BOOKS

October 17, 2017 from Workman Publishing

QUACKERY

November 16, 2021 from Workman Publishing

PATIENT ZERO

PATIENT ZERIO: A CURIOUS HISTORY OF THE WORLD’S WORST DISEASES
by Lydia Kang, MD and Nate Pedersen

From the masters of storytelling-meets-science and co-authors of Quackery, Patient Zero tells the long and fascinating history of disease outbreaks—how they start, how they spread, the science that lets us understand them, and how we race to destroy them before they destroy us.

Written in the authors’ lively and accessible style, chapters include page-turning medical stories about a particular disease or virus—smallpox, Bubonic plague, polio, HIV—that combine “Patient Zero” narratives, or the human stories behind outbreaks, with historical examinations of missteps, milestones, scientific theories, and more.

Learn the tragic stories of Patient Zeros throughout history, such as Mabalo Lokela, who contracted Ebola while on vacation in 1976, and the Lewis Baby on London’s Broad Street, the first to catch cholera in an 1854 outbreak that led to a major medical breakthrough. Interspersed are origin stories of a different sort—how a rye fungus in 1951 turned a small village in France into a phantasmagoric scene reminiscent of Burning Man. Plus the uneasy history of human autopsy, how the HIV virus has been with us for at least a century, and more.

Winner of the 2022 Nebraska Book Award in the category of Nonfiction Popular History.

February 18, 2025 from Workman Publishing

PSEUDOSCIENCE

PSEUDOSCIENCE: AN AMUSING HISTORY OF CRACKPOT IDEAS AND WHY WE LOVE THEM
by Lydia Kang, MD and Nate Pedersen

A rollicking visual and narrative history of popular ideas, phenomena, and widely held beliefs disproven by science.

The Bermuda Triangle. Personality tests. Ghost hunting. Crop circles. Mayan Doomsday. What do all these have in common? None can quite live up the rigor of actual facts or science and yet they all attract passionate supporters anyway.

Divided into broad sections covering the easily disproved to the wildly speculative to wishful thinking and of course hucksterism, Pseudoscience is a romp through much more than bad science—it’s a light-hearted look into why we insist on believing in things such as Big Foot, astrology, and the existence of aliens. Did you know, for example, that you can tell a person’s future by touching their butt? Rumpology. It’s a thing, but not really. Or that Stanley Kubrick made a fake moon landing film for the US government? Except he didn’t. Or that spontaneous human combustion is real? It ain’t, but it can be explained scientifically.

From the authors of Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything, Pseudoscience is a wild mix of history, pop culture, and good old fashioned science–one that not just entertains, but sheds a little light on why we all love to believe in a few things we know aren’t true.

THE STARRY WISDOM LIBRARY

THE CATALOGUE OF THE GREATEST OCCULT BOOK AUCTION OF ALL TIME

An anthology edited by Nate Pedersen

Scholars and book collectors across the country have long pondered the intended fate of the infamous collection of rare occult books left to rot in the Church of Starry Wisdom in Providence, Rhode Island, after the Starry Wisdom cult dispersed to parts unknown in the late 19th century.

The recent, shocking discovery of a previously unknown book auction catalogue issued in 1877 offers insight into the myriad mysteries of the cult. Entitled “Catalogue of the Occult Library of the Recently Disbanded Church of Starry Wisdom of Providence, Rhode Island,” and issued by the notorious Arkham firm Pent & Serenade, the catalogue reveals the long-suspected fact that the Church intended to sell its library to finance its removal from Providence.

The sale, of course, never materialized—as later events make obvious—but the book auction catalogue informs us of the cult’s
original intent and leaves for us an enormously valuable and fascinating piece of ephemera detailing the infamous collection of rare occult books in all of its dark and foreboding glory.

Furthermore, the book auction catalogue is unique amongst its contemporaries in that the auction firm Pent & Serenade—recognizing
the importance of the exceedingly rare volumes in the cult’s possession—commissioned a wide variety of 19th-century scholars to write essays on the histories of the books offered at auction.

As such, the catalogue is a uniquely—almost absurdly—valuable item for scholars and collectors around the world, and is presented here in exacting facsimile by PS Publishing.

THE DAGON COLLECTION

AN AUCTION CATALOGUE OF ITEMS RECOVERED IN THE FEDERAL RAID ON INNSMOUTH, MASS.

An anthology edited by Nate Pedersen

The companion book to "The Starry Wisdom Library," which has been in the works for seven years: "The Dagon Collection."  The anthology is once again presented as a fake auction catalogue, however this time it is 1929, shortly after the events in "The Shadow Over Innsmouth." The feds have just raided the Esoteric Order of Dagon Lodge. Now they've contracted with Pent & Serenade, Occult Auctioneers, to sell the items secured in the raid.  In addition to books, this auction also features weaponry, art, jewelry, nautical items, textiles, and objects both strange and prosaic once owned by the Dagon cult.

The design skills of Andrew Leman of H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society have brought the catalogue to life in all its 1920s period glory. Rebecca Baumann of the University of Indiana provided the cataloging of the objects.  Liv Rainey-Smith and Eduardo Valdes-Hevia contributed illustrations. Leading voices in horror and Lovecraftian fiction again contributed stories, including F. Paul Wilson, Jesse Bullington, John Langan, Gemma Files, Livia Llewellyn, Michael Cisco, Nick Mamatas, Ramsey Campbell, Selena Chambers, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and, in a bittersweet note, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. (to whom the book is dedicated), in what may be his final unpublished story.

2021 from Chaosium

SISTERHOOD

DARK TALES AND SECRET HISTORIES
An anthology edited by Nate Pedersen

In churches and convents and other religious communities, sisterhood takes many forms, forged and tested by such mundane threats as disease and despair, but also by terrors both spiritual and existential—Satan’s subtle minions and the cosmic nightmare of the Cthulhu Mythos. Sisterhood: Dark Tales and Secret Histories presents sixteen horror stories by some of the genre’s leading female voices. Their settings range around the globe and across the centuries, from 6th century Ireland to 17th century Virginia to Indonesia in the recent past.

Table of Contents

  • “The Wine of Men” by Ann K. Schwader

  • “From an Honest Sister, to a Neglected Daughter” by Monica Valentinelli

  • “Étaín and the Unholy Ghosts” by Lisa Morton

  • “The Barefoot Sisters of Saint Beatriz of the Mountain” by Kali Wallace

  • “Unburdened Flesh” by Penelope Love

  • “Only Dead Men Do Not Lie: The Trials of the Formosans” by Kaaron Warren

  • “Jane, Jamestown, The Starving Time” by Sun Yung Shin

  • “Dorcas and Ann: A True Story” by Molly Tanzer

  • “The Resurrected” by S. P. Miskowski

  • “The Low, Dark Edge of Life” by Livia Llewellyn

  • “The Anchoress” by Lynda E. Rucker

  • “Siūlais ir Kraujo ir Kaulų (Of Thread and Blood and Bone)” by Damien Angelica Walters

  • “Gravity Wave” by Nadia Bulkin

  • “The Veils of Sanctuary” by Selena Chambers

  • “The Sisters of Epione” by Alison Littlewood

  • “Red Words” by Gemma Files