The Mammoth Book Of Weird News

A humorous collection of hundreds of funny news stories, whacky phenomena, and hilarious blunders and gaffes from around the world, such as: the woman who smuggled 75 live snakes in her bra; the man who held a funeral for his amputated foot; the radioactive cat which got mistaken for a bomb; the human tongue that got served up in a hospital; the X-ray that revealed E.T.'s face in a duck; the youth who woke to find a bullet in his tongue; the tortoise that set a house on fire; and many more.

A giant humorous collection of funny news stories, whacky phenomena, hilarious blunders and gaffes—over 1000 extraordinary cases from around the world. Who needs urban legends, when these are all true? It's everything readers love about Ripley's Believe it or Not! with an added punch of humor.

An anthology focusing on newer elements of steampunk, one which deconstructs the staples of the genre and expands on them, rather than simply repeating them, with a greater spread both in terms of location and character. This is steampunk with a modern, post-colonial sensibility. Contributors include: Jeff VanderMeer, Caitlín Kiernan, Mary Robinette Kowal, Jay Lake, Cherie Priest, Cat Rambo, Catherynne M. Valente, Genevieve Valentine and many more.

A fun programme - featuring logic, observation, number and word puzzles, in categories such as reasoning, concentration and speed - that will help to build new brain skills in just a few minutes each day. At the end of each week, a 're-thinking' page features a range of suggestions and ideas to help improve your memory and unleash your creativity, challenging you to make better use of your brain in your daily life. An exceptionally wide range of content - 78 entirely different types of puzzle, none of which repeats within a quarter of a year - provides the novelty that helps a brain to thrive, while puzzles of the same type are carefully arranged in order of increasing difficulty through the book. A scoring system helps to keep you motivated as you improve week by week, with the final page of each week's puzzles offering you the chance to calculate your brain rank as another way to keep pushing yourself. Praise for The Mammoth Book of Fun Brain Training: 'The puzzles are fresh and lively' - Will Shortz

Dieselpunk: an emerging retro-futuristic sub-genre, similar to steampunk, based on the era between the First World War and the start of the Atomic Age, merging elements of noir, pulp, and the past with today?s technology . . . and sometimes a dash of the occult. Award-winning editor Wallace presents a cutting-edge collection of twenty-five vibrant stories that explore the possibilities of history while sweeping readers into high-powered hydrocarbon-fuelled adventures. Join us in an era when engines were huge, fuel was cheap and plentiful, and steel and chrome blended with the grit and grease of modern machines. Praise for The Mammoth Book of Steampunk: 'World Fantasy Award-winning editor Wallace has compiled an outstanding anthology . . . sure to satisfy even the most jaded steampunk fans and engage newcomers and skeptics. Each story exemplifies steampunk?s knack for critiquing both the past and the present, in a superb anthology that demands rereading.' Publishers Weekly

'The greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world!' This vainglorious introduction given to The Rolling Stones on stage by an excitable roadie was almost immediately accepted as a simple statement of fact. It was already evident that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Co. were, as their first manager Andrew Loog Oldham had claimed, 'a way of life'. The Stones' defiance of convention made them the figureheads of a questioning new generation, and drove the Establishment to imprison them. This enduring rebel aura and the unmistakeable craft evident in classic records such as Satisfaction, Honky Tonk Women and Brown Sugar ensured subsequent generations of diehard fans, establishing the band as the biggest box office attraction the world has ever seen. The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones provides a comprehensive collection of reviews, analysis, interviews and exposés - both archive and contemporary, favourable and critical, concise and epic - of these extraordinary cultural icons as they pass the astonishing milestone of 50 years as rock's pre-eminent band.

We think of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson, but far more seductive is the pairing of Holmes and Professor James Moriarty, 'the Napoleon of crime' - a rivalry unparalleled in the world of crime fiction. Fiercely intelligent and a relentless schemer, Moriarty is the super-villain as megastar. This wonderfully diverse collection by writers such as Martin Edwards, Jürgen Ehlers, Barbara Nadel, L. C. Tyler, Michael Gregorio, Alison Joseph and Peter Guttridge reveals not just the evil side of Moriarty's personality, but his humanity, his motivations and his human failings. Some of the stories are humorous, some scary, but all are hugely entertaining.

Maxim Jakubowski, together with Nathan Braund, edited the bestselling Mammoth Book of Jack the Ripper (1999), which has reprinted several times and was reissued in 2008 in a revised and expanded edition. The book focused on the countless theories that have been put forward with regard to the identity of the notorious Victorian serial killer and offered an extensive 100-page section presenting all the known facts in the case. It included 30 essays written by the most famous, often controversial Ripperologists putting forward their own theories. It remains one of the few titles to offer a series of alternative solutions to Jack the Ripper's identity and the truth behind the Whitechapel murders. But how many new theories and identities can researchers come up with? In this wonderful collection of brand-new stories, Jakubowski has compiled an extraordinary array of explorations into the identity of Jack the Ripper - this time unabashedly fictional, unrestrained by history and the known facts. Contributors include Carol Anne Davis, Martin Edwards, Peter Guttridge, Barbara Nadel;Alvaro Zinos-Amaro and Sally Spedding. 'Jack the Ripper' has appeared in a number of novels, as the lead character in some, beginning with Marie Belloc Lowndes's The Lodger (1913), filmed by Hitchcock. Authors as diverse as Michael Dibdin, Lindsay Faye, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Alan Moore, Fredric Brown, Ramsey Campbell and Colin Wilson have all used poetic licence to 'revive' the notorious killer. The varied stories in this fantastic new collection continue this tradition with many possible identities put forward, some already suggested by historians, others more speculative, including famous names from history and fiction. Even Sherlock Holmes is on the case!