THEY KNEW TOO MUCH ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Gray Barker

Here come the Men in Black! This is the book wherein Gray Barker introduces those sinister black suited creeps that have since become a UFOlogical standby. Barker certainly knows how to turn a phrase, and he weaves a twisted web of intrigue out of the flying saucer freakshow of the mid-50s. It's a worldwide whistlestop tour which includes the Flatwoods Monster, various contactees, the paranoid sexual miasma of the Shaver Mystery, and a detour into Hugh Auchincloss Brown and his theory of Catastrophic Pole Shift. The cure for which, by the by, is a flurry of H-Bombs a la Toho Studio's super science disaster epic Gorath. Brown's theory would later be the subject of a 1970s doorstopper disaster novel, The HAB Theory.

Barker includes a useful appendix of UFO books, and a condensed summary of the Shaver Mystery in case you missed the jist. This Tower Books reprint features a lovely impressionist cover of headlights on the highway. Available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tower Books, 1967 (original pub. 1956)

STRANGEST OF ALL by Frank Edwards

 

A collection of Forteana that straddles the old and new, with Frank Edwards presenting a series of disconnected chapters that move from feeble old school mysteries such as Clever Hans and ghostly folk tales into more modern fare like out-of-place artifacts, ESP, and Flying Saucers. Edwards would focus more heavily on these pseudoscience subjects for the latter half of his career, with his final two books being UFO titles. He passed away in 1967.

Ace Books, 1962 (original pub. 1956)