Myths & Lemons

What if dragons were never imaginary-only misunderstood?For more than thirty years, historian and author Arthur Belmont has built his career studying the stories people once believed. Dragons, sea serpents, monsters and supernatural creatures belong to folklore, not zoology. Every legend has an explanation. Every mystery eventually yields to evidence.At least, that is what Arthur has always believed.Then an obscure reference buried in an old manuscript leads him to the papers of a forgotten Victorian traveller-and to a description that should not exist.A creature observed in China.A broken horn.A strange mark repeated across decades and continents.And one unsettling sentence:It knows when it is observed.What begins as an academic curiosity becomes an extraordinary investigation spanning Britain, Norway, India, China, Japan and more than a century of hidden research. Ancient chronicles, forgotten recordings, abandoned expeditions and fragments of local knowledge begin pointing towards the same impossible conclusion.Something survived.But Arthur soon discovers he is not the first person to follow the trail.Others have spent generations searching for the creatures behind the legends-and their interest is far from academic. To some, the discovery represents scientific immortality. To others, enormous commercial value. And to those who have quietly protected the truth, the greatest danger the dragons face may not be extinction.It may be discovery itself.As Arthur moves ever closer to undeniable proof, he is forced to confront a question more difficult than whether dragons exist:If you discover something extraordinary, does that give you the right to reveal it?Blending historical mystery, folklore, scientific speculation and globe-spanning adventure, Myths & Lemons: A Search for Dragons reimagines the dragon not as a fire-breathing monster of fantasy, but as a living animal whose encounters with humanity may have left echoes in stories told across generations.Yet Arthur’s investigation reveals something even more important. Finding a real animal does not reduce centuries of mythology to mistaken zoology. A Chinese lóng, a nāga, Ryūjin, the dragons of medieval Europe and the great serpents of ancient stories belong to the cultures that created and preserved them. Reality does not erase mythology. Nor does evidence automatically explain it.And Arthur Belmont-brilliant, sceptical, sarcastic and quite certain that everyone else is capable of being a fool-is about to discover that the most dangerous assumption a scholar can make is that the lemon in the room is always somebody else.A mystery about dragons. A journey through mythology. And an adventure about the difference between discovering the truth and possessing it. 6