The Pig War and the Pelican Girls is a riveting and well-researched collection of little-known and obscure tales from history. This page-turner unearths the stories of men and women who strove to save their country from aggressors or better the lives of others or simply survive under mysterious and extraordinary circumstances.

From the tale of the Pelican Girls, a group of women deemed “of virtuous character” by the Catholic church and sent to the first French colonies in the New World in an attempt to re-create the Garden of Eden, to the story of “The Limping Lady, ” declared the most dangerous of all Allied spies by the Germans in World War II, the true tale of Pan American Airlines signing up passengers for a flight to the moon when mankind had barely left Earth orbit, and many, many more, Joe Cuhaj reveals real-life history that has been buried for centuries.

Whether you’re an armchair historian or a lover of all things unusual and astonishing, this collection of obscure history shows that life surely is stranger than fiction.