Pull back the curtain on the real history of magic – and discover why magic really mattersIf you read a standard history of magic, you learn that it begins in ancient Egypt, with the resurrection of a goose in front of the Pharaoh. You discover how magicians were tortured and killed during the age of witchcraft. You are told how conjuring tricks were used to quell rebellious colonial natives. The history of magic is full of such stories, which turn out not...

Here is the seminal biography of the magician's magician, Howard Thurston, a man who surpassed Houdini in the eyes of showmen and fans and set the standard fro how stage magic is performed today.Everyone knows Houdini-but who was Thurston? In this rich, vivid biography of the "greatest magician in the world," celebrated historian of stage magic Jim Steinmeyer captures the career and controversies of the wonder-worker extraordinaire, Howard Thurston.The publ...

This Encyclopedia Forteana anthologizes the cult hero’s four classic works on the strange, the unexplained, and the just plain weird: The Book of the Damned, Lo!, Wild Talents, and New Lands. It features Fort’s complete, unabridged text and a subject index.Here are the four books that invented our understanding of the paranormal. These are cult hero Charles Fort’s defining records of bizarre, haunting, strange, and inexplicable “facts” for which s...

**The acclaimed author of The Last Greatest Magician in the World sleuths out literature's iconic vampire, uncovering the source material—from folklore and history, to personas including Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman—behind Bram Stoker's lord of the undead.Praise for Who Was Dracula?**“A fantastic, well-documented story.” —Library Journal (starred review)“[A] well-researched and entertaining take on Dracula’s origin story.” —Publishers ...

The seminal biography of the twentieth century’s premier chronicler of the paranormal, Charles Fort—a man whose very name gave rise to an adjective, fortean, to describe the unexplained.By the early 1920s, Americans were discovering that the world was a strange place.Charles Fort could demonstrate that it was even stranger than anyone suspected. Frogs fell from the sky. Blood rained from the heavens. Mysterious airships visited the Earth. Dogs talk...

If you read a standard history of magic, you learn that it begins in ancient Egypt, with the resurrection of a goose in front of the Pharaoh. You discover how magicians were tortured and killed during the age of witchcraft. You are told how conjuring tricks were used to quell rebellious colonial natives. The history of magic is full of such stories, which turn out not to be true. Behind the smoke and mirrors, however, lies the real story of magic.It is a history of people from humb...

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems.At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both teachers, they were colleagues at t...

**All the secrets of the Bayview Four will be revealed in the TV series now streaming on Peacock!THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY • BUZZFEED • POPCRUSH“Pretty Little Liars meets The Breakfast Club” (Entertainment Weekly) in this addictive mystery about what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive.**Pay close attention and you might so...

P. Djèlí Clark returns to the historical fantasy universe of "A Dead Djinn in Cairo," with the otherworldly adventure novella The Haunting of Tram Car 015**.**Finalist for the 2020 Hugo AwardFinalist for the 2020 Nebula AwardFinalist for the 2020 Locus AwardCairo, 1912: The case started as a simple one for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and S...

Winner of the Boston Globe–Horn Book AwardWinner of the Lewis Carroll Shelf AwardOne of TIME's 100 Best Fantasy Books of All TimeGed was the greatest sorcerer in Earthsea, but in his youth he was the reckless Sparrowhawk. In his hunger for power and knowledge, he tampered with long held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tumultuous tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's...

Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of Paul Atreides—who would become known as Muad'Dib—and of a great family's ambition to bring to fruition mankind's most ancient and unattainable dream.A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, sha...

FX/Hulu’s Shōgun won nineteen Emmys, four Golden Globes, and four Critics Choice Awards. The most talked about and awarded series on television. Read the book that started it all!By #1 New York Times bestselling author James Clavell, Shōgun, the classic epic novel of feudal Japan that captured the heart of a culture and the imagination of the world, is now available for the first time in serial format. Part One contains the first...