Böcker av Roy Bainton

An amusingly entertaining exploration of omens, rituals, premonitions and general superstition in every part of the world

New mysteries, as well as variations on recurring ones, continue to surface on a weekly basis around the globe, from showers of frogs over Hungary to birds falling to earth in Arkansas. This compendious round-up of unexplained phenomena examines everything from the experiments being done with the Large Hadron Collider to classic maritime mysteries involving inexplicably missing crews, via UFOs, mediums, cryptozoology, panics, paranoia and a universe proving stranger in fact than we'd imagined.

In April 1945, Himmler's SS robbed Germany's National Depository, the Reichsbank. As well as the tons of gold bullion, millions in currency, jewels and other valuables, the Nazis already had billions of dollars' worth of art, stolen from doomed Jewish families, hidden away in the mountains of Bavaria and Austria. 70 years later, Kurt Kohler,art hunter and researcher, travels the world looking for works to retrieve and return to their owners' descendants. But when an old farmer tries to sell a batch of ancient gold coins, Kohler is called in and the hidden history of one of the most feared organisations of the 20th century is revealed. Kohler's investigations raise a question: what if Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler, who supposedly committed suicide with a cyanide capsule at Luneberg, Germany in May 1945 was not Himmler at all, but his terrified double? The official Himmler file at the UK's National Archives is embargoed until 2045. But Kurt Kohler unearths the truth ... and much more besides.

One momentous year in Russia through the eyes of ordinary folk