Mike Jay is perhaps my favourite writer on strange and obscure history: his excursions into rarely traveled back roads of conspiracy theory, mind control, drugs, science fiction and other topics are not only fantastic reads, but provide new and important perspectives that can help us to understand these subjects better.
We’ve featured Mike’s work in a number of our Darklore anthologies (a few of which we’ve also reproduced here on the Grail: see for example “Mushrooms in Wonderland” and “The Birth of the Illuminati Conspiracy“), but he has written many more essays for a bunch of top class publications, including Public Domain Review, Fortean Times, Aeon and Strange Attractor.
As such, I had the idea to take all of Mike’s Darklore essays, and collect them together with the other essays he has written and release them in one handy, extremely readable book. The end result is our latest release from Daily Grail Publishing: Stranger Than Fiction: Essays by Mike Jay, which is available NOW in paperback and Kindle formats.
STRANGER THAN FICTION brings together, for the first time, Mike Jay’s distinctive and immensely readable forays into the twilight zones of history, culture and the human mind.
Among them are his trademark investigations into the hidden histories of drugs, from the lotus eaters of Homer’s Odyssey to the laughing gas escapades of the Romantic poets and Sherlock Holmes’ cocaine habit; his reports from the disputed territories of mesmerism, brainwashing and mind control; fantastic beliefs from the birth of the Illuminati conspiracy to futuristic scenarios of human evolution; and global travel tales from megalith cultures of Borneo to ancient temples of Peru, the ‘cargo cult’ ceremonies of Melanesia to Britain’s most anarchic bonfire night.
Beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated, STRANGER THAN FICTION is a unique compendium of forgotten histories, untold stories and unexplored worlds.
You’ll find 24(!) essays in all in the 330 pages of Stranger Than Fiction, all laid out in our familiar Darklore format in the paperback edition, while the Kindle version is a stripped down version (as is necessary in reflowable ebook format) for less than half the price.
Whether for yourself, or the obscure history lover in your family, Stranger Than Fiction would be a fantastic edition to any bookshelf (or reading device). Go get it now!
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Thanks for your support, I’m sure all Grailers will enjoy this book a lot!
