Explores the relentless, wacky, eerie energy of old-time American summers and Carnivals through vivacious imagery.

Step right up, Ladies and Germs, and feast your eyes on the incomparable wonders of a hidden world! Be astonished! amazed! disgusted! by brazen acts of self-destruction that no natural human body should be able to withstand! Tony Gangi, professional magician, lifelong sideshow devotee, and card-carrying graduate of Coney Island's famed Sideshow School, guides you through the stupendous techniques and proud traditions of this shocking and fascinating realm of entertainment. • Learn the secrets behind Breathing Fire! Sword Swallowing! The Bed of Nails! Pounding Spikes into the Head! • Enter the mysterious worlds of the Snake Lady, the Human Blockhead, and more! • Meet sideshow greats like Melvin Burkhart and Ward Hall. • Discover today's dedicated entertainers, like Todd Robbins, Harley Newman, Tyler Fyre, Thrill Kill Jill, Donny Vomit, The Black Scorpion, and more! • See what it takes to enter this underground yet welcoming world as a performer. Features interviews with Penn Jillette and Todd Robbins and Penn Jillette's ode to the sideshow, the "10 in 1" monologue as performed by Penn & Teller Editors's Note: Not for the faint of heart, weak of stomach or easily grossed out. So go ahead, how can you resist?! Tony Gangi, a Philadelphia native, never actually intended to make his living by shoving nails up his nose. He left the corporate world to become a professional magician and proprietor of one of the few flea circuses remaining in the world ("Live fleas do, in fact, perform circus tricks," he says. They just need to be "trained the right way and treated with kindness.") He's now mastered straightjacket escapes, fire-eating, and napping on a bed of nails. He is currently working on his presentation for walking barefoot on broken glass. This is his first book. He hopes it is not his last.

Though she never wanted to sit on the plank above the dunk tank for the food pantry fundraiser, Jolie never dreamed what Scoobie saw would nearly kill him. His ex-con mother arrives and there's a murder to add to the mix. Even appraising real estate is complicated by home burglars. Jolie grudgingly seeks help from her nemesis, reporter George Winters, and tries to evade a kidnapper and murderer and take charge of her world again. The police wish she'd butt out and Aunt Madge is furious that Jolie insists on talking to a couple shady characters on her own. Soon even the guests at Aunt Madge's Cozy Corner B&B are in the way. Can Jolie keep her friends safe, and will Scoobie recover enough to say what happened to him and plan another silly fundraiser?

Welcome to Dorchester Cemetery. On this Halloween night, our dearly departed residents will guide you through a collection of original spooky poems and creepy tales, each designed to chill your spine.

L.M. Thaxton, a carnival barker, realizes that his ex-wife, a knife-thrower, will be the prime suspect when her current husband, the owner of the carnival, is found with one of her knives in his back

Two people from opposite worlds, one unforgettable kiss. You can't judge a carny by its cover. At a town fair on the coast of Oregon, handsome Native American carny, Vincent Youngblood, bestows an unforgettable kiss on shy, awkward teenager, Charlotte Davenport. Then disappears without another word, leaving her baffled and enamored. Ten years later, Charlotte is still living in the small fishing town of Astoria, while being trained to--reluctantly--take over for her philandering hotelier father when he retires. After all, who else will do it? Her two perfect sisters are busy being married to their flawless husbands and having cookie cutter children, while Charlotte remains single, childless, and every bit as mousy as she was a decade ago. As Charlotte struggles to climb out from underneath her judgmental parents thumb, the carnival rolls back into town, and Charlotte finds herself face to face with Vin again. He's back to run his father's carnival, walking away from a promising career in medicine he started in Chicago. Will her biased and judgmental family accept her relationship with a man who is not only a Native American, but works as a carny for a living? And what unsavory secrets bind the well-educated and seemingly superlative Vin to that ramshackle carnival? After all, you can't judge a carny by its cover.

Soon to be a major motion picture from Academy Award–winning director Guillermo del Toro and starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, and Toni Collette. Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a carnival-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him. And since Stan is clever and ambitious and not without a useful streak of ruthlessness, soon enough he’s going places. Onstage he plays the mentalist with a cute assistant (before long his harried wife), then he graduates to full-blown spiritualist, catering to the needs of the rich and gullible in their well-upholstered homes. It looks like the world is Stan’s for the taking. At least for now.