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King, Melanie

Kennedy-Luczak, Kathleen

Bikoff, Lauren

Panzczyk, Linda

Turan, Tulay

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory

Prophets Seers & Visionaries

History

Quercus

How did German intelligence agents use a dead fish to convey critical information to their operatives? What did an advertisement for a dog in the Times have to do with the movement of British troops into Egypt? And why did British officers suddenly become suspicious of the trousers hanging on a Belgian woman’s washing line? Throughout World War I, spymasters and their networks of secret agents developed many clever―and sometimes comical―methods of covert communication. Stacks of bread in a bakery window, puffs of smoke from a chimney, and even woolen pullovers were all used to pass on secret messages that were decipherable only to the well-trained eye. Drawing on the memoirs of eight spies, Melanie King divulges these and other tricks of the trade while sharing details from their astonishing stories. Among her informants are British intelligence officers working undercover in Germany and France, including a former Metropolitan police officer who once hunted Jack the Ripper; a German secret service officer codenamed “Agricola;” an American newspaperman; and an Austrian agent who disguised himself during his career as everything from a Jewish peddler to a Russian officer. A fascinating compendium of clever and long-forgotten ruses―interspersed with the stories of the spies themselves―Secrets in a Dead Fish sheds new light on the shadowy world of Great War espionage.

Secrets in a Dead Fish: The Spying Game in the First World War

Europe

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

There are few things in the world more pleasing than a decadent cup of hot chocolate, a steaming mug of one’s favorite tea, or that first wonderful sip of freshly brewed coffee. Three of the great culinary obsessions of the twenty-first century, tea, coffee, and chocolate are long-time favorites of both casual diners and foodies, But how did we become so enamored of the big three?             In her mouthwatering new book, Melanie King offers a concise cultural history. All three beverages hail from faraway places: tea came first from China, coffee from the Middle East, and chocolate from Central America. Physicians and politicians alike were quick to comment in newspapers and popular periodicals on their supposed perils or health benefits. Readers learn that coffee was recommended in the seventeenth century as protection against the bubonic plague. Tea was thought to make women unattractive and men “unfit to do their business,” while a cup of chocolate was supposed to have exactly the opposite effect on the drinker’s sex life and physical appearance. As consumption of these newly discovered delicacies grew, merchants seized on the opportunity by setting up coffee houses or encouraging ever-more-elaborate tea-drinking rituals.             Filled with fascinating and often funny anecdotes—from a goatherd whose flock became frisky after eating coffee berries to a duchess with a goblet of poisoned chocolate, Tea, Coffee & Chocolate shows how the rowdy initial reception of these drinks forms the roots of today’s enduring caffeine culture.

Tea, Coffee & Chocolate: How We Fell in Love with Caffeine

Cookbooks, Food & Wine

Cooking Education & Reference

English spas have a long and steamy history, from the thermal baths of Aquae Sulis in Bath to the stews of Southwark, the elegant pump rooms of Cheltenham and Buxton to the Victorian mania for hydrotherapy and Turkish hammams. 'The Secret History of English Spas' is an informative but light-hearted social and cultural history of our obsession with drinking and bathing in spa waters. It tells the stories of the rich, the famous, the poor and the sick, all of whom visited spas in hopes of curing everything from infertility to leprosy and gonorrhoea. It depicts the entrepreneurs who promoted these resorts - often on the basis of the most dubious scientific evidence - and the riotous and salacious social life enjoyed in spa towns, where moral health might suffer even as bodies were cleansed and purged. And yet English spas also offered an ideal of civility and politeness, providing a place where social classes and sexes could mingle and enjoy refined entertainments such as music and dance - all part of the fashionable pastime referred to as 'taking the waters'.

The Secret History of English Spas

Would you be buried, burned, sunk or pickled? Or turned into a diamond, embalmed like Lenin, or frozen like Walt Disney? The Dying Game explores all that has, could, and does befall a corpse - biologically, culturally, ethically, and legally. Entertaining, human, and based on sound research, Melanie King reveals everything you never knew (and didn't know you wanted to know) about the last taboo: Death.

The Dying Game: A Curious History of Death

Parenting & Relationships

Oneworld Pubns Ltd

The Lady Is A Spy: The Tangled Lives of Stan Harding and Marguerite Harrison

Biographies & Memoirs

Community & Culture

Ashgrove Publishing

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Books by King, Melanie