History

The exotic city of Constantinople, with its decadent court life, was a 1,000-year dream for invaders and is best known for its sacking by the Crusaders in 1204. Two hundred years later it was under siege again by the Ottoman Turks. Crowley's choice of the event for his first book obviously stems from his life in Istanbul. But it is an excellent choice, producing a narrative on many layers as Christian Byzantium clashed with the Islamic empire. Against the tide of battle, Crowley brings out the religious intensity with a fine and vivid pen and draws a superb portrait of Mehmet 11, the skilful Muslim commander who beseiged the city by sea and land.

Newgate, Stephen Halliday, (Sutton, £20)

Incarceration at Newgate was much to be feared throughout the ages. If one came out alive, the chances were that it would be on a cart bound for the "triple tree" of Tyburn, where public executions were watched by raucous crowds. Halliday knows his villains who included the escape artist Jack Sheppard, the highwayman Dick Turpin and the arch-robber Jonathan Wild and their stories make riveting reading. In 1902 Newgate, like so many of its inmates, lost its life. Until that time, since the 12th century, it had been a place of horror and degradation and Halliday, quite rightly, gives it hell.

Lady Franklin's Revenge, Ken McGoogan, (Bantam, £20)

Sir John Franklin was known as the "man who ate his boots", the Arctic explorer who vanished while searching for the North West Passage that would link the Atlantic with the Pacific. If you met his wife, Lady Jane, in her 19th-century heyday you would be pushed to insanity. Her great obsession to rescue her husband lasted a whole decade and, despite the fact that his ice-bound ships had been unable to complete his exploration, she forced the Admiralty to recognise that he had discovered the Passage. A woman of great energy, Lady Franklin was an adventurous pioneer who ultimately became a myth maker.