Designed by three puzzle-book pros and Mensa members, Mind-Melting Conundrums is brimming with almost 100 pages of number stumpers, logic problems, and verbal tests. Split into three levels of difficulty--called Super Brain, Mega Mind, and Ultra Genius--it gets more challenging as the pages progress. Kids, adults, and anyone else who enjoys a good dose of mental calisthenics will find themselves hooked by each marvelous, mind-melting puzzle.

Brainiacs on the prowl for challenging fun will find everything they're looking for in these cunning conundrums. Puzzle master Terry Stickels has created a mind-melting collection filled with hundreds of diverse and fiendishly tricky problems--including wordplay, math, analytic reasoning, logic, visual dilemmas, and code breaking. Figure out the next number in a series, find hidden phrases, and determine what a three-dimensional object would look like from two-dimensional drawings. Every puzzle provides a workout that strengthens mental muscles. And while these brainteasers do require concentration, they don't demand any special training or high-level math skills. A little practice, patience, and imagination are all it takes.

These challenging and brilliantly colorful puzzles will work out the brain and amaze the eye. Many of the pictures have a trick to fool the puzzler, from vivid optical illusions to 3-D effects that dazzle. Other problems feature a mathematical component—but even before doing the arithmetic, you’ve got to figure out the logic behind the question. So it’s important to look hard and pay close attention. Five bright soccer balls look almost the same. Which ball isn’t like the others? A group of bike racers ride across the page in an astounding array. But wait: one of the riders is wearing the wrong number. Hint: the colors of the shirts are the key to the answer.

In Nonplussed!, popular-math writer Julian Havil delighted readers with a mind-boggling array of implausible yet true mathematical paradoxes. Now Havil is back with Impossible?, another marvelous medley of the utterly confusing, profound, and unbelievable—and all of it mathematically irrefutable. Whenever Forty-second Street in New York is temporarily closed, traffic doesn't gridlock but flows more smoothly—why is that? Or consider that cities that build new roads can experience dramatic increases in traffic congestion—how is this possible? What does the game show Let's Make A Deal reveal about the unexpected hazards of decision-making? What can the game of cricket teach us about the surprising behavior of the law of averages? These are some of the counterintuitive mathematical occurrences that readers encounter in Impossible? Havil ventures further than ever into territory where intuition can lead one astray. He gathers entertaining problems from probability and statistics along with an eclectic variety of conundrums and puzzlers from other areas of mathematics, including classics of abstract math like the Banach-Tarski paradox. These problems range in difficulty from easy to highly challenging, yet they can be tackled by anyone with a background in calculus. And the fascinating history and personalities associated with many of the problems are included with their mathematical proofs. Impossible? will delight anyone who wants to have their reason thoroughly confounded in the most astonishing and unpredictable ways.

So many ways to bend your brain! From crossword variants and word searches to logic puzzles, mazes, and sudoku, this fabulous collection is filled with a wide variety of brainteasers and conundrums. Solvers eager for a mind-melting workout will find exactly what they're looking for!

What if the pieces of life's jigsaw could be rearranged in a differing pattern? How would this new mosaic appear? Could we improve the picture, or would it be distorted by Would we like what we discovered, or would it vary from our hopes and dreams? This is the saga, of the many facets of a relationship, and the ambitions of a couple engaged in their race up the corporate ladder. It is about the effect of these events, which compound their relationship. One miserable morning, when Mike is on the way to his weekly confrontation with his boss; he sees and falls for a most beautiful girl, Angie. He has never met her, yet feels that he knows her well. After a disastrous introduction, he discovers to his dismay, that they are to set up part of a new look business at Raymonds behest, the start of his scheme to become the most successful director in Norway. There is an uneasy standoff until, Angie walks in to Mikes office late one evening, and starts to talk to him. It seems as though they have been friends for many years this throws Mike completely. They form a team, and succeed in implementing Raymonds scheme, to everyones delight. Initially, as the workplace becomes pressurised Angie seems to thrive in this atmosphere. After a euphoric start, Mike becomes more nervous and reticent. The determination of Angie intensifies his anxieties, and he seeks professional help. They delve into his earlier life, his feelings for Angie, and his aspirations. She discovers accidentally while trying hypnotherapy that Mike and Angie appear to have shared memories of a past experience. Circumstances complicate matters further. On a crucial business trip to England, Mike is hospitalized after an accident; Angie tries to piece everything together, and save the deal, but she also discovers the extent of her business talent and acumen. Mike is a disoriented person who falls in Love with Angie all over again, but has huge difficulties in trying to rebuild his mind. He is sidetracked by other affairs. His recovery is hastened in business venture by, Ibrahim, a unique friendship ensues. Angie in contrast, develops, into a powerful businesswoman. Mike, sinks to his lowest ebb and contemplates suicide, and is rescued again in a surprising fashion.

In "The Chaos Conundrum," historian Aaron John Gulyas examines how the paranormal has intersected and influenced our culture in myriad ways, from the conspiracy beliefs of William Cooper and Exopolitics to the challenge that the stories of Gray Barker presented to our concept of self and time. He looks at the maelstrom of personalities, agendas, impressions, data, confusion, and contradictions that can be found in the world of the weird, and demonstrates how they have become an integral part of our lives, whether in the form of flying saucers, hauntings, religious revelations, psychic abilities, or dozens of other guises. Gulyas delves into the stories of the people who have attempted to create order out of the chaos. Along the way he recounts his own journey from enthusiastic believer in the "shadow government" and their underground bases to jaded academic skeptic, and then finally to someone who thinks there might just be something to the paranormal after all... but not what we have been led to expect or believe!