Cast out by Victorian society, Eve and Abel find succour from an unlikely source. They soar to fame as the Lion Faced Girl and the Flayed Man, star performers in Professor Josiah Arroner's Palace of Curiosities. And there begins a journey that will entwine their fates forever.

The perfect gift for your smartest friends and family (or you), The Labyrinth of Curiosities is a maze of 400 pages of trivia where each factoid and tidbit leads unexpectedly to the next. This never-before-seen, full-color, maze-like format makes for an entirely new way of discovering cool trivia in history, science, pop culture, and more! What do sign language puns have to do with Shakespearean cats? How do secret languages involve infamous twins? And how are gingko trees and tidal waves related? Open the labyrinth to embark on a voyage of exploration. Start at the beginning or open anywhere in the book, pick a fact that catches your eye, and see where it leads you—you’ll never know what peculiar trivia is waiting on the next page!

"The Book of Curiosities" by John Platts is an encyclopedia and dictionary containing ten thousand wonders and curiosities of nature and art, remarkable astonishing places, beings, customs, experiments, animals, phenomena, of both Ancient and Modern Times, in all parts of the globe. Excerpt: "We shall now introduce to our readers some Ancient and Modern Opinions respecting the Hair. The ancients held the hair a sort of excrement, fed only with excrementitious matters, and no proper part of a living body. They supposed it generated of the fuliginous parts of the blood, exhaled by the heat of the body to the surface, and then condensed in passing through the pores. Their chief reasons were, that the hair being cut, will grow again, even in extreme old age, and when life is very low; that in hectic and consumptive people, where the rest of the body is continually emaciating, the hair thrives; nay, that it will even grow again in dead carcases."

A light-hearted portrait of the origins of modern medicine in the ancient world

A Cabinet of Byzantine Curiosities will reinforce these old prejudices, while also stimulating a deeper interest among readers in one of history's most interesting civilizations. Many of the zanier tales and trivia that are collected here revolve around the political and religious life of Byzantium.

When Lukas Declercq is orphaned, his uncle summons him to Prague, a refuge for Europe's greatest alchemists and natural philosophers, offering to take him on as an apprentice. Uncle Anselmus is court physician to Rudolph II, the reclusive and unstable Emperor. He is also curator of Rudolph's bizarre Cabinet of Curiosities, a series of vast rooms stuffed with wonders and scientific marvels such as a nail from Noah's Ark, phoenix feathers and monstrous freaks of nature, which fascinate Lukas. As Rudolph retreats further into his fantasy world, the threat of rebellion hangs in the air. Dorantes, a diplomat from Spain, comes with his daughter, Celestina, on a mission from Philip II to persuade Rudolph to give up his heretical ways. But he discovers the court is full of diplomats who have been waiting months or years for an audience with the Emperor. Dorantes notices how some had wormed their way into the Emperor's favour by presenting him with fantastic gifts for his Cabinet, and sets about creating a device that he says will stop time. But it works only in the presence of the Emperor. Lukas knows the terrible truth behind Dorantes's mission. But sinister forces have plans for Lukas too, and before he can thwart the plot against the Emperor, Lukas must gamble on Celestina's loyalty in order to save his own life.