Co-written by the author of 'Where the Crawdads Sing', this bestselling and award-winning memoir charts the Owens' time researching wildlife in the Kalahari Desert. Carrying little more than a change of clothes and a pair of binoculars, the two young Americans caught a plane to Africa, bought a third-hand Land Rover, and lived in the Kalahari Desert for seven years in an unexplored area with no roads, no people, and no source of water for thousands of miles. In this vast wilderness the couple began their zoology research, working alongside animals that had never previously been exposed to humans. Here is their life with lions, brown hyenas, jackals, giraffes. 'Studies in the Serengeti of East Africa have shown that lionesses are notoriously poor mothers.' 'One of the cubs tottered up to Muffin and stuck its tiny face up to his giant whiskered muzzle.' Beautifully written, we get up close and personal inside a world we are privileged to visit from the comfort of our armchairs, and without the dry heat and danger this remarkable couple encountered. 464pp in a beautiful new edition containing never-before-seen colour photographs.

BBC Wildlife said of this book, 'Encyclopaedic in both ambition and achievement, and a tome to be treasured.' Very glamorous and super heavyweight softback with glossy white paper and over 200 colour photos, lively text and informative fact boxes, the book includes the latest research and data and special photography from award-winning wildlife photographers such as David Tipling. Expert ornithologist Jonathan Elphick provides facts about the world's 36 orders and 234 families of birds, revealing their diversity, appearance, behaviour and lifestyle from gannets and boobies, pelicans and penguins, flufftails and nightjars, sunbittern and grebes, turkeys and grouse, megapodes and magpie goose, screamers and kiwis, rheas and tinamous, ostriches and all the others. Which is the rarest parrot or the most endangered hummingbird? What is the difference between a swallow and a swift? Social behaviour, nest, fledgeling period, food, voice, migration and conservation status are all included for each entry and the sheer quality of the photography cannot be exaggerated. 416pp, large softback, 25.3 x 19.7cm.

Sub-titled 'Nature's Secrets to Longevity' molecular biologist Brendborg provides a hugely enjoyable whistle-stop tour of the science of ageing from far flung places to cutting-edge research labs. From the backwards-ageing jellyfish to the woman who successfully edited her own DNA, he follows the thread of every experiment, story and myth in search of immortality. With mind-bending discoveries and psychological gifts that feel closer to magic than reality, the book will make us marvel at the possibilities held by scientific discovery, and most of all at nature. We meet the fighting naked mole-rats who are much better than their close relatives mice at surviving stressors such as DNA-damaging chemicals, heavy metals or extreme heat. Chapters include The Secrets of Easter Island, Zombie Cells and How to Get Rid of Them, Winding the Biological Clock, Microbe Struggles and Immune Rejuvenation, Flossing for Longevity, Starving for Fun and Medieval Monks to Modern Science. Judicious and refreshingly clear, 270pp, paperback.

Designed for little tots aged four and up, we know that our adult pop-up and craft collectors of all ages will appreciate the chance to bag this unique 3D bargain. Create greetings cards, party favours, year round decorations with these colourful animal landscapes by the artist Junzo Terada. Made of sturdy card stock and easy to assemble, no scissors or glue are required. Put together an Arctic tundra with seals, whale and polar bear in their landscape, a camel and palm tree in a desert, farmyard animals, deer and bears and trees and tents in a woodland scene, and gorgeous monkey, snake, brightly coloured parrot and other animals in the rainforest scene. The box set includes 10 different cards, two per habitat, and 10 envelopes for mailing or storage. CE safety approved.

Born in Haiti in 1785, John James Audubon was a naturalist and painter and considered one of the greatest natural history artists of all time. He wandered the woods and rivers of the wild frontiers of North America shooting, studying, posing and painting birds and other animals, and many years later, the resulting books would change the worlds of ornithology and natural history art forever. He is best known for his groundbreaking work 'The Birds of America', of which only 120 complete original sets are known to exist. Less well known is his final work, an equally ambitious project to document the mammals of North America. He painted hundreds of species in their natural habitat in remarkable detail including many frontier animals depicted for the first time, each characterised by his highly dramatic style. Here is the marmot, woodchuck, groundhog, mountain hare, squirrels and foxes, a flying squirrel, a wolverine, mink, Canada porcupine, American beavers and badgers, shrews, the common mouse in a family of four munching on a chunk of bread in a kitchen scene, a polar bear with iceberg behind him in the scene, a ring-tailed bassaris, Columbian black-tailed deer, Rocky Mountain goats, in all 150 four footed mammals in their natural habitat. Beautiful colour and detail, most are presented in landscape format within the volume which could at this price easily be dismantled to frame as favourite prints. With marbled endpapers, 160 pages, 26 x 33.4cm.
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From a few thousand tours he has conducted in 70 countries, Bryan Bland recounts history, dramatic scenery, green exercise as a therapeutic intervention, and location filming and much else from world politics to the crucial life-enhancing role of music in his light-hearted examination of the profit of birding. Red-Lord Parrot, Keel-billed Toucan, Red-Crowned Ant-tanager, Collared Aracari, Pale-billed Woodpecker, Indigo Bunting, Ocellated Turkey, Red-capped Manakin - the only man-made structures visible were pre-Columbian and the roof combs of Mayan temples constructed 1,300 years ago. As far as the eye could see stretch nothing but the largest tract of the rainforest, north of the Amazon 'like sitting on top of a giant broccoli.' Author Bryan Bland has spent a lifetime discovering that there is more to birding than the obvious interest derived from just watching the birds. The pastime is also instrumental in opening doors for life's other pleasures and with his humorous and anecdotal text, birders and non-birders will be swept along with his tales of running 50 miles across the land-slide strewn Himalayas in order to keep an appointment with a tour group, to meeting Britain's first-ever breeding pair of Parrot Crossbills using material from Bryan's beard to build their nest. Based in the birding hotspot of Cley in Norfolk, Bryan alternates his highly regarded residential bird watching courses with his overseas tours, and he is also a highly regarded bird illustrator. 352pp, beautiful line art throughout.

A screaming crab-eating macaque going cheap at Spanish market, a Kemp's ridley sea turtle on an Alabama beach attached to a discarded beach chair by the neck, a young male lion poisoned in Kenya's Masai Mara. Wildlife Photography has surged in importance as our environment becomes more threatening and the lives of thousands of species are endangered. These 100 glorious photos have been selected from 48,130 entries in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition in 2019, and every one is a small masterpiece. The entries are judged blind so that an amateur photographer could scoop a prize, but in fact the winners are usually veterans with long experience and expertise. This reflects that fact that behind a good wildlife picture there are often months of preparation and hours or even weeks of patient waiting for the subject to appear in the desired context. Animal behaviour came to the foreground in this competition, and there was also an increase in entries from distant regions such as Mongolia, Tajikistan and China, possibly reflecting increase in access to equipment. The grand-title winner is Yongqing Bao, a Tibetan from China, whose image of a young marmot in the moment of realising that a fox was about to pounce is a haunting reminder that these photos reflect the savagery of nature. The portfolio award went to Stefan Christmann of Germany with his elegant and rather touching image of emperor penguins mating in an icy landscape. A blank sheet of snow also dominates the winning image for a young photographer's portfolio: Jérémie Villet of France got frostbite while recording two male Dall's sheep huddling together for warmth, having started out in territorial combat. Other striking images include bright orange algae weaving a tapestry on a Monterey cypress tree, and a large bull hippo snatching a calf from its mother with a view to killing it, probably in order to relieve overcrowding. The cover image of a puma attacking a guanaco in Patagonia had a happier ending with the escape of the prey. A Weddell seal, a juvenile jackfish travelling inside a jellyfish, and a garden of eels in the Philippines are some of the stunning shots of sealife. 160pp, over 100 large colour images on glossy paper, biographies of photographers and scenario descriptions of all the entries. 25.5cm square.
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Researched and written by a team of 70 academics, this is pure gold as we watch hares leaping, spiders jumping, bright patterns, serrated teeth of the white shark, meet the helmeted iguana, the laughing kookaburra, the penguin family, hoofed mammals, the sun bear and monkeys like the lemurine night monkey and the red bellied titi, boxing kangaroos and filter feeding manta rays. Specialist zoologists, palaeontologists, ecologists and photographers have collaborated for this super heavyweight visual compendium, first time discounted. It looks at the animal kingdom, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates and their habitats, showcasing more than 2,000 incredible species in stunning detail. Unrivalled in its scope and now fully revised and updated, it is an essential home reference and an introduction to evolution, animal anatomy, life cycles, classification and behaviour as well as the impact from habitats lost, climate change and other conservation issues. Each animal species comes with a description, photo, distribution map and statistics and organised into taxa (the groups of related species that scientists use to classify animals). With beautiful coloured detailed maps and striking photography, 632pp, 24 x 28.8cm.
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Tony Peake does not think that we survive the death of our bodies and instead argues that we do not die at all, that bodily death as we usually think of it is in fact not possible. Presenting insights into contemporary neuroscience and quantum physics as well as ancient cosmologies and mystical traditions, he presents a coherent picture of a universe that literally requires you to be immortal. As preposterous as this may seem, he finds persuasive evidence to support it from a variety of sources but most of all from our everyday experiences. How often have you had a sensation that you were reliving an event for a second time? How often have you had a correct 'hunch' about something that was about to happen? Is this a glimpse of a life already lived, perhaps many times? You will read about the common features of near-death experiences, the slowing of time, a review of your entire life, brain stimulation studies, evolution, Freudian slips and déjà vu, epilepsy and schizophrenia. Peake shows that the slowing of your sense of time dictated by chemical changes in your dying brain allows you to re-experience your life all over again - in seconds, in someone else's universe, but in another full life-time in yours. A most innovative and provocative argument about the afterlife. 416pp in new full price large softback.

Type of tree 'flower' that may hang down from branches like a tail. The huge easy to read crosswords each have an extra clue that when solved will reveal a word or words relating to plants at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. With approximately 20-24 clues across and down, these easy fun crosswords take inspiration from the scientific research and collections at Kew, home to more than 68,000 plants, from familiar names to the rare and exotic. With solutions to all 73 puzzles, 96 very large pages in softback. New full price.