Between 300 and 600 C.E., Chinese writers compiled thousands of accounts of the strange and the extraordinary. Some described weird spirits, customs, and flora

In the tradition of The Botany of Desire and Wicked Plants, a witty and engaging history of the first botanists interwoven with stories of today’s extraordina

Long before the Romantics embraced nature, people in the West saw the human and nonhuman worlds as both intimately interdependent and violently antagonistic. Wi

'Another island in the Great Ocean has many sinful and malevolent women, who have precious gems in their eyes.' In his Book of Marvels and Travels, Sir John Man

Not only was it mined by later writers on wonders as well as by writers of books on ghosts and demonology, but it also inspired Goethe's well-known vampire ball