Explore the Borderlands...

* The charred remains of Helen Conway, whose body "exploded."
Was this a case of spontaneous combustion?
* Discoveries of 130-foot-long boa constrictors and twelve-foot giant kangaroos.
What other species have gone undiscovered?
*In England, a town is pelted from the sky by hundreds of tiny rose-colored frogs.
Is this a one-time event, an omen, or a bizarre natural phenomenon?

Near-death experiences...lake monsters...crop circles...fairies...visions of the Virgin Mary...Using his vast research and privileged access to case files,...

In 1628 the Dutch East India Company loaded the Batavia, the flagship of its fleet, with a king s ransom in gold, silver, and gems for her maiden voyage to Java; the ship itself was a tangible symbol of the world s richest and most powerful monopoly.
The company also sent along a new employee to guard its treasure. He was Jeronimus Corneliszoon, a disgraced and bankrupt man with great charisma and dangerously heretical ideas. With the help of a few disgruntled sailors, he hatched a plot to seize the ship and her riches. The mutiny might have succeeded, but in the dark morning hours of...

In the 1630s, visitors to the prosperous trading cities of the Netherlands couldn't help but notice that thousands of normally sober, hardworking Dutch citizens from every walk of life were caught up in an extraordinary frenzy of buying and selling. The object of this unprecedented speculation was the tulip, a delicate and exotic Eastern import that had bewitched horticulturists, noblemen, and tavern owners alike. For almost a year rare bulbs changed hands for incredible and ever-increasing sums, until single flowers were being sold for more than the cost of a house.
Historians would come...

They called it Satan s Circus a square mile of Midtown Manhattan where vice ruled, sin flourished, and depravity danced in every doorway. At the turn of the twentieth century, it was a place where everyone from the chorus girls to the beat cops was on the take and where bad boys became wicked men; a place where an upstanding young policeman such as Charley Becker could become the crookedest cop who ever stood behind a shield.
Murder was so common in the vice district that few people were surprised when the loudmouthed owner of a shabby casino was gunned down on the steps of its best...