I am very blissful to announce immediately that my 34th
e book is now formally revealed, and as you possibly can discern from its title – ShukerNature E-book 3: Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, Jungle Walruses,
and Different Belated Weblog Beasts – it is
a 3rd compendium of my most vital ShukerNature weblog posts, expanded and
up to date wherever potential, filled with color and b/w illustrations, and 404 pages
lengthy.
When you
have bought both or each of my earlier two (as I am certain you might have!!), you
will know that ShukerNature
E-book 1 was dedicated to creatures I would blogged about that
I referred to in its subtitle as cryptic. That’s, not merely cryptozoological
normally but in addition (certainly, particularly) little-known, esoteric examples – from
the likes of locust dragons, king hares, large oil-drinking cathedral spiders, and
Linnaeus’s hellish fury worm, to medieval snail-cats, glowing lightbulb
lizards, tizheruks, tsmoks, and plenty of extra choices from essentially the most obscure
realms of unnatural historical past.
For ShukerNature E-book 2, I concentrated
upon creatures I would blogged about that I referred to in its subtitle as
monstrous. That’s, straddling the customarily ill-defined borders between the
mythological and the mundane, fantasy and truth, reverie and actuality – reminiscent of
residing gorgons, bottled homunculi, fossil griffins, Lewis Carroll’s mock
turtle, Harry Potter’s ambiguous amblypygid, and Physician Dolittle’s
pushmi-pullyu, the Massive Gray Man of Ben MacDhui, Wisconsin’s large grasshoppers,
South America’s photographed however non-existent ‘ape’, and all method of different
fascinating if macabre curiosities and caprices from the shadowy hinterlands of
darkest zoology.
My first two ShukerNature
compilation books (© Dr Karl Shuker/Coachwhip Publications)
For
this current, third ShukerNature
e book, nevertheless, I elected to veer off into a really totally different route when
choosing its contents as drawn from my weblog. I have been an expert
cryptozoological researcher and author for nearly 40 years now, so, as you possibly can
think about, I’ve coated an unlimited array of topics throughout that prolonged time frame.
But nevertheless many I do doc, there are all the time numerous others jostling for
place on the literary sidelines, impatiently agitating to safe their place
in a future e book or article of mine. Of those, there are a selection that I’ve
absolutely supposed to weblog about for a few years, however for a large number of various
causes I’ve by some means by no means obtained round to doing so regardless of simply how a lot
they’ve all the time fascinated me. Equally, there are topics that my many
readers down via the years have persistently requested me to weblog about however
which once more, inexplicably, I’ve by no means truly executed so.
Throughout
the prolonged, enforced durations of social lockdown necessitated by the Covid-19
pandemic, nevertheless, I made a decided effort to rectify my earlier
procrastination regarding these undeservedly delayed topics, by researching
and running a blog about as lots of them as potential. Having now executed so with a
sizeable choice, it’s these, subsequently, that represent the theme of this
third ShukerNature e book – which in
flip safeguards them from the uncertainties of ongoing on-line existence by
preserving them all the time in print.
They
embrace such long-awaited matters because the awe-inspiring Crystal Palace dinosaur statues
that I visited and photographed over a decade in the past however by no means wrote up afterwards
(however which are actually the topic of my e book’s spectacular wraparound cowl – the very
first such cowl that has ever graced any of my books), my private (and
undoubtedly controversial, iconoclastic, heterodox) views concerning the
(in)well-known Surgeon’s {Photograph} apparently depicting an unknown object in Loch
Ness, the large however mysterious animal head found in an historic Egyptian
boat, and the muddle of misidentification surrounding Lake Dakataua’s aquatic
migo.
Longstanding pal and superior artist Anthony Wallis’s
gorgeous portrait of the Nandi bear that he ready solely for inclusion in
this newest e book of mine – thanks Ant! (© Anthony Wallis)
Plus the
Nandi bear specimen that was truly examined by two of the world’s foremost
scientists earlier than it mysteriously vanished, the officially-impossible elephant
hybrid whose existence proved all of the specialists improper, the wry comedy of
zoological errors enshrouding the large however hysterical imperial flea, in addition to
an eclectic assemblage of jungle walruses, flying monkeys, hairless hyaenas, Koch’s
monstrous Missourium and horrid Hydarchos, Beebe’s black-and-white thriller
manta ray, the enormous lizards of Papua, a tenacious tomb-shattering pterodactyl,
and plenty extra too.
So
many of those curious, charismatic topics have been a very long time coming, I
freely confess – however now that they are
lastly right here so that you can examine and ponder over, I hope very a lot that, as
with all one of the best issues in life, you may take into account them effectively definitely worth the wait. Extra
particulars regarding my e book may be discovered on its devoted web page right here,
in my official web site.
As all the time, my new e book may be ordered straight
via Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and different on-line bookstores,
or ordered by way of your native bodily bookstore anyplace.
Classic
engraving of 19th-Century sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins’s Crystal
Palace studio in 1853, containing a few of his accomplished prehistoric animal statues
(public area)