Books published by publisher Mainstream Digital

Hidden History uniquely exposes those responsible for the First World War. It reveals how accounts of the war’s origins have been deliberately falsified to conceal the guilt of the secret cabal of very rich and powerful men in London responsible for the most heinous crime perpetrated on humanity. For ten years, they plotted the destruction of Germany as the first stage of their plan to take control of the world. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was no chance happening. It lit a fuse that had been carefully set through a chain of command stretching from Sarajevo through Belgrade and St Petersburg to that cabal in London.Our understanding of these events has been firmly trapped in a web of falsehood and duplicity carefully constructed by the victors at Versailles in 1919 and maintained by compliant historians ever since. The official version is fatally flawed, warped by the volume of evidence they destroyed or concealed from public view.Hidden History poses a tantalising challenge. The authors ask only that you examine the evidence they lay before you . . .

On the night of 10-11 May 1996, eight climbers perished in what remains the worst disaster in Everest's history. Following the tragedy, numerous accounts were published, with Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air becoming an international bestseller. But has the whole story been told?A Day to Die For reveals the full, startling facts that led to the tragedy. Graham Ratcliffe, the first British climber to reach the summit of Mount Everest twice, was a first-hand witness, having spent the night on Everest's South Col at 26,000 ft, sheltering from the deadly storm. For years, he has shouldered a burden of guilt, feeling that he and his teammates could have saved lives that fateful night. His quest for answers has led to discoveries so important to an understanding of the disaster that he now questions why these facts were not made public sooner.History is dotted with high-profile disasters that both horrify and capture the attention of the public, but very rarely is our view of them revised to such devastating effect.

I stole every nickel and blew it on fine threads, luxurious lodgings, fantastic foxes and other sensual goodies. I partied in every capital in Europe and basked on all the world's most famous beaches'. Frank W Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams and Ringo Monjo, was one of the most daring con men, forgers, imposters and escape artists in history. In his brief but notorious career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and co-piloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as a member of hospital management, practised law without a licence, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged checks all before he was twenty-one. Known by the police of twenty-six foreign countries and all fifty states as 'The Skywayman', Abagnale lived a sumptuous life on the run - until the law caught up with him. Now recognised as the nation's leading authority on financial foul play, Abagnale is a charming rogue whose hilarious, stranger-than-fiction international escapades and ingenious escapes - including one from an aeroplane - make CATCH ME IF YOU CAN an irresistable tale of deceit.

The House by the Dvina is the riveting story of two families separated in culture and geography but bound together by a Russian-Scottish marriage. It includes episodes as romantic and dramatic as any in fiction: the purchase by the author's great-grandfather of a peasant girl with whom he had fallen in love; the desperate sledge journey in the depths of winter made by her grandmother to intercede with Tsar Aleksandr II for her husband; the extraordinary courtship of her parents; and her Scottish granny being caught up in the abortive revolution of 1905.Eugenie Fraser herself was brought up in Russia but was taken on visits to Scotland. She marvellously evokes a child's reactions to two totally different environments, sets of customs and family backgrounds, while the characters are beautifully drawn and splendidly memorable.With the events of 1914 to 1920 - the war with Germany, the Revolution, the murder of the Tsar and the withdrawal of the Allied Intervention in the north - came the disintegration of Russia and of family life. The stark realities of hunger, deprivation and fear are sharply contrasted with the adventures of childhood. The reader shares the family's suspense and concern about the fates of its members and relives with Eugenie her final escape to Scotland.In The House by the Dvina, Eugenie Fraser has vividly and poignantly portrayed a way of life that finally disappeared in violence and tragedy.

A major film, co-written and directed by Angelina Jolie Until the age of five, Loung Ung lived in Phnom Penh, one of seven children of a high-ranking government official. She was a precocious child who loved the open city markets, fried crickets, chicken fights and being cheeky to her parents.When Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into Phnom Penh in April 1975, Loung's family fled their home and were eventually forced to disperse to survive. Loung was trained as a child soldier while her brothers and sisters were sent to labour camps. The surviving siblings were only finally reunited after the Vietnamese penetrated Cambodia and started to destroy the Khmer Rouge.Bolstered by the bravery of one brother, the vision of the others and the gentle kindness of her sister, Loung forged on to create for herself a courageous new life.First They Killed My Father is an unforgettable book told through the voice of the young and fearless Loung. It is a shocking and tragic tale of a girl who was determined to survive despite the odds.

In My End Is My Beginning is the story of Mary Queen of Scots (1542–87), the tragic heroine par excellence. Queen of an unfamiliar and troubled nation when she was a week old, it was her misfortune to be a pawn in the game of international politics throughout her life. Even in the brief period from 1561 to 1567 when she was ruler of Scotland in fact as well as in name, she was beset with problems that would have defeated a much stronger, more experienced monarch. A talented poet and a charismatic leader, she contended with a treacherous, self-serving nobility, the religious ferment of the Reformation, and the political ambitions of larger and more powerful neighbours. With little real authority and few resources, Mary’s reign was successful, until her disastrous marriage to the dissolute Darnley set in motion the events that brought about her downfall. For the last 20 years of her life she was a prisoner in the hands of her cousin, Elizabeth I of England, and the subject of treacherous plots and conspiracies. A hostage to fortune, she represented a threat and a rallying-point for English Catholics. Her tragic end was inevitable. Yet her life, with all its adventurous, failures and disasters, produced the son – James – who ultimately brought about the union of Scotland and England.In the End Is My Beginning uncovers the true facts of Mary’s life in the context of Anglo-Scottish relations and shows why, after more than 400 years, she remains arguably the greatest character in popular Scottish history.

Greyfrair's Cemetery in Edinburgh has a centuries old reputation for being haunted. Its gruesome history includes use as a mass prison, headstone removal, witchcraft, bodysnatching, desecration, corpse dumping and live burial. In 1998, something new and inexplicable began occurring in the graveyard. Visitors encountered 'cold spots', strange smells and banging noises. They found themselves overcome by nausea, or cut and bruised by something they could not see. Over the space of two years, twenty-four people were knocked unconscious. Homes next to the graveyard wall became plagued by crockery smashing, objects moving and unidentified laughter. Witnesses to these attacks ran into the hundreds. There were two exorcisms of the area. Both failed. The section of Greyfriars where the attacks occurred is now chained shut. The entity responsible has been named the 'Mackenzie Poltergeist'. It has become one of the best-documented and most conclusive paranormal cases in history. The Poltergeist is still growing stronger. This is its story.

Of all the extraordinary individual accounts that have come out of the Second World War and its aftermath, few can compare with that of Eric Pleasants, a member of the 'bastard' British wing of Hitler's SS - the British Free Corps. In this compelling autobiography, Pleasants writes of the bizarre and traumatic years he spent as a prisoner of the twentieth century's most notorious dictators. A life-long pacifist, Pleasants spent the early years of the war on occupied Jersey. He was imprisoned by the Nazis for petty crimes and the years that followed held a whirlwind of unexpected turns. He lived life on the run in occupied Paris, was captured and recruited into the British Free Corps of the Waffen SS, found love with a young German woman, witnessed the bombing of Dresden and attempted to escape from Soviet troops along the sewers of Berlin. When the war ended, Pleasants found himself on the Communist side of the Iron Curtain. By now a strong man in a travelling circus, he was arrested by the KGB on charges of espionage and sentenced to 25 years' slave labour in the notorious camps of Artic Russia. Only with Stalin's death in 1953 was Pleasants finally released from his unique kind of purgatory, after nearly half a lifetime of peripatetic nightmare. He died in 1998 at the age of 87. Hitler's Bastard remains a remarkable testimony to his imperishable will to survive.

Below Scotland's capital, hidden for almost two centuries, is a metropolis whose very existence was all but forgotten. For almost 250 years, Edinburgh was surrounded by a giant defensive wall. Unable to expand the city's boundaries, the burgeoning population built over every inch of square space. And when there was no more room, they began to dig down . . . Trapped in lives of poverty and crime, these subterranean dwellers existed in darkness and misery, ignored by the chroniclers of their time. It is only in the last few years that the shocking truth has begun to emerge about the sinister underground city.

The chief prosecution witness in the Moors Murders trial gives his account of the case after more than four decades of silenceDespite standing as chief prosecution witness in the Moors Murders trial, David Smith was vilified by the public due to the accusations thrown at him by Myra Hindley and Ian Brady about his involvement in their crimes. Hindley's later confession that she and Brady had lied in an attempt to reduce their sentences did little to diminish the slurs against his name. For over four decades, Smith was asked by writers and film-makers to tell his story. Apart from a handful of brief interviews, he always refused. Carol Ann Lee met Smith during her research for One of Your Own, her critically acclaimed biography of Hindley, following which he finally agreed to reveal all. In Evil Relations (previously published as Witness), interviews, archival research and, most significantly, David Smith's own vivid memoir are fused to create an unforgettable, often harrowing account of his life before, during and after the Moors Murders.David Smith lived in rural Ireland with his wife prior to his death in May 2012. He is survived by four children and several grandchildren. Carol Ann Lee is an acclaimed biographer and has written extensively on the Holocaust. Her most recent publication, One of Your Own, focused on the life and death of Myra Hindley.

Millions of Scots have left their homeland during the last 400 years. Until now, they have been written about in general terms. Scottish Exodus breaks new ground by taking particular emigrants, drawn from the once-powerful Clan MacLeod, and discovering what happened to them and their families. These people became, among other things, French aristocrats, Polish resistance fighters, Texan ranchers, New Zealand shepherds, Australian goldminers, Aboriginal and African-American activists, Canadian mounted policemen and Confederate rebels. One nineteenth-century MacLeod even went so far as to swap his Gaelic for Arabic and his Christianity for Islam before settling down comfortably in Cairo.This gripping account of Scotland's worldwide diaspora is based on unpublished documents, letters and family histories. It is also based on the author's travels in the company of today's MacLeods - some of them still in Scotland, others further afield. Scottish Exodus is a tale of disastrous voyages, famine and dispossession, the hazards of pioneering on faraway frontiers. But it is also the moving story of how people separated from Scotland by hundreds of years and thousands of miles continue to identify with the small country where their journeyings began.

On 6 February 1958, a plane took off from a snowy Munich airport carrying probably the finest club side the world has ever known. Moments later, the aircraft crashed, killing some of the most legendary names in British football. This book is dedicated to those players - Roger Byrne, Tommy Taylor, the mighty Duncan Edwards and the others whose lives were cut off in their prime - and their indomitable manager, Sir Matt Busby.Max Arthur has sought out all the players who survived the crash and spoken to the relatives and friends of those who died. From these interviews, sometimes serious but often humorous, he has captured their remarkable spirit and created a unique portrait of all the Busby Babes.