Who doesn’t love a book filled with unique and captivating characters, heart-pounding conflict, and deeply satisfying transformation? Oh, and it all happens in a gorgeous, off-the-grid setting with plenty of wild animal companions. This book is a rare treat—a heartwarming coming-of-age story that remains fresh and unexpected—as unpredictable as it is unforgettable.
From Jenni Ogden, author of multiple-award-winning A Drop in the Ocean, comes another evocative story of friendship, coral reefs, and marine conservation for book-club readers.
It is the late 1970s and teenagers Gaia and her brother Bron live with their parents on their isolated property on Western Australia’s Coral Coast. Intensively trained for a career as a professional ballet dancer by her mother, once a Principal Dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, Gaia also loves snorkeling over the coral reef that borders their small market garden. Then comes a day that changes her life forever: she discovers a rare pair…
This compelling techno-thriller with a metaphysical streak makes our current dark times feel timeless and hopeful. It reveals there’s nothing new about the problems we face—human beings have been working through them for millennia—and breaks through the overwhelm and hopelessness, making me feel like I can actually do something important to make our times less troubled. The writing is so fresh and the characters so vivid and authentic I felt I was in the middle of the story and it was all happening to me at each twist and turn. This is a rare book that’s both entertaining and deeply meaningful.
Darah, a tech writer living in the democratic nation of California, is dismayed to see the game she's helping develop for a Silicon Valley tech company has been tampered with. When her hacker friend Jedd investigates, he uncovers a conspiracy that could change the nation-and the world.
With a circle of close friends, Jedd digs deeper and deeper into the darknet and exposes the unthinkable: an app is being developed that uses quantum computing and neuroscience to alter people's brains, totally unbeknownst to them. As the friends realize the devastating impact of this technology, they're presented with a dilemma: stay…
Chickens are ubiquitous—they outnumber humans by a ratio of more than 3-to-1—yet they’re one of the world’s most underestimated and misunderstood creatures.
Did you know that hens communicate with at least twenty-four distinct calls that convey specific information, like what type of predator is approaching and how quickly? Or that they will choose not to peck a button that rewards them with food if it means they'll get more food later?
Through personal stories and scientific studies, Sy Montgomery pieces together a new picture of the world’s most common birds as surprisingly complex and intelligent—and, one might argue, quite lovable. As a longtime keeper of these amazing animals, I’m glad someone is finally giving them their due.
A charming and eye-opening exploration of the special relationship between humans and chickens from Sy Montgomery, "one of our finest chroniclers of the natural world" (The New York Times).
For more than two decades, Sy Montgomery-whose The Soul of an Octopus was a National Book Award finalist-has kept a flock of chickens in her backyard. Each chicken has an individual personality (outgoing or shy, loud or quiet, reckless or cautious) and connects with Sy in her own way.
In this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable creatures:…
Frankie Conner, first-year graduate student at UC Berkeley, is finally getting her life together. After multiple failures and several false starts, she's found her calling: become a neuroscientist, discover the cause of her depression and anxiety, and hopefully find a cure for herself and everyone like her.
But her first day of the program, Frankie meets a mysterious group of talking animals who claim to have an urgent message for her. The problem is, they're not willing to share it. Not yet. Not until she's ready.
While Frankie's new friends may not have her highly evolved, state-of-the-art, exalted human brain, they do know things she doesn't--poems, scientific facts, and what happened in the forgotten years before her adoption. Frankie can't dismiss her conversations with these animals as mere dreams, but she also can't accept them as real. To prove she's still sane, she investigates her past and defies the professor who heads her lab to conduct a series of scientific experiments to test just how much animals are capable of communicating. Just when Frankie uncovers the truth, she has to make an impossible choice: betray the animals she's fallen in love with-or give up her dream of neuroscience, her last chance at success, and everything she thought she knew.
