But recently he has written much more for adults.

Books such as How Science Works and How the Earth Works each sold over a million copies worldwide. In earlier years, he wrote mostly for children, and has been shortlisted a record four times for the junior Science Book prize. He has written hundreds of books, which have sold millions of copies around the world in most major languages and include many best-sellers, such as the award-winning Do Not Open, which received rave reviews in the USA and became a cult-hit as well as featuring on the New York Times and Washington Post best-seller lists. (Nov.John Farndon is an internationally known author, as well as a playwright, composer and songwriter, whose work has been performed at such theatres as the Donmar and Almeida in London and the Salisbury Playhouse and selected for showcases, such as Beyond the Gate. Elmo's fire and raining frogs to possible locations of Atlantis, the book incites curiosity-and expansively rewards it.

So was it an Elvis impersonator, a visit from beyond the grave, or Elvis alive and well?”) Taking in everything from “weird weather” like St. (In a caption for an entry dedicated to the controversy surrounding Elvis's demise, Farndon writes, “A year after his death, a photograph was taken of the man himself in the grounds of Graceland. ) discussions are largely straightforward, and leave some mysteries open-ended while debunking others.

Flaps, foldout pages and varied styles of illustration-from photomontage to digital cartoons and more conventional line art-keep the book visually fresh and ably complement the subject matter, as in a spread about advertising tricks that looks as though it has been collaged from magazine photos. As with the previous book, pseudo-hyperlinks direct readers to pages with related content (a spread about the storage of nuclear waste, for example, suggests other such “explosive issues” as alchemy and spontaneous combustion). Presented in a case designed with diecuts to resemble the door of a jail cell, the title issues a challenge that readers will not want to decline-the savvy psychology evident here is typical of this volume's approach to the target audience. , also from DK, this encyclopedic tome ventures into spookier territory to catalogue the mysterious and unusual. In the same stylistic vein as Jeremy Leslie and David Roberts's Pick Me Up

Do Not Open by John Farndon