Writer Mac Tonnies died this week at the age of 34, supposedly of “natural causes,” though dying at such a young age in this society is anything but natural. He was found dead in his bed in his apartment in Kansas City, Missouri. Mac was a soon-to-be author of an Anomalist Book, his long awaited work entitled The Cryptoterrestrials. I first contacted Mac after reading his clear-headed, remarkably balanced, but still full-of-wonder website on Martian anomalies, The Cydonian Imperative. I found him to be an original thinker and a terrific writer. At the time, I was the editor of Paraview Pocket Books, published by Simon & Schuster, and offered Mac a contract to write a book on the subject which became After the Martian Apocalypse. I spoke to Mac several times after the book was published and he expressed a strong desire to leave Kansas City, which he loathed. He seemed to have trouble making ends meet and was exasperated by the job market there. He ended up working at Starbucks and most recently at a call-center, in both cases a terrible waste of a wonderful mind. I saw Mac as a writer with a brilliant future and did my best to encourage him. Unfortunately, there will be no more quirky blog posts, stark photographs, or trenchant observations from Mac Tonnies anymore. He had promised to deliver his manuscript to us at the beginning of November and I will do my best to get his final work published. Mac is now posthuman, no doubt wandering among the stars from which he came. And I, along with his many friends, have a terrible case of the blues.

It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. It’s the fourth in our “Artists and Anomalies” titles (with Art, Life & UFOs, Love in An Alien Purgatory, and The Secret Art), our third “September Secrets” release (with The Secret Art and Science Fiction Secrets) and probably the most anticipated Anomalist Book to date. It’s the The Secrets Of Dellschau: The Sonora Aero Club & the Airships of the 1800s, A True Story by Dennis Crenshaw in collaboration with P.G. Navarro. Who is Charles Dellschau? He was born in 1830, in Brandenburg, Prussia, and immigrated to the United States in 1853, first settling in Texas. The historical record falls silent until 1860, when he is again shown living in Texas. The so-called “lost years” of the secretive Dellschau’s life became a matter of controversy when his voluminous, illustrated notebooks surfaced nearly a half-century after his death in 1923. Dellschau’s work – consisting of ink and watercolor illustrations of fanciful flying machines to which he frequently pasted newspaper clippings – appears to tell a coherent story of the Sonora (California) Aero Club. Using an anti-gravity gas purportedly invented by one of its members, The Club allegedly turned out a series of experimental aircraft some 50 years before the Wright Brothers first took wing. Today Dellschau is recognized as one of America’s leading visionary artists, a single page of one of his notebooks now fetches thousands of dollars. Did Charles Dellschau actually spend his lost years documenting wildly improbable inventions? Were the Aero Club’s airships also responsible for many UFO sightings in America? Or is it all a mere flight of artistic fancy?

Duncan Laurie is another artist unveiling secrets. He is best known for producing architectural glass designs for such clients as Blackrock Financial Management, 9 West, Citicorp Executive Center, Anne Klein II, Electra Records, Estée Lauder, Capital Cities ABC, and many other individuals and companies throughout the world. His introduction to alternative technology and inventors three decades ago led him eventually to look into the subject of radionics, a topic much maligned by mainstream science. In his new book, The Secret Art: A Brief History of Radionic Technology for the Creative Individual, Laurie sheds some new light on this controversial subject from the point of view of an artist. The history of radionics is the story of how various inventors designed devices that employ directed intent to affect the real world. With these tools, they have promoted healing without pills or surgery, grown crops without fertilizer, restrained insect predation without pesticides, and performed a host of other seemingly impossible feats that defy mechanistic science. The Secret Art traces this astonishing process beginning with prehistoric and indigenous peoples, whose art was also a means of interacting with Nature to enhance healing, increase crop yields, and enable visionary experiences. Eventually, radionic inventors discovered by trial and error that even drawings and bizarre technology could function radionically. This discovery followed a long process of design innovation that started with mechanical devices, proceeded through a generation of electronic instruments, and most recently has been applied to computer and software technology. Laurie believes that the potential exists today for radionic ideas to empower creative individuals to develop skills in working with Nature that achieve profound real world results.

Our recently published book, Outbreak! The Encyclopedia of Extraordinary Social Behavior by Hilary Evans and Robert Bartholomew, is the Fortean Times (Issue 253) cover story for September 2009: “Panic! Strange Tales of Mass Hysteria.” The story is written by Bob Rickard, who concludes that this book “will undoubtedly remain the definitive reference work on collective delusions, mass panics and other strange forms of group behaviour for the foreseeable future. We could not ask for two more qualified guides [as Evans and Bartholomew].” Be sure to pick up a copy on the newsstands. Previously, co-author Robert Bartholomew was featured in an interview in USA Today, “Don’t panic! It’s just an outbreak.” This story was then picked up by ABC News Online. The book was also mentioned in a front page story on the New York Times: “Chinese Workers Say Illness Is Real, Not Hysteria.” Finally, Peter Rogerson, pretty much raved about the book on the Magonia blog, saying: “This is a huge achievement for a small publisher such as Anomalist [Books] and marks a completely new level of publishing for them.”

We’re on an art-related  kick lately.  In June we released Budd Hopkins’ Art, Life and UFOs. In September we’ll be releasing Secrets of Dellschau and The Secret Art. But today we are announcing the publication of Love In An Alien Purgatory: The Life and Fantastic Art of David Huggins by Farah Yurdozu. In 1951, as young boy in rural Georgia, David Huggins claims he was visited and abducted by group of alien visitors from an unknown dimension. That contact continued over several decades and resulted in the birth of more than sixty hybrid children… and one of the most remarkable stories in all of UFO lore. Love in an Alien Purgatory is the startling pictorial account of David Huggins’ hidden life, as revealed in his own vivid and sometimes disturbing paintings. With commentary and text by UFO investigator Farah Yurdozu, David’s story takes the reader into a world between two dimensions: a purgatory of hope, sex, fear and, ultimately, love. This volume is special not only for its story but for its presentation. The book itself measures 8.5 by 11 inches and is in FULL COLOR, which means that you get to see 78 of David’s Huggins’ remarkable paintings in color, as well as 6 sketches he did in pencil. It’s a treat for the eyes, with mature content that will boggle the mind.

We have just published the third volume in Nick Redfern’s Secrets Series. The new volume is entitled Science Fiction Secrets: From Government Files and the Paranormal. It follows the two previous volumes in the series, Strange Secrets and Celebrity Secrets, and may be considered a little bit of both. The book deals with themes and topics at the intersection of science fiction, the paranormal, and UFOs that were often the subject of government and intelligence agency documents. It also deals with such people as Carl Sagan and Steven Spielberg, as well as Philip K Dick and other celebrity science fiction authors.

Among the questions Redfern seeks to answer in this book:

— Did the U.S. Government secretly assist Steven Spielberg in the production of his groundbreaking science fiction movies Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial?

— Why were special agents of the FBI so deeply interested in the life, career, and activities of science fiction author Philip K. Dick (of Blade Runner fame)?

— How did The X-Files spin-off series The Lone Gunmen anticipate months in advance the terrible tragedy of 9-11?

— Why was the top brass of the U.S. Air Force so secretly interested in, and concerned by, the UFO-related tales of a relatively anonymous 1950s science fiction movie-maker who died in poverty in the early 1980s?

— Did a nightmarish scenario presented in one of H.G. Wells’ novels prompt Soviet Premier Josef Stalin to clandestinely embark upon a secret and diabolical experiment designed to create a super race of monstrous, half-human half-ape soldiers?

— Has the military managed to successfully perfect human teleportation of the type that was most graphically and famously shown in Star Trek and The Fly?

The reviews for Jason Offutt’s Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us have been pouring in. A rather skeptical Jerry Clark, in Fate, does at least admit the title is “cool,” and Peter Rogerson in his review of the book in Magonia sets the stage with these words: “Ten to fifteen years ago nobody had heard of ‘Shadow People,’ now they are the latest fortean phenomenon..” But Nick Refern points out in his review on UFO Mystic that “there are definite parallels between the ominous Shadow People of Jason’s book and some of the stranger, occult/paranormal-driven Men in Black-type reports highlighted by the likes of Keel, Bender and Barker.” An enthusiastic Redfern goes on to say that the book is “a heady, ominous and roller-coaster ride into the twilight world of some of the strangest and most unsettling creatures to ever grace our planet….All in all, this is a great, informative, detailed and highly thought-provoking study of a phenomenon that straddles the realms of the paranormal, the occult and ufology with uncanny ease…” Finally, the review by Micah A. Hanks, on The Gralien Report, compliments Offutt for looking at this phenomenon “with new clarity, and perhaps even gives us the first complete work dedicated solely to the phenomenon… Offutt points out unique aspects of people’s encounters with shadow people…tying together for us unforeseen amounts of loose ends that seem to comprise the ‘high strangeness’ associated with ghostly phenomenon.” A somewhat spooked Hanks sums it up in the end, saying: “the book provides an eerie window into the lives of others like us who, under perhaps the most frightening circumstances imaginable, have managed to accept their fears, and even learn from them.”

This book is going to surprise a lot of people. First of all, it’s a new book (not a reprint) from a bestselling author, and it appears not from Simon & Schuster, not from Random House, but from Anomalist Books. Second of all, it is without a doubt the author’s most literary production to date. As a memoir, Art, Life and UFOs by Budd Hopkins not only provides the details of a very complex life, but it’s also the first treatment of Budd’s remarkable artistic career in book form. And it’s at the intersection of these two topics, art and life, that readers are allowed insights into his UFO work that we have never been privy to before. This memoir not only puts into perspective his 30 years of UFO research, but it also reveals, for the first time, the details of an important, previously unpublished case that helped Budd recognize “missing time” as an aspect of UFO abductions, as well as his curious personal ties to some of the people involved in the very first UFO report he ever investigated. Whether you are interested in UFOs, modern art, or Budd Hopkins himself, you are certain to find Art, Life and UFOs quite a candid and compelling read. (“Look Inside” the book at Amazon.)

No matter how hard we try to resolve the problem, Amazon can’t seem to get the editorial reviews straightened out for Brad Steiger’s new book, Beyond Shadow World, so we thought we would take this opportunity to post a couple of new reviews that the book has received since we reprinted it last month. Nick Redfern, over at UFO Mystic, had this to say: “Beyond Shadow World is more than just a collection of ghostly tales to be digested at the witching hour.. it’s a deep and thoughtful look at the whole controversy of the afterlife – but it also reveals much more…thought-provoking and informative…a must read.” And over at The Gralien Report, Micah A. Hanks wrote: “A masterful evaluation of the spirit realm by one of the most respected experts in spirit phenomenon today… From the exorcism of a small boy’s spirit left behind after a tragic murder, to the dangers of out-of-body projections and even the methodology behind contacting our “spirit teachers,” the entire experience of Beyond Shadow World involves the reader as an educational experience…Brad Steiger has, again, illustrated for us the dark side, but this time with such an element of light, hope and discovery that our ultimate knowledge of the Shadow World can finally be faced without fear, regret, or repression.” Update: Amazon finally corrected the Beyond Shadow World book page on July 20, 2009.

Did you know that you can now see a sample of our books on Amazon US? The cover, back cover, table of contents, index, and more than a half-dozen sample pages are now viewable through Amazon’s “Search Inside” feature on each of our book pages. This feature is only available for our original titles, not our reprints unfortunately. Here is the list to date:
An Alien Who’s Who
Astrology Off the Beaten Track
Celestial Secrets
Darkness Walks
Encounters at Indian Head
Extreme Expeditions
Fátima Revisited
Heavenly Lights
In Alien Heat
Intermediate States
On the Trail of the Saucer Spies
Outbreak!
Strange Company
The Spirit of Dr. Bindelof
The President’s Vampire
The Universe Wants to Play
The Yowie
There’s Something in the Woods