During that long, hot summer of 1964, Ivan Smith, a mercenary volunteer in the Armée Nationale Congolais, came to witness and understand fear, the law of the jungle and the lust for killing that permeates Africa. A member of 'Mad Mike' Hoare's 5 Commando Group he and his companions were nominally soldiers but there was little in the way of campaigns, tactics and discipline. Of conventional warfare there was none. Loyalty to country or unit did not exist and the fear of death was the only commander. Many more mercenaries died from an accidental discharge, in a drunken shoot-out or from a bullet in the back than were ever killed in action by Simba rebels. Nearly half a century later, Ivan Smith re-lives the nightmare that was the Congo.

A baby-faced murderer is leaving a trail of corpses across the Montana territory. A killing machine in boots, Ned Larson has already sent one unlucky lawman to an early grave. And Longarm is next on this bloodthirsty outlaw's death list. Raring to answer Larson's challenge, Longarm fixes to swap hot lead with a cold-blooded killer. But the weak-kneed officials tie his hands ... they want this butcher brought back alive!

"A suspenseful tale, told from the title to the end with wit and warmth by a very talented writer." —Nancy Pickard, award-winning author Summer in Benteen County, Kansas, is a season possessed of all the gentle subtlety of an act of war. Winter, of course, is no better, but remembrance of its frosts and blizzards and winds that begin to suck away your life before you walk a dozen steps has grown faint by the early hours of a Sunday morning in late June. While some try to sleep, and Sheriff English and his ex-wife try sex, the Reverend Peter Simms takes an early walk in the park and encounters someone counting coup. When the Sheriff's part-Cheyenne brother, Mad Dog, arrives to meditate, he finds the Reverend's mutilated corpse. Mad Dog is the obvious suspect and he begins to hang out in the town jail while Sheriff English widens his net. English picks up several suspicious characters, and an increasingly dark history for the Simms family. The case grows stormier, and so does the weather. As a tornado gathers to hurl its fury on the hapless town, the fury of the killer rises to meet it.

Mass Killers investigates those addicted to death. Many killers have become dangerously hooked on the thrill of the kill, driving them to commit even more extreme acts of violence in pursuit of their drug of choice - the suffering of others. This fascinating book is not for the faint hearted. It contains graphic descriptions of murder on a massive scale and looks closely at the lives of the damaged and deranged men and women who have perpetrated history's most horrific crimes Contents: Crimes against Humanity including Vlad the Impaler, Nazi Crimes, Japanese Crimes, Killing Fields of Cambodia Spree Killers including Charles Starkweather, University of Texas, Hungerford, Dunblane, Virginia Tech Serial Killers including Andrei Chikatilo, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Harold Shipman

How would you treat a murderer? If you’re from Hollywood and he’s notorious, you might turn him into a folk hero. Separate the facts from the many legends and revisions that have blossomed around these killers in this frightening look at the bloody real lives of movie’s infamous antiheroes. You’ll find a blood-curdling assortment of the “criminal elite” in American Murder: Criminals, Crime and the Media, a rogue’s gallery of our most famous killings, killers and other scoundrels (and some that ought to be more famous than they are). A collection of high-profile murderers, gangsters, assassins, psychopaths, such as O.J., Amy Fisher, Robert Blake, Susan Smith, Claus Von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Speck, Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bugsy Siegel, Jesse James, John Dillinger, Charles Manson, Albert Fish, T. Cullen Davis, Ronald DeFeo, Jr., Edmund Kemper, Beulah Annan, Bonnie and Clyde, Billy the Kid, Charlie Starkweather, as well as an assortment of lesser known killers with some incredible tales! With numerous photos and illustrations, this tome is richly illustrated, and its helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness. American Murderexplores the legends as depicted in movies, stories, and songs. You’d not want to meet any of them in person – either the real or Hollywood versions!

This book offers a fascinating and insightful overview of seven centuries of murder in Europe. It tells the story of the changing face of violence and documents the long-term decline in the incidence of homicide. From medieval vendettas to stylised duels, from the crime passionel of the modern period right up to recent public anxieties about serial killings and underworld assassinations, the book offers a richly illustrated account of murder’s metamorphoses. In this original and compelling contribution, Spierenburg sheds new light on several important themes. He looks, for example, at the transformation of homicide from a private matter, followed by revenge or reconciliation, into a public crime, always subject to state intervention. Combining statistical data with a cultural approach, he demonstrates the crucial role gender played in the spiritualisation of male honour and the subsequent reduction of male-on-male aggression, as well as offering a comparative view of how different social classes practised and reacted to violence. This authoritative study will be of great value to students and scholars of the history of crime and violence, criminology and the sociology of violence. At a time when murder rates are rising and public fears about violent crime are escalating, this book will also interest the general reader intrigued by how our relationship with murder reached this point.

Before the War of 1866 the name of Helmuth Von Moltke was scarcely known outside the Prussian army. His appointment as Chief of the General Staff was in many ways surprising, and he certainly did not himself expect it. He was thus put at the head of a military institution that was already to some extent superior to its counterparts elsewhere; he was to turn it into a formidable machine that became, in his hands, very nearly invincible. This was due to number of factors which coincided with his appointment. Among these were the many advances in military technology and logistics on the one hand, and on the other the emergence of Otto Von Bismarck as Minister-President of Prussia, with whom Moltke had a crucial, if occasionally uneasy, relationship. This book follows Moltke's part in the course of the campaign at the end of which his name had become a household word. It traces his rise to the position of Chief of the General Staff, against the background of the political situation of Prussia in the middle of the 19th Century, and the way in which he developed the functions of the General Staff. Moltke's contribution to the allied campaign of Prussia and Austria against Denmark in 1864 was an important part of his own development, before the inevitable war between the successful allies in 1866. As the book shows, for that war Moltke prepared his plans in the minutest detail. The triumphant success of his strategy in Bohemia was supplemented by the boldness of his campaign in western Germany, in which a small Prussian army overcame a huge numerical disadvantage. By the end of the Seven Weeks' War Moltke had made Prussia the strongest military power in Europe. The Campaign of 1866 in Bohemia is covered in great detail, including the most extensive coverage of the Battle of Königgätz yet published in English. The author has made full use of an extensive number of German language sources. His detailed text is accompanied by a number of black and white illustrations and battle maps. Orders of battle are also provided. This is the latest title in Helion's groundbreaking series of 19th Century studies, and will again appear in hardback as a strictly limited edition printing of 750 copies, each individually numbered and signed by the author on a decorative title page.