The intimate and detailed portrait of the celebrated Bellamy family of Upstairs, Downstairs. No family in the past century - excepting perhaps the Forsytes - has been so dramatically exposed to public stare as the Bellamys of Eaton Place. Drawing from the diaries of Richard Bellamy, the personal letters of Lady Majorie, the Southwold Papers in the British Museum, as well as his own friendship with James Bellamy and his conversations with Mrs. Elizabeth (Bellamy) Wallace shortly before her recent death in New York City, John Pearson has written a sensitive and finely detailed portrait of this patrician English family. The Bellamys could not have anticipated the extraordinary interest that their lives have generated in Europe and America through the award-winning television series Upstairs, Downstairs. Here, Mr. Pearson chronicles the Bellamys' complex, stormy, and passionate lives during the years between 1884 and 1929, when they reigned at 165 Eaton Place. An...

When an award-winning foreign journalist reveals the existence of an Amsterdam-based sweatshop known as a “knot shop” that employs and enslaves young girls as laborers, private security firm Rutherford Risk is hired by a philanthropist to find it and shut it down.   David “Sarge” Dulwich, Knox’s former boss from their government contractor days, knows that Knox's cultural knowledge, combat skills, and sympathy for the abused make him right for the job. Joined by Grace Chu, whose more subtle skills for acquiring sensitive tech information help to balance Knox's improvisational style, he heads to Amsterdam in an attempt to dismantle the child labor operation and rescue the girls. In their way is a crime organization that has permeated the neighborhoods with goodwill turning even the victims' parents against their would-be saviors. With enemies around every corner, Knox and Grace can't tell the good from the bad.

SUMMARY:Ever since the Kray twins invited John Pearson to write their official biography more than forty years ago, he has been obsessed with them. After they were jailed in 1969 for thirty years for murder, Pearsons biography The Profession of Violence enjoyed a cult following among the young and was said to be the most popular book in H.M.s prisons, after the Bible. Ron died in 1995. Reg followed him five years later, and both of their funerals drew crowds on a scale unknown for film stars, let alone for two departed murderers. Since then, far from fading with their death, public fascination with the twins has never flagged. Their clothes and memorabilia are sold at auction like religious relics. Rons childlike prison paintings fetch more money than those of many well-known artists. And people still refer to them like popular celebrities. Why? This is the question Pearson asked himself, and over the past three years he has been re-examining their history, unearthing much previously unknown material, and has come to some fascinating conclusions. The Immortal Murderers reveals new facts about the Krays tortured relationship as identical twins; a relationship which helped predestine them to a life of crime; a relationship that made them utterly unlike any other major criminals. Pearson has discovered two new and unsuspected murders, along with fresh light on the killings of George Cornell and Jack the Hat McVitie. There are facts about the twins obsession with publicity, and how far this made them actor criminals murdering for notoriety. Most riveting of all are the chapters which reveal how Ron Kray caused a major sexual scandal in which a prime minister, together with other leading politicians, condoned the most outrageous establishment cover-up in British politics since the war. The Immortal Murderers contains many more surprises, but the one thing that emerges is that the Kray twins were not only stranger but also far more important than anyone ever suspected. Fascination with them will forever remain; they will never lose their role as the immortal murderers.

Oil tycoon J. Paul Gerry created the greatest fortune in America - and came close to destroying his own family in the process. Of his four sons who reached manhood, only one survived relatively unscathed. One killed himself, one became a drug-addicted recluse and the third had to bear the stigma all his life of being disinherited in childhood. The unhappiness continued into the next generation, with the name Getty, as one journalist put it, 'becoming synonymous for family dysfunction'. Getty's once favourite grandson was kidnapped by the Italian mafia, lost his car and, after a lifetime of drink and drugs, became a paraplegic. A granddaughter is currently suffering from AIDS. And the Getty family itself has been torn apart by litigation over their poisoned inheritance. But did the disaster have to happen? John Pearson, who has specialized in biographies of families as varied as the Churchills, the British Royal Family, the Dcvonshires and the Krays, sets out to find the answer....

Reggie and Ronald Kray ruled London's gangland during the 1960s with a ruthlessness and viciousness that shocks even now. Building an empire of organised crime such as nobody has done before or since, the brothers swindled, intimidated, terrorised, extorted and brutally murdered. John Pearson explores the strange relationship that bound the twins together, and charts their gruesome career to their downfall and imprisonment for life in 1969. Now expanded to include further extraordinary revelations, including the unusual alliance between the Kray twins and Lord Boothby – the Tory peer who won £40,000 in a libel settlement when he denied allegation of his association with the Krays – 'Profession of Violence 'is a truly classic work.

John Pearson

A phenomenon and a legend in her lifetime, Barbara Cartland has held the world record four years running as the most prolific author alive. Now, with her novels being filmed and selling throughout the world, she has become a household name. But what of the woman behind the legend? Henry Cloud has looked back into her past life and tells of the unexpected hardships and the young girl's dreams that produced the first Barbara Cartland novels, written in her early twenties. He reveals the influence of men like Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill and Lord Birkenhead on her life when she was struggling to achieve fame. This was the era of the dancing Twenties, when she received forty-nine proposals of marriage. He describes her relationships with both her husbands and her love and ambition for her talented brother Ronald - her battle to get him into Parliament and his tragic death in the war. It is a story as romantic and inspiring as any of her own novels. But Barbara Cartland...

RetailWhen Lady Diana Spencer married the Prince of Wales in 1981, very little attention was given to her feudal family. The once powerful Spencer dynasty was in disarray and seemed to have outlived its usefulness. In the years following Diana's death, however, the spotlight has turned and remained on the Spencers. Members of what appeared to be a dysfunctional aristocratic family have more than come into their own.Blood Royal: The Story of the Spencers and the Royals addresses the questions surrounding the Spencer family story: their chequered history, their intriguing character, and, through the influence of Prince William, their future role within the monarchy. For while Diana left an indelible mark on the British nation and on those who loved and admired her around the world, she also left an indelible mark on the royal family of Windsor: her Spencer genes.