Butler has used story tides that are common to articles in the weekly tabloid newspapers available in supermarkets, and the stories contain elements from various sensationalized urban legends of the late twentieth century. Along with fictionalized accounts of movie stars' infidelities or health or contract woes, the tabloids have for years proffered tales of John F. Kennedy being alive but incog nito somewhere, of aliens abducting ordinary people from their homes or cars, of biblical prophecies of doomsday, of astronomers' prophecies of meteors some day to hit the earth, of sightings of Elvis Presley, of boats and aircraft and their crews being lost in the Atlantic region called the Bermuda Triangle, and so on.

Among the stories, Butler weaves occasional cross-references that connect stories which might at first reading seem quite unrelated, threading just enough familiarity through disparate works to make the book title accurate. In addition to...