We provide an algorithm for constructing a Kirby diagram of a 4-dimensional open book given a Heegaard diagram of the page. As an application, we show that any open book with trivial monodromy is diffeomorphic to an open book constructed with a punctured handlebody as page and a composition of torus twists and sphere twists as monodromy.

We work in the smooth category. Let $N$ be a closed connected orientable 4-manifold with torsion free $H_1$, where $H_q := H_q(N; {\mathbb Z} )$. Our main result is a readily calculable classification of embeddings$N \to {\mathbb R}^7$up to isotopy, with an indeterminacy. Such a classification was only known before for $H_1=0$ by our earlier work from 2008. Our classification is complete when $H_2=0$ or when the signature of $N$ is divisible neither by 64 nor by 9.

The group of knots $S^4\to {\mathbb R}^7$ acts on the set of embeddings $N\to {\mathbb R}^7$ up to isotopy by embedded connected sum. In Part I we classified the quotient of this action. The main novelty of this paper is the description of this action for $H_1 \ne 0$, with an indeterminacy.

Besides the invariants of Part I, detecting the action of knots involves a refinement of the Kreck invariant from our work of 2008.

For $N=S^1\times S^3$ we give a geometrically defined 1–1 correspondence between the set of isotopy classes of embeddings and a certain explicitly defined quotient of the set ${\mathbb Z} \oplus {\mathbb Z} \oplus {\mathbb Z} _{12}$.

Let M be a closed, connected, orientable topological $4$ -manifold, and G be a finite group acting topologically and locally linearly on M. In this paper, we investigate the spectral sequence for the Borel cohomology $H^*_G(M)$ and establish new bounds on the rank of G for homologically trivial actions with discrete singular set.