Quirk Holiday Mall 2024: One-Stop Nonfiction Shop

Browse the books below to find the perfect gift for the offbeat fact finder in your life.

Revisionaries

By Kristopher Jansma

Find creative inspiration in this fascinating rummage through the wastebaskets, secret diaries, and abandoned files of 20 literary superstars.

Revisionaries takes you on an engrossing tour through the discarded drafts, false starts, and abandoned projects of influential writers. In the process, it dismantles some of our most deeply held—and most suffocating—ideas about what it takes to produce great creative work.

Cult Following

By J. W. Ocker

From the author of Cursed Objects and The United States of Cryptids comes an eye-popping compendium of the most infamous, audacious, and dangerous cults in history

Have you ever wondered how smart, normal people end up enmeshed in extreme cults? Weird history expert J. W. Ocker strives to answer that question in Cult Following. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about history’s most notorious cults–and the psychology of the people who join them–is packed into this accessible, engaging volume.

Walk in the footsteps of the followers who were lured into these sinister groups, and learn about the terrifying attraction of cults, demonstrating the elasticity of belief, the desperateness of belonging, and the tragedy of trust.

The Darcy Myth

By Rachel Feder

What if we’ve been reading Jane Austen and romantic classics all wrong? A literary scholar offers a funny, brainy, eye-opening take on how our contemporary love stories are actually terrifying.

In The Darcy Myth, literature scholar Rachel Feder unpacks Austen’s Gothic influences and how they’ve led us to a romantic ideal that’s halfway to being a monster story. Why is our culture so obsessed with cruel, indifferent romantic heroes (and sometimes heroines)? How much of that is Darcy’s fault? And, now that we know, what do we do about it?

Movies with Balls

By Kyle Bandujo and Rick Bryson

This irreverent, balls-out celebration of the greatest matchups in sports movie history includes analysis, maps and diagrams, and designed memorabilia, perfect for movie buffs and sports fans.

Illustrated with fictional ticket stubs, trading cards, play maps, and more, Movies with Balls brings to life the iconic films and characters that we love and admire—just as much as we love our real-world sports and athletic heroes—letting us cheer them on, again and again.

We Are Not Alone

by Marc Hartzman

Do you want to believe? Explore our fascination with UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence through exclusive interviews, archival photos, and strange but true stories from history.

After decades of cover-ups and denials, in a June 2021 report, the US government finally admitted what many people already knew: yes, UFOs are real, and no, we don’t know what (or who) they are. Writer and historian Marc Hartzman separates fact from fiction and provides a comprehensive tour through the skies, and will inform and entertain anyone who’s ever doubted that we are really alone in the universe.

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