Scratch the surface of any family and you will find stories of intrigue, abuse and illegitimacy. It is just that, because of the nature of my grandfather's business, our secrets are more sinister' Lilian Pizzichini's grandfather was a conman who worked with some of London's most notorious gangsters. Within the pages of this haunting and revealing account of his life, she re-creates, in vivid detail and with remarkable detachment, the world of criminals and corrupt policemen that he dominated until his death in 1978. This is a book to set the mind reeling with thoughts of cunning and intrigue, corruption, hardship and secrecy. Above all, it conveys beautifully the glamour and seduction of a London shrouded in mystery and this charismatic criminal who rose from its war-torn ashes.

It is almost impossible to summarise the extraordinary life of Mariella Novotny in a few paragraphs. In 1961 she was an underage hooker engaging in sexual relations with President John F. Kennedy, the most powerful man in the world. She was believed to be part of a vice ring set up by an alleged Communist agent who was also a well-known British film producer. FBI officers called their investigation 'The Bow-Tie Case'. Two years later the young 'Monroe lookalike' played a major part in another sex scandal with implications for national security: the Profumo Affair. Mariella was the hostess of the Man in the Mask party. She was a close friend of Stephen Ward, the osteopath and pander to high society, another putative whistle-blower who died in suspicious circumstances. In the late 1960s, she gave birth to the illegitimate child of Eddie Chapman (Agent Zigzag), England's most successful wartime double agent. Between 1975 and 1978 she was working undercover for Operation Countryman, an investigation into police corruption in the Flying Squad. Her chief target was the author's grandfather, Charlie Taylor, a London conman who had high-ranking officers in his deep pockets. Mariella brought them all down. Mariella was found dead with her face in a bowl of milk pudding in February 1983. She was in the process of writing her memoirs - in her own words, 'It's dynamite!' Christine Keeler said, 'I think it was murder ... most probably by the CIA.' In the author's own words, 'This is a life that is bigger than the woman who led it. She embodies the emergence of a radical sexual politics.'

It is almost impossible to summarise the extraordinary life of Mariella Novotny in a few paragraphs. In 1961 she was an underage hooker engaging in sexual relations with President John F. Kennedy, the most powerful man in the world. She was believed to be part of a vice ring set up by an alleged Communist agent who was also a well-known British film producer. FBI officers called their investigation 'The Bow-Tie Case'. Two years later the young 'Monroe lookalike' played a major part in another sex scandal with implications for national security: the Profumo Affair. Mariella was the hostess of the Man in the Mask party. She was a close friend of Stephen Ward, the osteopath and pander to high society, another putative whistle-blower who died in suspicious circumstances. In the late 1960s, she gave birth to the illegitimate child of Eddie Chapman (Agent Zigzag), England's most successful wartime double agent. Between 1975 and 1978 she was working undercover for Operation Countryman, an investigation into police corruption in the Flying Squad. Her chief target was the author's grandfather, Charlie Taylor, a London conman who had high-ranking officers in his deep pockets. Mariella brought them all down. Mariella was found dead with her face in a bowl of milk pudding in February 1983. She was in the process of writing her memoirs - in her own words, 'It's dynamite!' Christine Keeler said, 'I think it was murder ... most probably by the CIA.' In the author's own words, 'This is a life that is bigger than the woman who led it. She embodies the emergence of a radical sexual politics.'

What you've got to understand is that here in Southall, everyone's up to something. In 2006, Lilian Pizzichini swaps life on dry land for a narrowboat on the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal. The Adam Bonny, moored between Newlocks and Shackleton Estates, is to be the place she can learn more about her extensive working-class London family - and the place where she will become pulled into a strange underbelly of drugs, vagrant neighbours and criminals. Lilian always found it easier to observe than join in. Abandoned by everyone around her, by the time she was fourteen she had developed a taste for Pernod and black. Speed allowed her to talk to boys, but she spent most of her time with her great-aunt Dolly, who had no regard for convention, sang songs and urinated on the street. Born into the slums of Lisson Grove, Dolly spoke like Eliza Doolittle when no-one was listening. With her, Lilian felt the bonds of mischief, gambling, madness and song. As the sad lives of her ancestors sprawl and take root in her head, Lilian drinks endless brandy and cokes in the Brickmaker's Arms. Pete - ex-burglar and dealer - brings her heroin, skunk and bags of pills and, united by a desire to lose consciousness on a regular basis, becomes her boyfriend. He tells her about the Somalis and Punjabis and their rival gangs, about the honour killings happening under their bridges and they watch as the prostitutes and pimps run the streets. But addiction has a relentless appetite and Lilian soon realises that, just like the Adam Bonny, she is sinking and must, with her help of her ancestors, try to pull herself back.

Jean Rhys (1890-1979) is best known for her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea. A prequel to Jane Eyre, Rhys's revolutionary work reimagined the story of Bertha Rochester-the misunderstood "madwoman in the attic" who was driven to insanity by cruelties beyond her control. The Blue Hour performs a similar exhumation of Rhys's life, which was haunted by demons from within and without. Its examination of Rhys's pain and loss charts her desperate journey from the jungles of Dominica to a British boarding school, and then into an adult life scarred by three failed marriages, the deaths of her two children, and her long battle with alcoholism. A mesmerizing evocation of a fragile and brilliant mind, The Blue Hour explores the crucial element that ultimately spared Rhys from the fate of her most famous protagonist: a genius that rescued her, again and again, from the abyss.