From fairy tales to your garden, Enchanted Plants is an illustrated treasure trove of the lore and magic in the kingdom of plants.

Take a walk through mystical, magical, and folkloric gardens and discover the plants and flowers that have captured our hearts and minds for centuries. Will you dare to pick a golden apple or seize the perfect rose? Will you sneak through the gilded gates of the poison garden where plants both alluring and life-saving intertwine? From the baneful bog to the garden gate, plant lover and lover of the bizarre Varla Ventura brings together forgotten lore of plants for the ultimate romp through a botanical wonderland, including excerpts from fairy tales and a lively discussion of each plant's legendary magical and medicinal properties. Don't forget your scissors.

Enchanted Plants is arranged by general environment:

• cultivated plants and edibles;
• toxic plants;
• meadowlands;
• the woods;
• marshes and swamps; and
• tropical plants.

The lusty vampire, the sympathetic werewolf, the tragic banshee are just a few of the dark and frightening creatures you'll discover in Banshees, Werewolves, Vampires, and Other Creatures of the Night. Huffington Post Weird News columnist and author Varla Ventura takes readers on a wild ride through the shadowy hills of rural Ireland, the dark German forests, and along abandoned farms and country roads across the world to discover some of the most frightening and freaktacular tales, tidbits, and encounters with all those beasties that go bump in the night.

Along with classic pieces from Bram Stoker, Elliot O'Donnell, Sabine BaringGould, William Butler Yeats and many others, Ventura includes:
- Famous vampires you may not know
- The identity of the author of the first English vampire novel (and his relationship to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein)
- Excerpts from the first psychic vampire novel ever written
- Stories of 19th century werewolf hunters
- Why banshees are the most feared of supernatural creatures

From Homer's Odyssey to Pirates of the Caribbean, Mermaids have fascinated popular culture for centuries.

Among the Mermaids is an enchanting collection of classic stories, facts, and tales of mermaids from around the world that will thrill every lover of this romanticized mythological creature.

Compiled by Book of the Bizarre author and Magical Creature devotee Varla Ventura, Among the Mermaids includes turn of the century tales of merfolk from Bret Harte, T. Crofton Croker, and W.B. Yeats, along with tantalizing trivia, facts, firsthand accounts, and speculations about mermaids in popular culture.

Some facts about the fluid and the fair from the book:

• Many people believe today that early explorer sightings of mermaids were manatees. (Scurvy + many days away from your lady = a blubbery creature looking supple and bodacious.)
• Blackbeard, the fierce and terrible pirate, was afraid of his crew being lured into a watery grave by mermaids, so he ordered his ships to avoid certain areas reputed to have a high number of mermaid sightings.
• Since 2009, the town of Kiryat Yam, Israel has offered a prize of $1 million dollars to anyone who can prove the mermaid off their coast is real. The prize remains unclaimed.

While it's true that fairy folk love a good garden and take great pleasure in a tulip, there are dozens of beasties who fall under the fairy domain that are not quite as delightful as the quintessential flower fairy. This book is an exploration of the many things that go bump in the night near the fairy mound. Along with an exploration of folklore and historical literature, readers will delight in fairy tales that demonstrate everything from striking a bargain with a fairy to staving off changelings to laughing with the dwarves.

Included are fairy tales and myths from Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Scandinavia plus classic stories by Thomas Crofton Croker, Joseph Jacobs, Clara Stroebe, the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Yei Theodora Ozaki, and others on goblins, trolls, gnomes, pookas, changelings, banshees, and more!

Chapters include:

• A Fear of Little Men: Elves, Trolls, Leprechauns, Tree Spirits, Brownies, Coblyns, Dwarves, Goblins, Bonga, Trolls and Other Fairy Folk of Glen, Forests and Hearth
• The Hand That Rocks the Cradle: Changelings and Other Greedy Kidnappers of the Fairy Kingdom
• I'm Not Drunk, It's Just My Pooka: Tales of the Trickster Fairy and Its Wild Counterpart
• Is That All There Is? Faries Who Give, or The Barter System
• Whoops, There It Is: How to Enter the Fairy Kingdom (or How Not To)

If you think fairies are merely delicate beings who follow you about on gossamer wings, you are in for quite a shock: the kingdom of the fairy is one of vengeance, thievery, trickery, and wild creatures. Consider yourself warned!

From shimmering specters to mysterious tricks, Varla Ventura's Paranormal Parlor includes original supernatural tales, classic ghost stories, legends, hauntings, s ances, superstitions, and death customs.

This book showcases a chilling collection of startling ghost stories as told to the author as well as legendary ghosts and haunted locations and an overview of the paranormal parlor games that rose to popularity in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. It also includes hidden history such as the story of Mark Twain's ghost, and the quiet horror writings of the architect who started the Gothic Revival movement (Ralph Adams Cram).

The sequel to the bestselling The Book of the Bizarre, Beyond Bizarre offers up scores of new freaky facts, terrifying trivia, and strangerthanfiction stories. Arranged into 13 chilling chapters like Haunted Hollywood, Blood Red Crosses and Gross Anatomy: Hospital Horrors, Bride of Bizarre, and Tales from the Cryptids, Beyond Bizarre tackles everything from female pirates and creepy candy stripers to psychic predictions and virgin shark birthsand much, much more.

A word of warning: this book is not for the faint of heart