Desert Oracle
Volume 1: Strange True Tales From the American Southwest
Picador · Print & ebook · December 7, 2021
The cult-y pocket-size field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave—its myths and legends, outcasts and oddballs, flora, fauna, and UFOs—becomes the definitive, oracular book of the desert For the past five years, Desert Oracle has existed as a quasi-mythical, quarterly periodical available to the very determined only by subscription or at the odd desert-town gas station or the occasional hipster boutique, its canary-yellow-covered, forty-four-page issues handed from one curious desert zealot to the next, word spreading faster than the printers could keep up with.
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- Who it’s for
- A pocket-sized companion to the Mojave’s natural wonders, strange lore, and desert oddities.
- Themes
- American Southwest folklore, Desert flora and fauna, Paranormal phenomena
- Genres
- Desert Life, UFOs & Extraterrestrials, Pacific West Travel (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA)
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Start with this bookAbout this book
The cult-y pocket-size field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave—its myths and legends, outcasts and oddballs, flora, fauna, and UFOs—becomes the definitive, oracular book of the desert For the past five years, Desert Oracle has existed as a quasi-mythical, quarterly periodical available to the very determined only by subscription or at the odd desert-town gas station or the occasional hipster boutique, its canary-yellow-covered, forty-four-page issues handed from one curious desert zealot to the next, word spreading faster than the printers could keep up with.
Continue reading
It became a radio show, a podcast, a live performance. Now, for the first time—and including both classic and new, never-before-seen revelations—Desert Oracle has been bound between two hard covers and is available to you. Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is “The Voice of the Desert”: a field guide to the strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros, out there in the sand. Desert Oracle is your companion at a roadside diner, around a campfire, in your tent or cabin (or high-rise apartment or suburban living room) as the wind and the coyotes howl outside at night. From journal entries of long-deceased adventurers to stray railroad ad copy, and musings on everything from desert flora, rumored cryptid sightings, and other paranormal phenomena, Ken Layne's Desert Oracle collects the weird and the wonderful of the American Southwest into a single, essential volume.
Desert Oddities
A pocket-sized companion to the Mojave’s natural wonders, strange lore, and desert oddities.
Come here for
- Desert flora, fauna, myths, and UFOs
- Ghost towns, outcasts, and the Southwest’s stranger corners
Expect
- Field-guide curiosities alongside paranormal rumors and modern legends
- A blend of natural history and uncanny tales
Where it sits
| Desert Life | 63% |
|---|---|
| UFOs & Extraterrestrials | 41% |
| Pacific West Travel (AK, CA, HI, OR, WA) | 37% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Nature Writing
- Desert Life
- Mountain West Travel (AZ, CO, ID, MT, NM, NV, UT, WY)
- Authors
- Ken Layne
- Publisher
- Picador
- Published
- December 7, 2021
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Theme
- American Southwest folklore · Desert flora and fauna · Paranormal phenomena
- Reading lane
- Nature Writing