Hal Johnson

Congratulations on your acceptance to the Apprentice Academy, one of the world's finest institutions for knightly education. Your course of study here will prepare you for a career as a knight, samurai, Viking, or really any type of sword-swinging warrior. Swinging a sword is inherently dangerous, but this guide will help you complete your education while minimizing the twin risks of 1. getting maimed and 2. working too hard. Learn how to: - Fight people - Fight dragons - Fight monsters - Fight everything else - Die honorably - And more Please follow all instructions carefully. If you go off on your own and try something silly, and then get your head chopped off or your body bitten in two, don't start drafting a letter of complaint. You had fair warning.

Welcome to the Apprentice Academy. Congratulations on your acceptance to one of the world’s finest institutions for sorcery. Your course of study here will be long and perilous, but this book of sorcery skills and fascinating tales from the world of magic will help you along the way - ideally with all your limbs and wits intact. Learn how to: · Read minds! · Prophesize! · Perform a love spell! · Choose an animal familiar! · Turn anything into gold! · Summon demons! · Find a lair! · And more! But most of all learn to cheat, or, rather, to weasel through without actually cheating. Please follow all instructions carefully, as one wrong move can transform your hands into forks or serpents, and then you will have a hard time turning the page.

Across 1400 years and six continents (sorry, Australia), Impossible Histories examines pivotal moments in history from both sides--what happened and what would have happened had things gone differently. The results are by turns strange, hilarious, tragic...and always fascinating. Imagine a world in which...- Hitler builds a thousand-year Reich- Columbus gets driven from the Americas by mounted knights- Robespierre decapitates Caesar Augustus- The Inca Empire has an air force- Jimmy Carter presses the Button These brave new worlds are merely our own, familiar world--if something small had happened differently. We're all one elephant away from peace in the Middle East, one knife thrust away from nuclear Armageddon. This book examines twenty pivotal moments in history, asks what if?..., and drags the answers kicking and screaming into the light. History--factual and counterfactual has never been so entertaining. A whirlwind ride through history as it never happened--but could have.

Meet the monsters in this who’s who of the baddest of the bad! Like those supernatural beasts everyone knows and fears—the bloodsucking vampire, Count Dracula, and that eight-foot-tall mash-up of corpses, Frankenstein’s Monster. Or that scariest of mummies, Cheops, who scientists revived after 4,700 years—big mistake! Or more horrifying yet, the Horla, an invisible, havoc-wreaking creature that herds humans like cattle and feeds of their souls. Drawn from the pages of classic books and tales as old as time, this frightfully exciting collection features 25 of the creepiest creatures ever imagined, from witches and werewolves to dragons and ghosts. Every monster is brought to life in a full-size full-color portrait that captures the essence of the beast, and in lively text that recounts the monster’s spine-tingling story. With sidebars that explore the history and the genre of each sourcebook, The Big Book of Monsters is an exciting introduction to literature and language arts.

Now in paperback, twenty bone-chilling tales about the most dangerous fantastical beasts in American folklore. Meet the Snoligoster, who feeds on the shadows of its victims. The Hodag, like a spiny-backed bull-horned rhinoceros. The Hoop Snake, which can chase prey at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour and then, with one sting of its tail, cause it to turn purple, swell up, and die.Illustrated throughout, Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods is for every young reader who loves a good scare. The book was originally published in 1910 by William Thomas Cox and is now inspiringly retold by Hal Johnson, author of Immortal Lycanthropes. The creatures are all scales and claws, razor-sharp teeth and stealth, camouflage and single-minded nastiness. Straight out of the era of Paul Bunyan, they speak to an earlier time in American history, when the woods were indeed dark and deep and filled with mystery. The tone is smart and quirky. The illustrations have a sinewy, retro field-guide look. Read them around a campfire, if you dare.