Richard Wiseman produces books at a prodigious rate. He’s done an evidence-based self-help guide, and looked at luck and the quirky side of life, but his main interests are magic, illusions and parapsyschology.

In Paranormality, Wiseman explores how everyday reality creates the illusory experiences we often attribute to the paranormal. He has a conversational tone and deftly combines anecdote with solidly referenced research data.

Wiseman is sceptical about the paranormal, but he’s in a different league to your usual sceptic. He carefully explains how the appearance of paranormality is produced in the phenomena he is examining, and does so based on his own research, be it into ghosts, pro­phecy, fortune-telling or mind-control.