British Library Publishing

In the mid-nineteenth century, as new routes opened up, a new generation of travellers embarked on excursions to India, China and Japan. Globetrotters - leisure tourists with a keen interest in experiencing authentic culture - flocked to the East, casting aside preconceptions and gravitating towards what they hoped to be the unchanged landscapes and traditions of Eastern cultures.

The Library has one of the largest and most impressive cartographic collections in the world, including manuscript maps and atlases, administrative records and plans, large-scale surveys and digital maps. From this rich resource, 100 fascinating examples ranging from world and city maps, celestial and sea charts, literary and statistical maps, curiosities and fake maps have been selected as the basis for th...

Stanfords London Book of the Month February 2017 London: one of the great historic cities of Europe, cultural capital, centre of music and fashion, hub of politics and business, Olympic city, home and workplace of millions. The city's long history is palpable - we can still see the London of Dickens, Dr Johnson, Defoe, Wren and even Shakespeare. The very names St Paul's, Smithfield, Char...

Books; reading, collecting and the physical housing of them has brought the book-lover joy - and stress - for centuries. Fascinated writers have tried to capture the particular relationships we form with our library, and the desperate troubles we will undergo to preserve it.

In a gloomy flat off Islington High Street, Chief Inspector Brett Nightingale and Sergeant Beddoes find an old woman dead. The Princess Olga Karukhin, who fled from Russia at the time of the Revolution, has lived in terror of being discovered ever since.

In this richly visual narrative, acclaimed historian Susan Schulten explores five centuries of American history through maps. From the voyages of European discovery to the digital age, she reveals the many ways that maps have shaped history. Whether made for military strategy or urban reform, to encourage settlement or to investigate disease, maps have the power to illuminate and complicate our understandin...

A car hurtles down the driveway of a luxury villa in Switzerland. The driver is a young woman, Lucia Bernardi. Inside the house, police find the body of her lover on the bedroom floor. The dead man - Ahmed Fathir Arbil - was an Iraqi refugee, who has been tortured and killed. Lucia vanishes into hiding in the South of France.Piet Maas, a journalist for the World Reporter, sets out on Lucia's trail, hoping f...

London - A History in Maps published by the British Library in association with the London Topographical Society beautifully illustrates the development of London over the past 750 years from a small town, snuggly fitted within its walls, into one of the world’s greatest and most dynamic capitals.

Howling down the tunnels comes a new collection showcasing the greatest stories of strange happenings on the tracks, many of which are republished here for the first time since their original departure.

'Never had I been given a tougher problem to solve, and never had I been so utterly at my wits' end for a solution.' A signalman is found dead by a railway tunnel. A man identifies his wife as a victim of murder on the underground. Two passengers mysteriously disappear between stations, leaving behind a dead body. Trains have been a favourite setting of many crime writers, providing the mobile equival...

The British Library's map collection is the national cartographic collection of Britain and numbers around four million maps dating from 15 CE to 2017 CE. These include road maps drawn for 13th century pilgrims and sea charts for 17th-century pirates. They include the first printed map to show the Americas and the last to show English-controlled Calais. They include the world's biggest and smallest atlases....

The 1939 Arsenal side is firing on all cylinders and celebrating a string of victories. They appear unstoppable, but the Trojans - a side of amateurs who are on a winning streak of their own - may be about to silence the Gunners.

When Dr Raymond Ferens moves to a practice at Milham in the Moor in North Devon, he and his wife are enchanted with the beautiful hilltop village lying so close to moor and sky. At first they see only its charm, but soon they begin to uncover its secrets - envy, hatred and malice.

From picturesque canals to the swirling currents of the ocean, a world of secrets lies buried beneath the surface of the water. Dubious vessels crawl along riverbeds, while the murky depths conceal more than one gruesome murder.

If you centre a globe on Kiritimati (Christmas Island), all you see around it is a vast expanse of ocean. Islands of various sizes float in view while glimpses of continents encroach on the fringes, but this is a view dominated by water. The immense stretch of the Pacific Ocean is inhabited by a diverse array of peoples and cultures bound by a common thread: their relationship with the sea.

The possibilities of flight have long fascinated us. Each innovation captivated a broad public, from those who gathered to witness winged medieval visionaries jumping from towers, to those who tuned in to watch the moon landings.

The detective's role is simple: to catch the culprit. Yet behind each casual observation lies a learned mind, trained on finding the key to the mystery.

The sea monsters on medieval and Renaissance maps, whether swimming vigorously, gambolling amid the waves, attacking ships, or simply displaying themselves for our appreciation, are one of the most visually engaging elements on these maps, and yet they have never been carefully studied. The subject is important not only in the history of cartography, art, and zoological illustration, but also in the history...

Arthur Simpson - 'British to the core', but without a passport to prove it - lives in Athens, scraping by as a driver, journalist and petty thief. When Simpson spots Harper at the airport he recognises him as a tourist new to the city and in need of a private driver. But an ill-judged attempt to relieve Harper of his traveller's cheques reveals him to be a highly sophisticated criminal, and entangles Simpso...

The Female Detective was published in 1864 and it introduces the first professional female detective in British fiction, Mrs Gladden. Typical of detective fiction of its time, Forrester's book features various cases narrated by Gladden, whose deductive methods and energetic approach anticipate those of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Mrs Gladden uses similar methods to her male counterparts - she en...