Mark Hofmann is no ordinary murderer. Until he was incarcerated he was the world?s greatest literary forger: a man who combined meticulous historical research with craftsmanship and forensic science. In 1997, one of his most accomplished forgeries, a poem by the much-loved 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson, turned up at a Sotheby?s and was sold for $21,000 to the library in Dickinson?s home town, Amherst.

In THE POET AND THE MURDERER Simon Worrall reveals the psychology of a master forger and a ruthless killer, a man whose love for books developed into an uncontrollable compulsion. Desperate to acquire some of the rarest manuscripts on the market, Hofmann resorted to ever more elaborate schemes to raise money, and spun a web of deceit which stretched right across America. As Worrall utangles the truth from the lies, he grapples with the history of literary forgery, the science of forensic testing and the glamour of the auction houses. A true story which encompasses the love of learning, graphology and poetry, THE POET AND THE MURDERER is also a chilling dissection of a man driven from verse to violence.

Alice Miller has achieved recognition for her revolutionary work on the causes and effects of child abuse - here she works towards demolishing the wall of silence which surrounds the sufferings of early childhood as they affect everyday life, politics, the media, psychiatry and psychotherapy. An infant's trust and dependency on its parents, its longing to be loved and be able to love in return, are boundless. To exploit this dependency, to confuse a child's longings and abuse its trust by pretending that this is somehow good for it, Alice Miller condemns as a criminal act, committed time and again out of ignorance and the refusal to change. The essential first stage in this healing process is feeling the truth of our experience. Only this, Alice Miller writes, can enable us to recognise childhood events and resolve their consequences so that we can lead a conscious, responsible life. If we know and feel what happened to us then, we will never wish to harm ourselves or others now.