Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

The London Silver Vaults - for well over a century, the largest collection of silver for sale in the world. It has more locks than the Bank of England and more cameras than a celebrity punch-up. Not somewhere you can murder someone and vanish without a trace - only that's what happened.

Alongside their boss DCI Thomas Nightingale, the Special Assessment Unit find themselves embroiled in a mystery that encompasses London's tangled history, foreign lands and, most terrifying of all, the North!

And Detective Constable Peter Grant must solve this case soon because back home his partner Beverley is expecting twins any day now. But what he doesn't know is that he's about to encounter something - and somebody - that nobody ever expects...

In this vital re-examination of a shared history, historian and broadcaster David Olusoga tells the rich and revealing story of the long relationship between the British Isles and the people of Africa and the Caribbean. This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new chapter encompassing the Windrush scandal and the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, events which put black British history at the centre of urgent national debate. Black and British is vivid confirmation that black history can no longer be kept separate and marginalised. It is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation and it belongs to us all.

Drawing on new genealogical research, original records, and expert testimony, Black and British reaches back to Roman Britain, the medieval imagination, Elizabethan 'blackamoors' and the global slave-trading empire. It shows that the great industrial boom of the nineteenth century was built on American slavery, and that black Britons fought at Trafalgar and in the trenches of both World Wars. Black British history is woven into the cultural and economic histories of the nation. It is not a singular history, but one that belongs to us all. Unflinching, confronting taboos, and revealing hitherto unknown scandals, Olusoga describes how the lives of black and white Britons have been entwined for centuries.

A mutilated body in Crawley. The prime suspect is one Robert Weil, an associate of the twisted magician known as the Faceless Man. Before PC Peter Grant can get his head round the case a town planner goes under a tube train, adding to his case-load. And then Peter gets word of something very odd happening in Elephant and Castle…Book four in series.

Peter Grant is facing fatherhood, and an uncertain future, with equal amounts of panic and enthusiasm.

Leaving his old police life behind, he takes a job with Silicon Valley tech genius Terrence Skinner's new London start up: the Serious Cybernetics Corporation.

Drawn into the orbit of Old Street's famous 'silicon roundabout', Peter must learn how to blend in with people who are both civilians and geekier than he is. Compared to his last job, Peter thinks it should be a doddle. But magic is not finished with the Met's first trainee wizard in fifty years...

Because a secret is hiding somewhere in the building. A technology that stretches back to Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage, and forward to the future of artificial intelligence. A secret that is just as magical as it technological - and twice as dangerous.

In a small village in Herefordshire, the local police are reluctant to admit that there might be a supernatural element to the disappearance of some local children. London policeman Peter Grant soon finds himself caught up in a deep mystery, having to tackle local cops and local gods. And what's more, all the shops are closed by 4pm...Book five in series.

There's something going bump on the Metropolitan line and Sergeant Jaget Kumar knows exactly who to call. It's PC Peter Grant's speciality...

Only it's more than going 'bump'. Traumatised travellers have been reporting strange encounters on their morning commute, with strangely dressed people trying to deliver an urgent message. Stranger still, despite calling the police themselves, within a few minutes the commuters have already forgotten the encounter - making the follow up interviews rather difficult.

So with a little help from Abigail and Toby the ghost hunting dog, Peter and Jaget are heading out on a ghost hunting expedition. Because finding the ghost and deciphering their urgent message might just be a matter of life and death.

A Rivers of London novella.

In the darkest months of the Second World War, Churchill approved what seemed to many like a suicide mission. Under orders to attack the St Nazaire U-boat base on the Atlantic seaboard, British commandos undertook "the greatest raid of all", turning an old destroyer into a live bomb and using it to ram the gates of a Nazi stronghold. Five Victoria Crosses were awarded -- more than in any similar operation.

Drawing on official documents, interviews, unknown accounts and the astonished reactions of French civilians and German forces, The Greatest Raid recreates in cinematic detail the hours in which the "Charioteers" fought and died, from Lt Gerard Brett, the curator at the V & A, to "Bertie" Burtinshaw, who went into battle humming There'll Always be an England, and from Lt Stuart Chant, who set the fuses with 90 seconds to escape, to the epic solo reconnaissance of the legendary Times journalist Capt Micky Burn.

Unearthing the untold human stories of Operation Chariot, Bridge of Spies author Giles Whittell reveals it to be a fundamentally misconceived raid whose impact and legacy was secured by astonishing bravery.

Suspicious deaths are not usually the concern of PC Peter Grant, even when they happen at an exclusive party in London. But Lady Ty's daughter was there, and Peter owes Lady Ty a favour. Plunged into the alien world of the super-rich Peter soon creates new enemies at the point where the world of magic and that of privilege intersect. Assuming he survives the week . . .Book six in series.

A radically uplifting account of our species' progress, from one of the world's pre-eminent thinkers - with breakthrough insights into the power of diversity and our capacity to tackle climate change.
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What are the keys to human progress?

Why are living standards so unequal around the world?

How might all humans thrive and survive?

In The Journey of Humanity, Oded Galor offers a revelatory explanation of how humanity became, only very recently, the unique species to have escaped a life of subsistence poverty, enjoying previously unthinkable wealth and longevity. He reveals why this process has been so unequal around the world, resulting in the great disparities between nations that exist today. He shows why so many of our efforts to improve lives have failed and how they might succeed.
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Martin Chorley - aka the Faceless Man - wanted for multiple counts of murder, fraud and crimes against humanity, has been unmasked and is on the run. Peter Grant, Detective Constable and apprentice wizard, now plays a key role in an unprecedented joint operation to bring Chorley to justice.

But even as the unwieldy might of the Metropolitan Police bears down on its foe, Peter uncovers clues that Chorley, far from being finished, is executing the final stages of a long-term plan.

To save his beloved city Peter's going to need help from his former best friend and colleague - Lesley May - who brutally betrayed him and everything he thought she believed in. And, far worse, he might even have to come to terms with the malevolent supernatural killer and agent of chaos known as Mr Punch...

Book 7 in the Rivers of London series.

New York City. Meet Augustus Berrycloth-Young - fop, flaneur, and Englishman abroad - as he chronicles the Jazz Age from his perch atop the city that never sleeps

That is, until his old friend Thomas Nightingale arrives, pursuing a rather mysterious affair concerning an old saxophone - which will take Gussie from his warm bed, to the cold shores of Long Island, and down to the jazz clubs where music, magic, and madness haunt the shadows...

When Dr Walid called me to the morgue to listen to a corpse, I recognised the tune it was playing. Cyrus Wilkinson, part-time jazz saxophonist, had apparently dropped dead of a heart attack just after finishing a gig in Soho. He wasn't the first. No one was going to let me exhume corpses to see if they were playing my tune, so it was back to old-fashioned legwork, starting in Soho. Book 2 in series.

Peter Grant is a Detective Constable for the Metropolitan Police and since becoming a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, his world has become somewhat more complicated. There's something festering at the heart of the city. The spirit of rebellion has awakened, and it's fallen to him to bring order out of chaos - or die trying. Book one in series.

This is the story of K. It is the story of one young man, from birth to adulthood, told in fragments of memory. As he grows, he begins to realise that he is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart. His story explores questions of identity, belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, family and religion.

Something horrible is happening in the labyrinth of tunnels that make up the tube system that honeycombs the ancient foundations of London. And delays on the Northern line is the very least of it. Time to call in the Met's Economic and Specialist Crime Unit 9, aka 'The Folly'. Time to call in PC Peter Grant, Britain’s Last Wizard. Book three in series.