A century before Jack the Ripper there was the London Monster, whose knife attacks on women caused unprecedented alarm, terror, and uproar. Through chance combined with vigilante effort, a young Welshman, Rhynwick Williams, was arrested as the Monster and committed to prison after a sensational trial at the Old Bailey. However, doubts about Williams' guilt persisted, and some writers asserted that there never was a Monster at all. Over 200 years later, Bondeson (author of A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities and The Feejee Mermaid and Other Essays in Natural and Unnatural History) unearthed new clues to this fascinating case, which lies somewhere between fact and urban legend. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Summer, 1840. Edgar Allan Poe arrives in London to meet his friend C. Auguste Dupin, in the hope that the great detective will help him solve a family mystery. For Poe has inherited a mahogany box containing sheathes of letters that implicate his grandparents in some of London’s most heinous and scandalous crimes – those committed by the so-called London Monster who, for two years, terrorized the city’s streets, stalking attractive, well-to-do young women, slicing their clothing and their derrières. Unable, or perhaps unwilling, to accept that his grandparents – actors who struggled to make a living on the London stage – led a clandestine and nefarious double life, Poe and Dupin set out to prove the missives forgeries. But as they delve deeper into the city’s secrets, and past horrors emerge, they start to suspect that they too are being watched and preyed upon. And if they are, might their stalkers be connected to the London Monster?

Between 1788 and 1790 a bizarre serial attacker known as the London Monster assaulted more than 50 women. During his two-year reign of terror the London Monster became a psychopathic celebrity, both celebrated and condemned in plays, newspapers and caricatures. The farcical search for the Monster culminated in the arrest and trial of a young Welshman named Rhynwick Williams, who despite good alibis, was condemned. The story has remarkable parallels to our time: a police force unable to find their man, a tabloid press frenzy that sold newspapers and generated a climate of fear, a need to convict someone at all costs, even if the evidence was questionable...

An official guide to Buffy the Vampire Slayer describes the mythology and influences behind the monsters, ghouls, and characters through interviews with the creators and details of the episodes.

Explores the options available to a monster from the time it is born, such as becoming the scary monster under someone's bed or playing on the school basketball team.

Packed with foul facts and disgusting drawings, this book will tell you everything you need to know about avoiding the monstrous menace ... almost!