The Premonitions Bureau

More about the book

Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time. Dr John Barker was an ambitious psychiatrist with an uncontrollable interest in strange mental conditions. Then, in 1966, in the wake of a national disaster, he had an outlandish vision. He would collect the public's premonitions and forebodings. He would build a database to predict the future and help avert future disasters. The Premonitions Bureau is the astonishing story of this bizarre real-life undertaking - the radical thinking and peculiar characters behind it; the hundreds of correspondents, their visions, the headlines that they made; and the Bureau's two most gifted "percipients", a charismatic piano teacher and a troubled switchboard operator. Together, the pair predicted plane crashes and train wrecks, assassinations and international incidents with disturbing accuracy. And then, they called to give Barker their most unnerving premonition: a glimpse of his own imminent demise. The debut book from one of today's most exciting long-form storytellers, The Premonitions Bureau is an enthralling secret history of madness and wonder, promethean ambition and mortal fear - a journey to powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.