"How can you talk to a complete stranger as if you have known them all your life? Is it really possible to read someone's thoughts and feelings within seconds of meeting them? In this..book ... explains the secrets of the oldest and most powerful psychological persuasion system in the world"--Back cover.

"Mark Edward is an equivocator, fibber, and mountebank. Which begs the question: if a liar admits to lying, can he be telling the truth? He is a literate, informative, intellectual, a student of the psychology of humans, a foe of those who would defraud the public for personal gain, and as an author and practicing psychic, he is first and foremost an entertainer."—Joel Moskowitz, International Brotherhood of Magicians Mark Edward admits that for years he exploited believers who wished to connect with supernatural ideas and sad family members who missed dead loved ones. Now Edward is a magician who works the Haunted Castle in Hollywood and is also on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine, where he reveals the means of psychic scamsters. This entertaining book is at once a confessional and instructional regarding human belief and those who exploit it. Though Edward believes that most practitioners of the psychic business are out-and-out scam artists, he also counters the skeptic belief that the supernatural is a lie. Both skeptic and skeptical of skepticism, Mark Edward has worked as a 900-number psychic, ghost hunter, and Hollywood Magic Castle medium. He has also worked vigorously to debunk psychic frauds and currently works on the editorial board of Skeptic magazine.

Outstanding collection of nearly 200 crowd-pleasing mental magic feats requiring no special equipment. Author offers insider's tips and expert advice on techniques, presentation, diversions, patter, staging, more.

More and more people every day are visiting psychics for advice, guidance and a peek into the future. The industry is a moneymaker, with TV talk shows, Internet astrologers and corner store psychics available for the seeker's pleasure. Mediums, sages and astrologers have enjoyed a long and well-documented history, and can even be found in The Bible, while modern psychics have turned their readings into fame, fortune and celebrity. But what can a psychic really do? This book will examine the ways that psychics run their show. Readers will come to understand the basics of the "cold read," which is the psychic's main tool for convincing customers to return

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time From the Modern Library’s new set of beautifully repackaged hardcover classics by Truman Capote—also available are Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Other Voices, Other Rooms (in one volume), Portraits and Observations, and The Complete Stories Truman Capote’s masterpiece, In Cold Blood, created a sensation when it was first published, serially, in The New Yorker in 1965. The intensively researched, atmospheric narrative of the lives of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, and of the two men, Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Edward Smith, who brutally killed them on the night of November 15, 1959, is the seminal work of the “new journalism.” Perry Smith is one of the great dark characters of American literature, full of contradictory emotions. “I thought he was a very nice gentleman,” he says of Herb Clutter. “Soft-spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.” Told in chapters that alternate between the Clutter household and the approach of Smith and Hickock in their black Chevrolet, then between the investigation of the case and the killers’ flight, Capote’s account is so detailed that the reader comes to feel almost like a participant in the events.