I started climbing and running around the hills in my teens, got into boats, became a professional sailor for twenty years, then took up surfing at thirty and snowboarding at forty. There’s something special about playing with gravity, whether it’s sliding down hills or waves, or defying it on a mountain face. All these books capture the thrill and the dangers.
I discovered this book when I had just started surfing, and it blew me away – so there could be great fiction about extreme sports! I loved the grittiness, the foreboding noir feel, and the unusual setting. It was part of the inspiration for Powder Burn, although they are very different books.
Heart Attacks is California's last secret spot - the premier mysto surf haunt, the stuff of rumour and legend. The rumours say you must cross Indian land to get there. They tell of hostile locals and shark-infested waters where waves in excess of thirty feet break a mile from shore. For down-and-out photographer Jack Fletcher, the chance to shoot these waves in the company of surfing legend Drew Harmon offers the promise of new beginnings. But Drew is not alone in the northern reaches of the state. His young wife, Kendra, lives there with him. Obsessed with the unsolved murder…
I write well-researched literary fiction with an ecological focus. Before becoming a biomedical editor, I did clinical research for a leading academic medical center in Cleveland, OH. However, it was only by working at a research institution – and becoming a patient there – that I realized how much science overlooks; it’s only one way of knowing about something. Another way is by building relationships – including with non-human beings. It’s not just people who are complex. Every living thing exists within an intricate, nuanced ecosystem. This sort of knowing, built over long periods, is what facilitates understanding, compassion, and respect for other beings. These are the qualities I hope to share through my writing.
In The Dolphin House, author Audrey Shulman helped me form an extraordinary bond with one species in particular: dolphins.
Although this remarkable novel is based on a true story about a bizarre 1960s experiment, what caught my attention upfront was the fact that the main character, Cora, is partially deaf. Few authors incorporate people with different abilities in their writing, let alone make them a focal point.
Shulman takes this a step further, making Cora’s “disability” the trait that helps her understand and empathize with the four dolphins in her care. The writing is swift and confident; the story, engrossing.
Based on the true story of the 1965 “dolphin house” experiment, this spellbinding novel captures the tenor of the social experiments of the 1960s in award-winning author Audrey Schulman’s tightly paced and evocative style.
It is 1965, and Cora, a young, hearing impaired woman, buys a one-way ticket to the island of St. Thomas, where she discovers four dolphins held in captivity as part of an experiment led by the obsessive Dr. Blum. Drawn by a strong connection to the dolphins, Cora falls in with the scientists and discovers her need to protect the animals.
There is such a visceral sense of place in this book. The author clearly knows Northern Ontario's landscape well, and this small town's remoteness and isolation is as much a character in the story as the protagonist and her family.
Orphaned at a young age, the book follows Katie and her siblings as they struggle to forge a life together in a town where their tragedy is just one in a long line of them.
Paralleling the story of her youth, the book weaves in Katie's now-adult life in Toronto, where she has escaped into a life of academia. When her past and present collide, she has to face some truths about herself and the relationship she once shared with her beloved older brother, Matt.
Sibling relationships are almost always complex, whether viewed from a child's perspective or as an adult. This book combines the two in a way that…
The Morrison siblings have been haunted by tragedy since the sudden death of their parents in an accident when they were young.
Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world.
But Kate can't seem to escape her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.
'I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson . . . Each one of…
As a child, one of my favorite places was in the top branches of a tree. From up there I could watch the world pass by, remaining invisible. I could make up stories about the world below and no one would challenge me. The second best place for me was inside the story of a book, the kind that took you to magical places where children always found a way to win the day. I knew when I “grew up” I would write one of those empowering books. I became a middle school teacher and have since read many wonderful books for this age. Enjoy my list of favorites.
Where do you turn when the only adult who gets you, your grandpa, is gone, and the world seems to be in self-destruct mode?
On his 12th birthday, Thomas runs away to the forest he used to visit with Grandpa. It is dying. Will saving it from a deadly parasite bring him closer to Grandpa or make his world safer? Before he can find out, he is enticed into a magical world under an attack of a different kind.
Welcomed by a garden of talking plants, mind-reading creatures, tree-climbing, nature-loving beings, Thomas conquers the stinging, prickly hedge that guards the portal to this alternate world. At last, a place where he fits in. A place that needs him. But what about his and Grandpa’s forest?
“…a magical book...” John Perkins, New York Times best-selling author
I wish that I knew Nichols’
secret recipe for making me laugh out loud and cry at the same time. These are
characters you want to kiss, shake, shoot, and make love to (sometimes all at
once).
The plot mixes petty larceny and terrible crimes, guerilla warfare,
dangerous pigs, a great deal of alcohol, a little sex, and injustices that seem
even more relevant now than when the book was written.
Tragedy? Comedy? Depends
on your point of view. If you’ve seen the movie, you have seen only about a
tenth of the book. So, read it!
The Milagro Beanfield War is the first book in John Nichols's New Mexico Trilogy (“Gentle, funny, transcendent.” ―The New York Times Book Review)
Joe Mondragon, a feisty hustler with a talent for trouble, slammed his battered pickup to a stop, tugged on his gumboots, and marched into the arid patch of ground. Carefully (and also illegally), he tapped into the main irrigation channel. And so began-though few knew it at the time-the Milagro beanfield war. But like everything else in the dirt-poor town of Milagro, it would be a patchwork war, fought more by tactical retreats than by battlefield victories.…
Bathsheba Demuth is a historian and prize-winning writer, interested in how people, ideas, places, and other-than-human species intersect in the far north. Her interest in these subjects began when she was 18 and spent several years in the Yukon, mushing huskies, hunting caribou, fishing for salmon, and otherwise learning to survive in the taiga and tundra. Now, when not in the Arctic, she lives in Rhode Island, where she is a professor at Brown University.
Any discussion of how people and nature relate to each other in the twenty-first century will come up against the issue of climate change. And there are so many good books to read on the topic – Elizabeth Rush’s Rising comes right to mind, or the collection All We Can Save, edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson. What Tale of Two Planets offers is a global perspective on rising seas, changing seasons, and damaging weather through genres from poetry to prose to fiction. Each author brings clarity to the science and politics of climate change, but the sections here are also portraits of love for place and community. If you’ve never read a book on climate change before, it’s a great start; if you’ve read them all, there’s something new and beautiful here.
Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.
In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced. In the course of this work, one major theme came up repeatedly: Climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse,…
I’ve spent my life journey so far in the outdoors of northern Ontario, Canada. Before I became a conservation officer, I worked for twelve years in a wilderness park as a canoe ranger. I also had eighteen sled dogs and taught dogsledding and winter survival. I’ve always been drawn to reading adventure stories, so when I finally became an author (in my forties. It’s never too late), I naturally wrote the kind of books that I grew up reading. Now I love that I get to share my passions with readers. I hope you find some books of interest on this list and join me on a journey into a new adventure.
I love books that show a bond between humans and animals. Especially well-researched books. And this story certainly captures it all with a sweet encounter between a lonely polar bear and a girl. Between the environmental tidbits, the plight of polar bears, and also the unique storyline, this book should be on everyone’s radar.
Imagine making friends with a polar bear... The Last Bear is perfect for readers of 8+, beautifully illustrated throughout by Levi Pinfold - winner of the Kate Greenaway Medal and illustrator of Harry Potter 20th anniversary edition covers.
WINNER OF THE 2022 BLUE PETER BOOK AWARD WINNER OF THE 2022 WATERSTONES CHILDREN'S BOOK PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR CHILDREN'S FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2022 SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2022
"This is an important first novel, important for us, for polar bears, for the planet. It is deeply moving, beautifully told, quite unforgettable." Michael Morpurgo.…
The Sweet Goodbye weaves a powerful story of duplicity and loss.
It gave me exactly what I want in a crime thriller, a triumvirate of psychological veracity, physical presence, and page-turning suspense. What’s a crime thriller without complex perpetrators and victims, powerful descriptive passages that pull me into the action, and subterfuge that keeps me guessing until the end?
A book I put down. No danger of that with The Sweet Goodbye. Corbett has been nominated for both the Edgar and Arthur Ellis awards. In this novel, he draws readers deep into the Maine timberlands and holds them there with a riveting plot.
In this thrilling new series from Edgar®-nominated author Ron Corbett, the most dangerous predator in the Maine wilderness walks on two feet—and it is Danny Barrett's job to bring him down.
Something is not right in the North Maine Woods.
A small family-run lumber company should not have more than two hundred million unaccountable dollars on their books. Money like that comes from moving something other than wood across the border.
The first agent the FBI sent undercover was their best man—sure to get the answers that were needed. He was dead within a month.
Gil, the protagonist of Dinosaurs, has two good friends and a live-in partner, but one feels his
essential aloneness, and when his girlfriend suddenly abandons him, he leaves
home in New York and walks to Arizona. After his arrival, a family moves
into the glass-walled house next door and Gil soon becomes enmeshed in their
lives.
This might seem far-fetched, but Millet captures the reader
through close observation and empathy for her characters. The friendship
between Gil and Tom, his adolescent neighbor, is the most surprising fictional friendship
I’ve read in years.
The need for community and connection in a precarious
world is the underlying theme, and I left Dinosaurs feeling
more hopeful than I had before.
Over twelve novels and two collections Lydia Millet has emerged as a major American novelist, writing vividly about the ties between people and other animals and the crisis of extinction. Her exquisite new novel, the first since A Children's Bible (ISBN 978 0 393 86738 1) ("a blistering little classic"-Ron Charles, Washington Post), tells the story of an Arizona man's relationship with the family next door, whose house has one wall made entirely out of glass.
The story delivers attraction and love, friendship and grief. But Millet also evokes the uncanny. Through close observation of human and animal life in…
Growing up near the outskirts of a lush Honduran cloud forest, I remember searching for magic in the woods, a fairy behind the waterfall, and an emerald quetzal bird in the canopy. I have always been a lover of nature, ecology, and wildlife, and I appreciate how each of these five books speaks to the passion that I have for ecology in a unique way. From fantastical rabbits to hidden systems we all rely on, to turtles and whales and the entire animal kingdom, these books will resonate with those of us who believe that we each have a place in our interconnected planet.
As someone who has always connected with animals, wild and domesticated, Song for a Whale was a story I could not put down.
Lynne Kelly’s middle grade novel about a deaf girl determined to help a whale who cannot communicate with its family is full of heart and compassion, and it kept me on my toes until the very end. I love stories with brave, unique, and realistic protagonists, and Iris was all of these things.
I appreciated the deaf representation, and the theme of family that is woven so beautifully into the plot. I could picture the whale, Blue 55, so perfectly, and the short chapters in the whale’s POV were the cherry on top of an already lovely story of courage and connection.
A stirring and heart-warming tale of a young deaf girl who is determined to make a difference, the perfect read for fans of Wonder.
Iris was born deaf, but she's never let that define her; after all, it's the only life she's ever known. And until recently she wasn't even very lonely, because her grandparents are both deaf, too. But Grandpa has just died and Grandma's not the same without him. The only place Iris really feels at home anymore is in her electronics workshop where she loves taking apart antique radios.
I’m
a children’s book author and illustrator and I have a special fondness for
picture books. They’re often a child’s first experience of reading — or being
read to, and that’s such a magical time! I still remember my favourite picture
books as a child. I’m also a crazy cat person and I love all cats, big and
small. My first picture book, Tiger in a Tutu, is about a tiger who lives in
Paris Zoo but wants to be a ballet dancer. I
made a small list of my favourite tiger picture books for you. I hope you enjoy
it.
This
is a beautiful book that encourages children to use their own imagination. It
tells the story of a little girl, Nora, who explores her grandma’s garden— and her imagination, to look for a tiger that
supposedly lives there. The illustrations are colourful and detailed and hold
hidden clues for the younger readers to look for.
As read by Tom Hardy on CBeebies! Winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2017, Illustrated Books Category.
When Grandma says she's seen a tiger in the garden, Nora doesn't believe her. She's too old to play Grandma's silly games! Everyone knows that tigers live in jungles, not gardens. So even when Nora sees butterflies with wings as big as her arm, and plants that try and eat her toy giraffe, and a polar bear that likes fishing, she knows there's absolutely, DEFINITELY no way there could be a tiger in the garden . . . Could there?
