The Disappearance of Percy Fawcett

And Other Famous Vanishings

Significant facts and plausible theories behind ten of the most mystifying disappearing acts in history—from Czar Alexander I to Amelia Earhart.

Here are the stories of adventurers, celebrities, political figures, unwitting victims, and visionaries with one thing in common: They vanished into thin air. This collection features ten cases that became the stuff of tantalizing speculation and investigation, inspiring everyone from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Ian Fleming to Stephen King.

In 1925, Percy Fawcett ventured into the Amazon jungles searching for the mythical Lost City of Z and never re-emerged. Aviator Amelia Earhart embarked on her historic flight around the world in 1937 but didn’t return. Other cases are less famous but just as enthralling: New York’s Judge Crater who stepped into a taxi and was never seen again; travel writer Richard Halliburton, known for his headline-making stunts—the one in 1939 made him a legend; and Lionel Crabb, the British frogman whose fate became a Cold War mystery.

Here too are the unsolved vanishings of Roger Tichborne, heir to a fortune and cause célèbre of Victorian England; Philadelphia toddler Charley Ross who, in 1870, was the first kidnap victim to receive nationwide attention; activist and Columbia University professor, Jesús de Galindez; writer Ambrose Bierce; and Czar Alexander the First, shadowed to this day by rumors of a faked death.

This thoroughly researched book covers a century of historical puzzlers. Some are investigated to this day, some are all but forgotten—yet all are real-life mysteries still waiting to be solved.