This Mysterious Realm Called Sleep (Paperback) | Released: 04 Jan 2018

Leslie Watkins' unabridged collection of three volumes exploring sleep, a mystery packed with surprises. Most people are unaware that every night vast numbers of sleepwalkers display totally unexpected behaviour. They move around in their hundreds, in their thousands, and they're spread through every town and city in the world. There's the famous musician whose dream gave him one of the most successful songs of this century - one enthusiastically covered by a host of stars including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Liberace. Equally intriguing is the case-history of the daughter of pauperised former slaves in Louisiana who, thanks to information given in a dream, became one of the world's richest women - and an immensely generous philanthropist. Some call it the mystery of slow-wave sleep when behaviour by sleepwalkers, which seem too bizarre to be possible, takes place. They are typified by the baffling talent of Welshman Lee Hadwin, the first example in this book, who is a brilliant artist -- but only when fast asleep. He cannot paint nor draw when awake and yet his hypnotic paintings sell for hundreds of thousands. And then there's sexomnia, when primal urges in the brain take control, like the case of Toronto landscaper Jan Luedecke accused of raping a young woman. He had sex with the woman and yet Ontario Court Judge Russell Otter ruled that the attack had been involuntary and acquitted Luedecke. He walked from the court a free man. Why? Because the judge ruled Luedecke had been asleep when he raped the girl. Somnambulism, parasomnia, noctambulism are just a few of the names for such strange, fascinating and sometimes terrifying goings-on. Lesley Cusack of Warrington in Cheshire - a mother-of-three - who was desperate to lose weight cooking huge meals while asleep; dieting furiously during the day but eating herself to death each night. A man waking, horrified to find himself in a lake surrounded by crocodiles and it wasn't a dream. He survived but was lucky to be alive. How did a beautiful little blonde girl called Reeva Rebecca Steenkamp predict her own violent murder when she was a teenager? Reeva made headlines right around the world after Valentine's Day, 2013, when she was savagely killed by her lover - double-amputee paralympic champion and Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius. These are just some of the incredible cases explored in This Mysterious Realm Called Sleep.
About the Author: Welshman Leslie Watkins was acclaimed as a top Fleet Street journalist long before his first book was published. That was an attention-grabbing exploration of somnambulistic violence entitled The Sleepwalk Killers which, like some of his subsequent books was sparked by his newspaper assignments. Watkins's interest in the subject was aroused when he covered the murder trial of American airman Willis Boshears who had strangled his bed-mate, 20-year-old Jean Constable, at her home in Essex, UK. He was found not guilty because he had killed while fast asleep. His first novel The Killing of Idi Amin was inspired by his experiences in the crazed dictator's Uganda where he was covering a minor war. He was arrested at gunpoint and accused of being an anti-Amin spy, before being beaten up, imprisoned and threatened with execution. Background for his novel The Unexploded Man, republished with new material in 2016, came from extensive interviews he had conducted for the Daily Mail with former inmates of Russia's notorious prison-hospitals - and with psychiatrists who had sought sanctuary in the West. His Sci-Fi Classic, Alternative 3 was the basis of Frank Jacob's 2015 feature film 'Packing for Mars.' He now lives quietly in New Zealand with his wife Kathleen, two dogs - Skipper and Suzi -and an elderly cat called Bundle.