Magical Masterpieces by Louis Nikola

The most famous invention of Nikola is his card system, which is described in The Nikola Card System and in an abbreviated version in Encyclopedia of Card Tricks. Cards are not the only area Nikola excelled in.

From the inside cover:Magical Masterpieces is no mere fanciful title. It is an apt description of a selection from the accumulated repertoire of a practical magician whose outstanding characteristic is the painstaking perfection and stamp of individuality of all his productions. It is safe to say that if a new book of magic provides only one workable and suitable addition to the reader's store it is a sound investment. The magician who cannot find many more than one acceptable item herein must indeed be hard to please. A wealth of valuable material is offered. This is not a book for idle reading alone, although even as such it is an entertainment in itself. It is a book for reading and reading again and oft repeated reference. It is a store-house of ideas to be placed in the magician's library and taken out from time to time for reference. Today he may find something for immediate addition to his programme. A year hence, two years hence, many years hence, he may still find something new. If he reads between the lines, he will not only absorb new ideas, he will learn something of the writer's secret of developing ideas and acquire habits of thought that will enable him to do likewise. Unhampered by confinement to a single type, the keynote of the volume is variety, and its contents range from subtle sleight-of-hand tricks without visible appliances to elaborate mechanical devices of extreme intricacy and some entirely new suggestions in the way of self-contained illusions.

1st edition, 1934, Will Goldston; 256 pages.

1. Inside cover
2. The Feast of Lanterns - Frontispiece
3. Introduction
4. The Disappearing Cloak
5. A Disappearing Walking Stick
6. Fire and Water
7. Catching a Card on a Knife Point
8. A Treacle Trick
9. Card Cricket
10. Magic Photography
11. A Transforming Card Table
12. Dyeing Silks
13. "Bunglo"
14. Dyeing Silks. Ne Plus Ultra
15. The Great Lemon
16. A Ring and An Orange
17. A Ring and A Dove
18. With A Watch
19. The Nest of Boxes
20. A New Method in the Smoke Trick
21. The Incorrigible Cigars
22. A Super Rice Bowls Trick
23. How I Saw the Great Indian Rope Trick
24. The Truth? About the Indian Rope Trick
25. Transit of Wine
26. The Recipe for Diamonds
27. Off With His Head
28. An Extemporised Drum Production
29. Another Drum Load
30. Optical Delusion
31. The Power of Suggestion
32. A Message From Mars
33. Marvellous Addition
34. A Magic Spell
35. Reading by Touch
36. Patriotic Drill
37. Flying Colours
38. On The Line
39. Transposing Milk and Sugar
40. The Topsy Turvy Tea Table
41. Under The Pillar Box
42. Tricky Tennis
43. Aerial Angling
44. Hoffmann's Bullet Trick
45. The Feast of Lanterns
46. The Junior Feast of Lanterns
47. The Housing Problem
48. The Rajah's Pearls
49. Aqua Vitae
50. Squeezed To A Jelly
51. What Happened To Smith Minor

word count: 61084 which is equivalent to 244 standard pages of text