With a cheerfully withering eye for their cons, Stoker introduces us to many famous fakers including: royal pretenders (such as Perkin Warbeck, who claimed King Henry VII's throne) magicians (Paracelsus, Cagliostro, etc.) witches and clairvoyants women masquerading as men hoaxers and others. Irish author ABRAHAM STOKER (1847-1912) worked for more than a quarter of a century as manager of the West End's Lyceum Theatre, which drew him into London's literary and artists circles; he was a friend of such luminaries as writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. Stoker is also the author of The Lair of the White Worm (1911), among other books."