Everyone has heard of the KGB, but little has been published about is 'daughter' organisations through which Moscow terrorised the satellite states grabbed by Stalin during and after the Second World War. Staffed by Moscow-trained nationals closely monitored by KGB 'ambassadors', Poland's UB, the Czech StB, the Hungarian AVH, Romania's Securitate, Bulgaria's KDS and the ultra-Stalinist Stasi of the German Democratic Republic all repressed democratic movements in their respective countries for forty years. They arrested and imprisoned without trial anyone not toeing the Moscow line, earning the hatred of their compatriots. When this boiled over - in GDR 1953, Hungary 1956 and Czechoslovakia 1968 - Russian troops and tanks mowed down unarmed protestors. The 'daughters' also carried out espionage and mokrye dyela assassinations for Moscow in Britain and other Western countries, such as the murder of Bulgarian defector Georgi Markov on Waterloo Bridge in 1978, and occasionally hired professional hit men, including the notorious assassin Carlos the Jackal. Historian and author Douglas Boyd explores for the first time the relationship between the KGB and its ghastly brood of 'daughters' - a true family from hell.

When people think of Richard the Lionheart they recall the scene at the end of every Robin Hood epic when he returns from the crusade to punish his treacherous brother John and the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham. In reality Richard detested England and the English, was deeply troubled by his own sexuality and was noted for greed, not generosity, and for murder rather than mercy. In youth Richard showed no interest in girls, but a taste for cruelty and a greed for gold that would literally be the death of him. To save his own skin, he repeatedly abandoned his supporters to an evil fate, and his lack of interest in women saw the part of queen at his coronation played by his formidable mother, Queen Eleanor. His brief reign bankrupted England twice, destabilised the powerful empire his parents had put together and set the scene for his borther's ruinous rule. So how has Richard come to be known as the noble Christian hero associated with such bravery and patriotism? Lionheart...

What was life really like in German-occupied France during the Second World War? Douglas Boyd paints the clearest picture yet, using hitherto unpublished first-person accounts of ordinary men and women who lived through this extraordinary and dangerous time, when a few made fortunes, but most went cold and hungry. Less than 1 per cent of the French was pro-German. It is pure coincidence that the same percentage actively resisted the Germans despite knowing that, if caught, their husbands, wives and children were considered equally culpable under the brutal Teutonic principle of Sippenhaft - guilt by association? Using new, meticulously researched material, Douglas Boyd tells an enthralling and sometimes chilling narrative history of the Occupation, as lived by the French people. It is a record of great heroism and ultimate cruelty. Read it and ask yourself, 'How would I have reacted, living in Occupied France?' The answer may surprise you.