The She-Fiend of the War Clouds and Other Strange True Tales

Mata Hari. The Mary Celeste. A servant girl who became a princess. A kidnapped child who was never found. A murderer who died in a field hospital, or did he?

The second selection from Maki Itsuma's celebrated series of strange true stories (1929-1930) follows spies, impostors, vanishings and a mass murderer who may have slipped away in wartime. In the author's urgent, rhetorical reporter's voice, we meet Mata Hari and the secrets of the tanks, the abandoned Mary Celeste and the actress lost from a Rhine yacht, Princess Caraboo's imaginary island kingdom, little Charley Ross, and Béla Kiss, the tin-maker of Czinkota.

A new English translation from the Japanese, with endnotes. Five stories.