Book Title: Spy Princess
Genre: History/Biography
Format: Paper (Special 20th Edition)
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Shrabani Basu tells the moving story of Noor's life from her birth in Moscow - where her father was a Sufi preacher - to her capture by the Germans. Noor was one of only three women SOE awarded the George Cross and, under torture, revealed nothing but her name - but not her real name, nor her code name, just the name she used to register at SOE: Nora Baker. Kept in solitary confinement, chained between hand and feet and unable to walk upright, Noor existed on bowls of soup made from potato peelings. Ten months after she was captured, she was taken to Dachau and, on 13 September 1944, she was shot. Her last word was 'Liberte'.

The Author:
Shrabani was born in Calcutta and grew up in Dhaka, Kathmandu and Delhi. She graduated in History from St Stephen’s College, Delhi and completed her Masters from Delhi University. In 1983 she began her career as a trainee journalist in the bustling offices of The Times of India in Mumbai. She moved to London in 1987, and has since then been the correspondent of the Calcutta-based ABP group writing for Ananda Bazar Patrika, Sunday magazine and The Telegraph. She has also written for BBC History Magazine, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph and other publications. Over her long career she has done exclusive interviews with many eminent people including Benazir Bhutto, Sheikh Hasina, Salman Rushdie, Nirad C Chaudhuri and Viv Richards.

She has always combined her journalism with her love of history and all her books have evolved from her observations about the shared histories of India and Britain. She is a Sunday Times best-selling author and her books include the critically acclaimed The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer: Arthur Conan Doyle, George Edalji and the Foreigner in the English Village, (2021) For King and Another Country: Indian Soldiers on the Western Front 1914-18, (2015) Victoria & Abdul: The True Story of the Queen’s Closest Confidant (now a major Oscar-nominated motion picture starring Dame Judi Dench and Ali Fazal), (2010) Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan, (2006) and Curry: The Story of the Nation’s Favourite Dish (1999 and 2003).

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Book Title: A Very Private School
Genre: Royal Historical Biography
Format: Hardback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: Global

The Book:
INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

"A tour de force." --The Washington Post

In this poignant memoir, Charles Spencer recounts the trauma of being sent away from home at age eight to attend boarding school.

A Very Private School offers a clear-eyed, first-hand account of a culture of cruelty at the school Charles Spencer attended in his youth and provides important insights into an antiquated boarding system. Drawing on the memories of many of his schoolboy contemporaries, as well as his own letters and diaries from the time, he reflects on the hopelessness and abandonment he felt at aged eight, viscerally describing the intense pain of homesickness and the appalling inescapability of it all. Exploring the long-lasting impact of his experiences, Spencer presents a candid reckoning with his past and a reclamation of his childhood. And now, in a new afterword, Spencer reflects on the aftermath of his memoir's publication, including the outpouring of support and solidarity from fellow abuse survivors.

The Author:
Charles Spencer is an author, historian, public speaker, broadcaster and journalist. He is also the 9th Earl Spencer.

Charles Spencer is the author of seven non-fiction books, including three Sunday Times bestsellers: Blenheim, Battle for Europe, which was shortlisted for Historical Book of the Year at the 2005 National Book Awards; Killers of the King – which was the second highest selling History book in the UK in 2014; and The White Ship, the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon.

He has been the keynote speaker at hundreds of events in the UK, India, USA, South Africa, France, Australia, Canada, Spain, Portugal and New Zealand.

As a broadcaster, Charles Spencer worked for NBC News as an on-air correspondent from 1986 to 1995. He has been a reporter for Granada Television, has presented for the History Channel, and has appeared on many occasions as an expert on the BBC.

As a print journalist he has written in the UK for The Guardian, The Independent on Sunday, The Financial Times, The Daily Telegraph, and others. In the United States he has written for Vanity Fair, Veranda, and Nest magazines.

Charles Spencer was educated at Eton, and at Oxford University, where he earned his MA in Modern History.

Most recently, Charles Spencer has enjoyed success with ‘The Rabbit Hole Detectives’, – his new podcast presented alongside Dr Cat Jarman, and the Rev. Richard Coles – which takes listeners on a fascinating dive into the origins of real and symbolic historical objects.

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Website: https://althorpestate.com

Book Title: Secret Voices
Genre: History - Biography
Format: Hardback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
A captivating collection of daily extracts from women’s diaries, looking back over four centuries to discover how women’s experience – of men and children, sex and shopping, work and the natural world – has changed down the years. And, of course, how it hasn’t.

Organised around the calendar year, in this engaging anthology you’ll find Lady Anne Clifford in the seventeenth century and Loran Hurnscot in the twentieth both stoically recording the demands of an unreasonable husband; Joan Wyndham and Anne Frank, at much the same time, but in wildly different settings, describing their first experiences with sex; and Anne Lister (TV’s Gentleman Jack) in eighteenth-century Yorkshire exploring her love affairs with women alongside Alice Walker in twentieth-century California.

With several selections for each day, from the 1st January to the 31st December, this book is a fascinating record of how women were thinking, feeling and reacting to historical events. From Virginia Woolf relishing her new haircut and Oprah Winfrey meditating on her career to Emilie Davis chronicling the death of Abraham Lincoln and teenage Ma Yan yearning for education in poverty-stricken China, Secret Voices contains a rich mix of well-known diarists and less familiar ones, and often the voices echoing down the centuries sound eerily familiar today.

The Author:
Sarah Gristwood is a biographer, journalist, and commentator on royal affairs. Her previous books include the best-selling Arbella: England’s Lost Queen, The Tudors in Love, Secret Voices, and biographies of Beatrix Potter, Winston Churchill, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, and HM Queen Elizabeth II. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an honorary patron of Historic Royal Palaces and regularly contributes to TV documentary series and coverage of royal events. She lives in Kent.

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Book Title: 1996: Reflections on the year that changed my life
Genre: Biography/ Sport
Format: Hardback.
Signed by Both Ian and Tony - Dedication is Available by Ian .
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
'Tony Adams calls it a “celebration of recovery.” It’s a monument to candour too. Gruesome memories come with smiles… The fresh detail in his new autobiography, 1996, adds layers that are both harrowing and redemptive as he goes about the work of helping others.' PAUL HAYWARD, The Observer

It was the summer of Euro 96 and England was in party mood as the nation hosted a major tournament, revelling in watching Gazza and Co reach the semi-finals. For the national team's captain Tony Adams, though, it masked a misery that had been building all year, with his wife leaving and his children being removed from him as a result of his dangerous and damaging drinking.

Following Gareth Southgate's crushing penalty miss against Germany, Adams proceeded to embark on a 44-day bender to drown sorrows that learned how to swim and led him into some seamy, sordid situations. Finally, he could take no more and desperation drove him to quit the booze and get help. A year that had begun in dark despair would end in a new lightness of being.

In 1996, Adams revisits in candid, graphic detail that year when football came home but England's thirty years of hurt continued. And, as he reaches his 60th birthday, he reflects with trademark honesty and accumulated wisdom on his own remarkable thirty years off hurt.

The Author:
IAN RIDLEY is the author of 14 sports books, including the Sunday Times No.1 best selling Addicted, with the former Arsenal and England captain Tony Adams, which was shortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. The follow-up book Sober was published in 2017, 20 years on. Another of his books, The Breath of Sadness: On love, grief and cricket, which is a poignant account of coping with the death of his trailblazing sports journalist wife Vikki Orvice, was also shortlisted for the William Hill. In addition, three other titles have been shortlisted in the British Sports Book Awards.

Over a 40-year career in journalism, Ian was a sports writer for The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and the Mail on Sunday, for whom he was Chief Football Writer. He was named Sports Journalist of the Year in the 2007 British Press Awards and nominated on two other occasions.

Ian has also written for television, including more than 20 episodes of the Sky One drama series Dream Team, and has in development a film script on the life story of the world champion boxer Darren Barker, based on the autobiography on which the two collaborated, A Dazzling Darkness.

After completing a Masters in Crime and Thriller Writing at Cambridge University in recent years, Ian has published two novels, Outer Circle and Don't Talk, books 1 and 2 in the series of Jan Mason investigative journalist books.

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Set of Three Great Hardback Books

Title 1: The Romanovs Under House Arrest
Title 2: Rasputin and his Russian Queen
Title 3: The Anne Boleyn Bible
Genre: History - Biographies
Format: Hardbacks
Signed: Dedications Available YES
Bids Accepted: UK Only

Title 1: The Romanovs Under House Arrest
Although many books cover the lives of Russia’s last
royal family in some considerable detail, their time
spent under house arrest in their own domestic home –
the Alexander Palace, outside St. Petersburg – is often
explained in a few scant pages, or a chapter at most.
But when set against the Revolution and the abdication
of the Tsar, these few months from February to August
1917 take on tremendous significance and deserve to
be studied in detail. Therein, as events spiralled out of
control, the Romanovs would find themselves virtual
prisoners in their own palace.
Worse still, with the aforementioned Tsar –
Nicholas II – away and ensconced in the vicissitudes
of World War One, it was left to his wife Alexandra
– favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria – to
commandeer a household increasingly under siege.
She did this with aplomb, whilst simultaneously caring
for a haemophiliac son and four daughters laid low
by life-threatening measles. Alexandra’s boast that she
was the one who ‘wore the trousers’ was thus put to the
test in the hardiest of scenarios, as she found herself
forced both to bolster a flagging palace garrison against
the possibility of attack by bloodthirsty insurgents,
whilst attempting to hold together a domestic staff
increasingly fearful for their own lives in the face
of mob retribution. Meanwhile, the German High
Command set about releasing a veritable human
bacillus – Lenin himself – back toward his native
Russia, in a novel attempt to destabilise the Russian
war machine further still.
Not simply a blow-by-blow account of the daily lives
of a monarchy defiled, this book runs in tandem with
the Russian Revolution as it surges out from Petrograd
and toward the idyllic suburbs that the Romanovs
called their home … without Rasputin to rally them,
who can save the dynasty now?!

Title 2: Rasputin and his Russian Queen: The True Story of Grigory and Alexandra
RASPUTIN’S RELATIONSHIP with Russia’s last Tsarina, Alexandra, notorious from the famous Boney M song, has never been adequately addressed; biographies are always for one or the other, or simply Alexandra and her husband Nicholas. In this new work, Mickey Mayhew reimagines Alexandra for the #MeToo generation; ‘neurotic’; ‘hysterical’; ‘credulous’ and ‘fanatical’ are shunted aside in favour of a sympathetic reimagining of a reserved and pious woman tossed into the heart of Russian aristocracy, with the sole purpose of providing their patriarchal monarchy with an heir. When her longed-for son then developed haemophilia, she turned to the one man capable of curing the child’s agonising pain – Grigory Rasputin. Some say that between them, Grigory and Alexandra brought down 300 years of Romanov rule and ushered in the Russian Revolution, but theirs was simply the story of a mother fighting for the health of her son against a backdrop of bigotry, sexism and increasing secularism. She liked to pray and he liked to party, but when they found themselves steering Russia through the First World War, her gender and his class gave society no option but to destroy them. Bubbling with his trademark bon mots, Mickey Mayhew’s latest book breathes fresh life into two of history’s most fascinating – and polarising – figures. This is the real story of Rasputin and his Russian Queen.

Title 3: The Anne Boleyn Bible
Anne Boleyn sells, but she sells in segments; a biography here, a study over there on her guilt and something else yonder concerned with where she lived or what she liked to wear. This book, covering not just her life but her life onscreen, in theatre, on TV and also the impact of the first black actress to play her, is the definitive, all-encompassing story of Anne Boleyn from 1501 (or thereabouts) to 2023. Having examined the ardent fandom of Anne Boleyn for his doctorate, Dr Mickey Mayhew is in a unique position to offer something new to say on this much-discussed 'tragic' Tudor queen and is not afraid to tackle some of the less palatable aspects of her life. Also, this book is the first to examine with authenticity the reality of Anne's relationship with the most important man in her life, the man whose name she repeated in comfort whilst facing the Swordsman of Calais on the scaffold, having spent her life promulgating his doctrine; Jesus Christ himself. As for the aforementioned executioner, Dr Mayhew's research in Calais and Saint-Omer can now lift a lid on a few of the particulars of this elusive and yet essential figure of Anne Boleyn mythos; and yes, now he even has a name as well. The Anne Boleyn Bible also offers a straightforward retelling of Anne's actual historical life, albeit one that outlines an entirely fresh and empowering perspective on her rise to prominence; this is followed by a series of considered arguments on the 'for' and 'against' in regard to her guilt & execution; then her entry into popular culture, firstly in plays and masques, before she went on to headline movies, TV series, cosplay, and now, with the first black woman to portray her, model and actress Jodie Turner-Smith. This book is simply what it says on the cover - The Anne Boleyn Bible - leaving no depiction, no religious aspect, no appearance in popular culture, from The Simpsons to the West End musical 'Six', overlooked; likewise, Dr Mayhew also turns his trademark brand of rather wry commentary toward the vast plethora of Anne Boleyn merchandising, tourist spots, rubber ducks, beanies and the wrangling question of who was the ultimate onscreen Anne; Genevieve Bujold or Natalie Dormer?!

Author Bio:
Mickey Mayhew is an author and historian from London, working mainly on Mary Queen of Scots, Anne Boleyn, and the Romanovs; he has a PhD focusing on the online ‘tragic queen cult’ surrounding Mary and Anne. He wrote ‘The Little Book of Mary Queen of Scots’ (published by The History Press) in 2014 and then ‘I love the Tudors’ (published by Pitkin Publishing) in 2016. ‘House of Tudor – A Grisly History’ and ‘Imprisoning Mary Queen of Scots – The Men Who Kept the Stuart Queen’ were released by Pen & Sword Books in 2022. ‘Rasputin and his Russian Queen – The True Story of Grigory and Alexandra’, will be released in March 2023, with ‘The Anne Boleyn Bible’ due in August.
Previously to this, he was co-author on three books relating to Jack the Ripper, whilst fictional work includes the urban fantasy trilogy ‘The Barrow Boys of Barking’, beginning with ‘Jack and the Lad’ and concluding, for now, with ‘Jamie’s Big Bang’. His tongue-in-cheek memoir ‘Mickeypedia’ is also now available, with all proceeds going to the Anna Kennedy Online autism charity.

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Book One: Rebel Women Between The Wars
Book Two: Wildly Different
Genre: History
Format: Paperbacks
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book One: Rebel Women Between The Wars
What did it mean to be a ‘rebel woman’ in the interwar years? Taking the form of a multiple biography, this book traces the struggles, passions and achievements of a set of ‘fearlessly determined’ women who stopped at nothing to make their mark in the traditionally masculine environments of mountaineering, politics, engineering and journalism. From the motorist Claudia Parsons to the ‘star’ reporter Margaret Lane, the mountaineer Dorothy Pilley and the journalist Shiela Grant Duff, the women charted in this book challenged the status quo in all walks of life, alongside writing vivid, eye-witness accounts of their adventures. Recovering their voices across a range of texts including novels, poems, journalism and diaries, Rebel women between the wars reveals their inch by inch gains won through courageous and sometimes controversial and dangerous actions.

Book Two: Wildly Different
The globe-trotting tales of five extraordinary women who fought for the right to enjoy the wild places of the earth.

A Financial Times best summer book of 2025
‘Spellbinding.’ – Daily Express
‘Well worth reading.’ – Bookmunch

For millennia the ‘wild’ was a place heroic men went on epic quests. Women were forbidden from joining them. So how did they claim their place in the remote and lovely parts of our planet?

In Wildly different, historian Sarah Lonsdale traces the lives of five women who fought for the right to work in, enjoy and help to save the earth’s wild places. We’ll meet Mina Hubbard, who outraged the exploration community when she stepped into a canoe in northern Labrador. Evelyn Cheesman, who became the first female keeper of insects at London Zoo. Dorothy Pilley, who shocked polite society by donning men’s climbing breeches. Ethel Haythornthwaite, who helped make the Peak District Britain’s first National Park. And Wangari Maathai, who started a movement to plant millions of trees across sub-Saharan Africa.

Drawing on interviews with Sir David Attenborough, Wangari Maathai’s daughter and others, Lonsdale recounts the women’s adventures across five continents. Evocative and inspiring, this book shows how women can be ‘wildly different’.

The Author:
Sarah Lonsdale is an award-winning journalist, writer and historian and lives near Canterbury in Kent, UK. She is a senior lecturer in Journalism and history at City St George’s University, London. She was a reporter on the Observer newspaper, and freelanced for most major newspapers and magazines before studying for her PhD on journalists in fiction in 2009 - 2013. She is the author of three critically acclaimed books:

The Journalist in British Fiction and Film: Guarding the guardians 1900 to the present (Bloomsbury Academic, 2016)

Rebel Women Between the Wars:Fearless writers and adventurers (Manchester University Press, 2020)

Wildly Different: How five women reclaimed nature in a man's world (Manchester University Press, 2025)

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Title: Scenes From My Life in Poetry and Prose
Genre: Biography - Poetry
Format: Paperback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book;
Scenes from My Life is a collection of short stories, poems and non-fiction articles. Many pieces have been published in magazines and newspapers, but some, until now, were for my eyes only.

When I began writing my memoirs in 2023, I thought, if I don’t get this body of work out in the world, it might one day be deleted. Each piece is part of me, written at times in my life that were happy, sad, or tragic. These times were imperative to my development as a human being and later as an actress and writer. Times when I met people who influenced me, encouraged me to take a risk, gave me the confidence to change – and most importantly, understand more, do more, do better, and follow my dream.

Each piece of work in this collection is a scene from my life.

The Author:
I was bought up in a busy pub in a market town called Lutterworth. For as long as I remember, I wanted to be an actress and writer. I was offered a television role when I was sixteen, but my mother wanted me to have a 'proper' job, so I did a hairdressing apprenticeship instead. Eight years later, aged twenty-four, I sold two successful businesses for a place at East 15 Drama College and a career as an actress, working in Repertory theatre, the West End, film and http://television.In 2000 I gave up acting, taught myself to touch type, completed a two-year college course and began writing articles and presenting radio. In 2010, after living in London for thirty-six years, I returned to Lutterworth, swapping two window boxes and a mortgage for a garden and the freedom to write - and I loved it. Since then, I have written a series of ten novels. The first four books, set in World War Two, introduce the Dudley sisters. Three post-war books follow, and then three mystery, crime and spy thrillers take the Dudley sisters to 1960. Each story stands alone but is interwoven with the other stories.

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Website: https://madalynmorgan.com

Book Title: Phyll to her Friends
Genre: Biography
Format: Paperback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
A riveting story of grinding poverty and casual cruelty in 1920s Halifax, UK. A time just within the edges of living memory when a four-year-old child danced for pennies on a pub table, to pay for her father’s drinking. And as a nine-year-old, that same child scrubbing the outside steps of the big houses in all weathers, for a few, desperately needed pennies.

Yet this is not just social history, a tale of a child and her mother trying to survive against the odds. This is the story of the author’s mother and grandmother, tales which Kathleen heard many times throughout her own childhood. Unflinching, unsentimental without self-pity, Kathleen’s mother refused to be defined by the appalling circumstances of her childhood, and with courage and dignity, grew into the woman known simply as Phyll to her friends.

The Author:
Kathleen was brought up in rural Cumbria and now lives in North Yorkshire. She spent her working life in the NHS and, since her retirement, is now able to concentrate on her family, gardening and studying and writing poetry.

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Book Title: The Real Leonardo da Vinci
Genre: Biography - History
Format: Hardback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
Leonardo Da Vinci was left-handed. That’s probably why he wrote backwards from right to left to avoid smudging ink on his hand as he made notes on his latest works and visionary discoveries. Words could only be read with the help of a mirror making it taxing for anyone but himself to quickly decode his handwriting. There are many theories exploring the reason why he kept using “mirror writing” in all his manuscripts. Some historians say that he was trying to make it more challenging for people to steal his ideas while others claim that it was a clever attempt to hide scientific findings from the intolerant Roman Catholic Church of the Renaissance. Whatever the logic behind this, the constant association with mirror writing and studies on the human body anatomy, made him one of the most enigmatic figures of his and then of our century. This biography investigates Leonardo and his different roles from anatomist to inventor, architect, painter, rumoured to be templar and scientific pioneer. Despite leaving several of his works incomplete, Leonardo managed to influence generations of artists and still today remains a highly regarded figure in both the artistic and scientific sector.

The Author:
Rose Sgueglia is a writer, journalist and marketing consultant based in Cardiff. She is the founder of Miss Squiggles, a digital magazine and content agency. Her work has been published in different publications including GQ, La Repubblica, Yahoo and WI Life (a magazine for members of The Women’s Institute). She holds a BA in Journalism, Film and Media and a Post Graduate Diploma in Magazine Journalism from Cardiff University. She is currently working on her PhD in Media Studies with a research project on the impact material culture and audio-visual material has had on Chanel.

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Title: The Making of Swallows and Amazons (1974)
Genre: TV & Film Biography
Format: Paperback (First Edition)
Signed: Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK only.

The Book;
In 1973 Sophie Neville was cast as Titty alongside Virginia McKenna, Ronald Fraser and Suzanna Hamilton in the film Swallows & Amazons. Made before the advent of digital technology, the child stars lived out Arthur Ransome's epic adventure in the great outdoors without ever seeing a script. Encouraged by her mother, Sophie Neville kept a diary about her time filming on location in the lakes and mountains of Cumbria. Bouncy and effervescent, extracts from her childhood diary are interspersed among her memories of the cast and crew as well as photographs, maps and newspaper articles, offering a child's eye view of the making of the film from development to premiere - and the aftermath.

The Author:
Award-winning author Sophie Neville became inadvertently well known as a child when she starred as Titty in the 1974 feature film of Arthur Ransome's book Swallows and Amazons.

After that sunshiny time she went on to work for the BBC behind the camera on television programmes such as Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, Doctor Who and Eastenders. Having produced her own Inset series for BBC2 she was busy directing her second drama serial for children when disaster struck in the form of a mystery illness.

Fully recovered, Sophie now lives on the south coast of England with her husband. Every year she disappears for a while to ride in different parts of the world and has also been known to go sailing, but only when the sun shines.

Book Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chXkQ8m8tKM

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Website: https://sophieneville.net
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sophie_Neville

Book Title: The Witch Bottle
Genre: Children - Middle Grade
Format: Paperback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
‘They do say there be a witch in it, and if you let ‘un out, there’l! be a peck of trouble’
Eleven-year-old Egg, is having a rough year. Dad has a whole new family and she’s sure it’s all her fault. The last thing she wants is a mandatory school trip to the spooky Pitt Rivers Museum, but her strange, silver-haired teacher, Mr. Fel!grim, insists. When she’s paired with the popular Josh for a museum- wide treasure hunt, Egg thinks her luck might final!y be changing.

As the hunt leads them deeper into the eerie, artefact-filled halls, the shadows begin to stretch. Why does Mr. Fel!grim look exactly like a man in a hundred-year-old portrait? And where did the rest of her classmates go?

When the museum lights flicker and die, a bone- chil!ing fog swal!ows everything. When Egg wakes up, she isn’t in the museum anymore. She’s staring through silver-tinted glass at a world that has grown impossibly large.

Egg is trapped inside the Witch Bottle, one of the museum’s prize exhibits. Now, she must find the courage to face Priscil!a— a powerful, ancient witch with a wicked plan. If Egg can’t find a way out, she’ll become much more than just a student on a school trip. She’ll be the museum’s newest permanent exhibit...

The Author:
Kate was a late developer, attending university to study English and Creative Writing in her late 30s. She was one of the real life 'Ritas' featured on the Radio 4 Woman's Hour Programme commemorating the anniversary of the play, Educating Rita. Kate is a dedicated and licenced mudlark who is never happier than when she is up to her eyes in mud. She has won several literary awards and this year judged the historical fiction and biography category of the prestigious Eyelands International Book Awards.

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Facebook: https://katewiseman.co.uk
Instagram: https://www.facebook.com/katherine.blackmore
Website: https://katewiseman.co.uk

Book Title: The Man Who Bled Blue
Genre: Sport - Biography
Format: Hardback
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
Mike Lyons was Everton through and through. A boy from Croxteth who stood on the Goodison terraces, he rose through the ranks to captain his boyhood club during one of the most agonising eras in its history. He never won a trophy, but no player gave more of himself.

The Man Who Bled Blue tells the story of a footballer whose courage became legendary, from the diving header against Norman Hunter’s boot that long adorned the walls of Everton’s old Bellefield training ground to the bloodied face that remains synonymous with the player even today. It chronicles the near-misses that haunted a generation of Evertonians: a League Cup final trilogy, FA Cup semi-final heartbreaks, a title challenge that slipped away. And it captures the bond between a local hero and the supporters who loved him, even when the groans came loudest.

Beyond Goodison, the book follows Lyons to Sheffield Wednesday, Grimsby Town, Brunei and Australia as player, manager and coach, spreading his enthusiasm across four continents.

For author Simon Hart, this is a deeply personal story. His father coached Lyons as a schoolboy, building a connection that endured for decades. Drawing on that link and dozens of interviews, Hart has produced an intimate portrait of a man whose generosity of spirit matched his physical bravery, and whose dementia diagnosis revealed the devastating price of a life lived at one hundred per cent.

The Author:
Simon Hart has been working in sports journalism since the late 1990s and has been present at the past five World Cups. He reports on European football for UEFA's website and publications, and also writes for the Independent. His previous work includes Here We Go and in 2018, he released the critically acclaimed World in Motion.


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Website: https://mountvernonpublishing.com

Book Title: Pixie
Genre: Biography
Format: Hardback
Signed. Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book:
Jill Dawson's latest novel PIXIE (Bloomsbury) tells the story of Pamela Colman Smith, illustrator of the world's most famous Tarot deck. The FT described it as a 'transcendent, full-bodied tale of artists who conjure spirits, meaning and societal social change through their practice.' Louise Doughty as a 'work of genius' ; Paula Hawkins as 'a captivating novel about the most famous Occult artist you never knew.'
It's the turn of the twentieth century and Pamela 'Pixie' Colman Smith is a young woman of stark contradictions: plucky yet naïve, artistically gifted despite lacking classical training, fascinated by the esoteric but sceptical of the world around her.

After the deaths of her beloved mother and her troubled but well-intentioned father, Pixie finds herself in the complex, political world of fin-de-siècle art, trying to get her stunning work seen and to forge a name and a path for herself in life. Across Jamaica, Devon, London and Brooklyn, Pixie is a novel of epic proportions, a tale of the twists and turns, séances and secrets, successes and devastation, of one young woman's talent, grit and determination.

In Pixie, Jill Dawson renders the real-life figure of Pamela 'Pixie' Colman Smith, artist, publisher and illustrator of the still-iconic Rider–Waite–Smith tarot deck, in arrestingly vivid detail, breathing life into a story that is instantly knowable, but has, until now, eluded popular imagination.

The Author:
Born in Durham, Jill Dawson grew up in Yorkshire. She has won prizes for poetry, short stories and fiction and held many Fellowships, including the Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia, where she taught on the MA in Creative Writing course. In 2006 she received an honorary doctorate in recognition of her work and in 2020 became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in an eco house designed by her husband the architect Meredith Bowles in the Cambridgeshire Fens. She has read Tarot for forty years and is a certified Jungian Tarot reader and Iyengar Yoga teacher.

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Website: https://jilldawson.co.uk

*Clare has donated a rare proof of her book*

Title: The Spy Who Loved
Genre: History - Biography
Format: Paperback (Rare Proof)
Signed - Dedication is Available
Bids Accepted: UK Only

The Book;
'Brings alive a glamorous, swashbuckling heroine' – Sunday Times

In June 1952, a woman was murdered by an obsessive colleague in a hotel in South Kensington. Her name was Christine Granville – Churchill's favourite spy. That she died young was perhaps unsurprising. That she had survived the Second World War was remarkable.

The daughter of a feckless Polish aristocrat and his wealthy Jewish wife, Christine fled to Britain on the outbreak of war and persuaded MI6 to make her their first female recruit. She took on mission after mission, skiing into occupied Poland, serving in Egypt and later parachuting into occupied France.

Her quick wit, courage and determination won her release from arrest more than once, and she saved the lives of several fellow officers, including one of her many lovers just hours before he was due to be executed by the Gestapo.

Of more strategic importance, the intelligence she smuggled to Britain, and her service in France, including single-handedly securing the defection of an entire Nazi German garrison, was a significant contribution to the Allied war effort. She was awarded the George Medal, the OBE and the Croix de Guerre.

In The Spy Who Loved Mulley has brought Christine vividly to life – a complex, courageous and very effective special agent who deserves to be better remembered.

The Author:
CLARE MULLEY is the award-winning author of AGENT ZO, shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2025; THE WOMAN WHO SAVED THE CHILDREN, which won the Daily Mail Biographers' Club Prize; THE SPY WHO LOVED, which led to Clare receiving Poland's cultural honour, the Bene Merito; and THE WOMEN WHO FLEW FOR HITLER, long-listed for the Historical Writers Association prize.

A popular contributor to TV, radio and pods, Clare lectures internationally, including at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Imperial War Museum in London, and Museum of the Second World War in Poland. She also writes and reviews across the papers.

Clare lives in England, with too many books and a dog who needs more baths.

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Website: https://claremulley.com