Reading Line: Fifteen Mind-Boggling Tales from the Golden StateAre the Santa Lucia Mountains really inhabited by Los Vigilantes Oscuros? John Steinbeck's "no-nonsense" mother claimed she exchanged gifts for several years with someone in the area that she never saw, but whose presence she simply felt. Since the beginning of history, local residents and visitors alike have reported fleeting glimpses of the mysterious Dark Watchers.Is the labyrinthine Winchester House still inhabited by the reclusive widow who masterminded its construction? For nearly forty years--up to the day she died--Sarah Winchester, heiress of the famous rifle manufacturer, hired workers to build a maze of a mansion that boasts ten thousand windows, over forty staircases, and nearly two thousand doors leading to 160 rooms--and some to nowhere at all.How did a sewing machine salesman make good on his promise to end a terrible drought in Southern California? In 1916, the heavens unleashed a catastrophic downpour that flooded San Francisco, wiped out crops, and drowned livestock. To this day, no one has been able to duplicate the chemical formula Charles Hatfield used time after time and that earned him a reputation as a bona fide rainmaker.From Mount Shasta's legendary Lemurians to battles with alien spacecraft, California Myths and Legends of makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of the Golden State's most fascinating and compelling stories. Ray Jones is a historian, author, and publishing consultant living in Pebble Beach, California. He has written more than thirty books, including Niagara Falls: An Intimate Portrait and his award-winning Lighthouse Encyclopedia, both published by Globe Pequot Press.

Joe Lubow, formerly Merrill College Librarian and Fellow at the University of California at Santa Cruz, has been an editor and author for more than thirty-five years.