Featuring
a vintage, suitably terrifying illustration of Wisconsin's hideous hodag
glaring and frimacing at all potential readers, here is the front cover of my
latest book, ShukerNature Book 4 (©
Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications).
Yes indeed – today, 9 Septembe 2024,
marks the official publication of my latest, 35th book. The fourth,
and final, volume in my tetralogy of anthology volumes compiled from my
long-running, award-winning ShukerNature blog, now in its 16th year,
it is entitled ShukerNature Book 4: Tijuana's
Zebras, Turkana's Dancing Worms, and Other Impossible Blog Beasts. That
alone should give you at least a hint of the astonishing animals that you will
be encountering within its 400+ pages, but if you'd like more details, read on:
Even
when dealing with cryptozoology's variously, (in)famously elusive and illusive
subjects, there are certain examples that test the credulity of even the most
open-minded, objective of investigators. This is because, based at least upon
their descriptions, they appear to be, albeit for many different reasons,
simply impossible. Not implausible, not unlikely, not unfeasible, not incongruous,
but impossible – or are they?
After
all, who could believe in the existence of dragonflies with 6-ft wingspans, or
spiders so huge that they can hunt down soldiers in the heart of Louisiana, or
an unrealistically-reclusive Vietnamese deer whose antlers inexplicably
resemble the horns on a Viking's helmet, or a rapacious Beast (or Beasts) that
carried out the wanton slaughter of terrified rural peasants despite the most
concerted efforts made to end this very different Reign of Terror in France and
still remain unidentified over 300 years later, or all manner of kangaroo-like
cryptids keeping researchers on the hop far beyond their Australasian homeland?
Yet these have all been soberly reported, by sober observers.
And
what are the fascinating stories behind the horrific, hideous, horn-bearing
hodag, or Tijuana's delightfully faux 'zebras', or the prehistoric worms that
dance beneath a tropical African moon and kill with a single bite, or how I
managed to lose a multi-headed chimaera from Greek mythology but encounter the
skull of a legendary Cornish sea monster, or the unexpected answers to a
veritable herd of quagga-themed queries, or how a magnificent yet hitherto-unrecorded
painting of what may conceivably be a murderous mystery cat from Tanzania was
discovered wholly by chance in an English charity shop?
Close-up of a fascinating but highly mysterious painting
documented in my book that depicts an extremely distinctive big cat very closely
recalling native descriptions of a exceptionally aggressive Tanzanian feline cryptid
known as the nunda or mngwa (photograph © Maxine Pearson; artist's identity still
currently unknown despite considerable investigations made by me)
So,
it's time to suspend disbelief and suppress doubt – for if you choose to
surrender to the secrets and surprises awaiting you inside my newest book, you
must prepare instead to encounter the reputedly unaccountable, witness the
allegedly unimaginable, and be impressed by the ostensibly impossible!
Packed with lavish full-colour and
hitherto-obscure b/w illustrations, containing an exhaustive bibliography, plus
a detailed index, as well as updating and expanded many of the original blog
articles upon which its chapters are based, this fourth ShukerNature anthology
goes far beyond its online blog equivalent to provide its readers with
unparalleled coverage of its beastly but breathtaking subjects.
Published by Chad Arment at Coachwhip
Publications, ShukerNature Book 4 can
be purchased instantly and easily here on Amazon UK and here on Amazon USA, and can also be ordered
through all good bookstores. So click away if you wish, and prepare as always with
my books to be amazed, astonished, and awe-struck by the monstrously
fascinating menagerie eagerly awaiting inside its pages to meet you, greet you,
and (if only they could break free!) eat you in a trice! Yes indeed, you know it
makes sense!
But seriously: from
studies of medieval Norse illustrations of bizarre, ostensibly impossible sea
monsters, not to mention even earlier Chinese depictions of strange, unfamiliar-looking
gibbons, and ancient Middle Eastern ones of long-vanished, long-unidentified
equine enigmas, for example (and all documented in my book), it has become
abundantly apparent that many major zoological discoveries of the future were
actually signposted very clearly in artefacts from the distant past, if only
scientists and other scholars had recognized this. So who knows what additional
'impossible' beasts are still to be revealed and verified as real by paying
closer attention to pictorial clues hidden in plain sight amid the antiquaries
and relics from bygone times?
Full
cover wrap for my new book, featuring a vintage quagga image on the back cover (©
Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)