Natural Science

On an August night in 1893, the deadliest hurricane in South Carolina history struck the Lowcountry, killing thousands—almost all African American. But the devastating storm is only the beginning of this story. The hurricane's long effects intermingled with ongoing processes of economic downturn, racial oppression, resistance, and environmental change. In the Lowcountry, the political, economic, and social conditions of Jim Crow were inextricable from its environmental dimensions.

The latest Scandinavian publishing phenomenon is not a Stieg Larsson-like thriller; it's a book about chopping, stacking, and burning wood that has sold more than 200,000 copies in Norway and Sweden and has been a fixture on the best seller lists there for more than a year. Norwegian Wood provides useful advice on the rustic hows and whys of taking care of your heating needs, but it's also a thoughtful attempt to understand man's age-old predilection for stacking wood and passion for open fires.

A quiet revolution has been underway in recent years, with study after study revealing substantial same-sex sexual behavior in animals. Join celebrated author Eliot Schrefer on an exploration of queer behavior in the animal world—from albatrosses to bonobos to clownfish to doodlebugs. In sharp and witty prose Schrefer uses science, history, anthropology, and sociology to illustrate the diversity of sexual behavior in the animal world. Interviews with researchers in the field offer additional insights for readers and aspiring scientists.

Jacob Compass is stuck in the human world, navigating a peaceful treaty so that supernaturals are not exposed. Justice Winter reluctantly finds herself helping him with this task, all the while dreaming about punching him in his perfect, smug face. Suffice it to say, their coexistence is a challenge in many ways. Turns out, though, that during this battle against an enemy that they can't just kill and get rid of - annoying as it may be - they learn that they have more in common than just their fey race.

My mother isn’t my mother. A werewolf wants me for his one-and-only baby mama. Oh! And I’m the new leader of a tribe I joined weeks ago. Messed up doesn’t begin to explain it. I’m more desperate than ever to uncover an explanation for Mum’s mounting betrayals. Because this time, I’m not sure forgiveness is possible.

A must-have audiobook for walkers, sailors, swimmers, anglers and everyone interested in the natural world, in How to Read Water, Natural Navigator Tristan Gooley shares knowledge, skills, tips and useful observations to help you enjoy the landscape around you. From wild swimming in Sussex to wayfinding off Oman, via the icy mysteries of the Arctic, Tristan Gooley draws on his own pioneering journeys to reveal the secrets of ponds, puddles, rivers, oceans and more to show us all the skills we need to read the water around us.

Scrapbooking is magic, and so am I. Or at least I would be, if I could take a freaking nap already. What kind of dream witch can't even make herself fall asleep? A tired witch. A middle-aged, raising-her-teenage-son-alone witch. I'm supposed to keep the magic world a secret. I'm supposed to dream the future. But supposed-tos are for suckers. At 41, I'm done with doubt. And I'm not about to let anyone else tell me what I can or can't do.

Throughout history, rivers have been our foremost source of fresh water both for agriculture and for individual consumption, but now economists say that by 2025 water scarcity will cut global food production by more than the current U.S. grain harvest. In this groundbreaking book, veteran science correspondent Fred Pearce focuses on the dire state of the world's rivers to provide our most complete portrait yet of the growing world water crisis and its ramifications for us all.

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and with it, the trajectory of life on Earth in the past, present, and future. Taking listeners from the deep geologic past to our current era of human dominance, Stephen Porder focuses on five of life’s essential elements—hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus.

On July 4, 1999, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a bizarre confluence of meteorological events resulted in the most damaging blowdown in the region's history. Gunflint Falling tells the story of this devastating storm from the perspectives of those who were on the ground before, during, and after the catastrophic event.

Transporting listeners to far-flung environments we could never call home, Super Natural paints an awe-inspiring portrait of life’s resilience and ingenuity under the harshest circumstances. We meet creatures exquisitely adapted to endure unimaginable deprivations: of water, oxygen, food, sunlight. Alex Riley shows how, at nature’s extremes, the rules of life as we know them are rewritten—and how, here, we can find hope for the future of life on Earth, and beyond.

Christopher Wills's claim has its roots in an insight from Charles Darwin: the interactions between species in an ecosystem are a powerful driver of evolution. In this book Wills describes how, by using the latest genetic techniques, we are probing ecosystems and discovering that even the most apparently barren of them are rich in variety, especially of microbes.

Even among special agents, Andromeda Stone is special. Her unique ability to walk in the dreams of others has placed her in the services of a secret government research and defense facility known only as The Agency. She always assumed it was because of her gift that she felt out of place, even among her family; but as she faces an entirely new and dangerous mission, perhaps it's something deeper that sets her apart.

In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.

When a bolt of lightning ignited a hilltop in the sleepy town of Yarnell, Arizona, in June of 2013, setting off a blaze that would grow into one of the deadliest fires in American history, the 20 men who made up the Granite Mountain Hotshots sprang into action. An elite crew trained to combat the most challenging wildfires, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were a ragtag family crisscrossing the American West and wherever else the fires took them. The Hotshots were loyal to one another and dedicated to the tough job they had.

Maddison has been fighting the gods from the first moment she found out they existed. Those arrogant and power hungry deities have a plan...a plan that includes destroying everything she holds dear, and she fears that one day soon, they're going to succeed. When new information is dropped in her lap, a way to end the gods once and for all, Maddison jumps at the chance. That's until she finds out that the path to her prize is through a maze of challenges that have stumped all who've attempted them before.

Born in Boston, Stephen Bodio wandered into Magdalena, New Mexico, in the 1970s while on his way to Montana and never left. He was accompanied by Betsy Huntington, who was twenty years his senior; the couple had been inseparable from the day they met. After stumbling upon a vintage home along the highway, they settled into a country life; it was the perfect way for the two of them to make their lives together in an out-of-the-way place.

Entertaining and insightful, David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion and The Natural History of Religion are considered to be among the most important philosophical works on the topic of religion. Each investigates the formation and consequences of religious belief.

The author of Last Train to Paradise tells the story of the largest public water project ever created - William Mulholland's Los Angeles aqueduct - a story of Gilded Age ambition, hubris, greed, and one determined man whose vision shaped the future and continues to impact us today.

Lovelorn kangaroo shifter Hamish Mulherne, drummer for the mega-hit rock band Hunter’s Moon, waited years for the band’s jaguar shifter bassist to notice him. Instead, she’s just gotten married and is in a thriving poly relationship. How is Hamish supposed to compete with that? But with everyone else in the band mated and revoltingly happy, he needs somebody. Since he can’t expect true love to strike twice, he signs up with Supernatural Selection. Because what the hell?