I’m an author, journalist, and lecturer. I have a background in newspapers, writing mainly on tourism and environmental issues. I've also written several guidebooks to South America (Ecuador, Galapagos, and Peru), where I lived for over five years. I’ve always been passionate about nature and the environment, and when I decided to write my first novel, I wanted to write a story that reflected these passions. I have chosen books that express the importance of ecological issues effectively within the framework of a good story.
Dystopian novels are often bleak but this ‘cli-fi’ book, recommended by the likes of Barack Obama and Bill Gates, offers possible pathways through an impending climate catastrophe. This novel is science fiction that is heavy on the science. The story imagines a Ministry for the Future that holds future generations’ rights as important as the current generation’s and launches initiatives—from a ‘carbon coin’ currency to geoengineering to prevent glaciers from melting in Antarctica. There are two protagonists—Mary, who heads the ministry, and Frank, an aid worker traumatized by deadly heat waves. It’s an epic and intricate story, and author Kim Stanley Robinson has a peerless track record in climate fiction, previously writing a trilogy on colonizing Mars.
“The best science-fiction nonfiction novel I’ve ever read.” —Jonathan Lethem
"If I could get policymakers, and citizens, everywhere to read just one book this year, it would be Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future." —Ezra Klein (Vox)
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite…
A Pulitzer Prize winner and global bestseller—The Overstory is one of the most successful and widely read works of environmental fiction. It’s a complex novel, weaving together nine separate stories of Americans whose close connections with trees spur them to protect the forests. The story is divided into four sections—root, trunk, crown, and seeds, reflecting the life cycle of trees. If it strikes you that combining nine separate narratives through four cycles is complicated, then you’re right—this is no easy read. Many of the characters endure terrible hardships too—from family tragedy to paralysis and untimely deaths, but there is optimism and above all the book is an inspiring, thought-provoking homage to trees.
The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of-and paean to-the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers's twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours-vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see…
On the run from her abusive husband, Kyra Smith hits the road. Destination unknown. With a dog she rescued in tow, she lands in the peaceful California mountain town of Gold Creek and is immediately befriended by an openhearted group of women who call themselves the Tattooed Ladies. They’re there…
Published in 2012, this literary novel won several awards. The author draws upon her background in biology to tell the story of a farmer Dellarobia, who hikes behind her farm in the Appalachians one day to find millions of Monarch butterflies in the valley below. The butterflies have been displaced from Mexico—some locals think it’s a message from God while scientist Ovid Byron deems it a worrying sign of climate change. Awash with biblical imagery, the novel’s central tension is between climate change deniers and scientific investigation.
"The flames now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a campfire when it is poked. The sparks spiralled upward in swirls like funnel clouds. Twisters of brightness against grey sky."
On the Appalachian Mountains above her home, a young mother discovers a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature: the monarch butterflies have not migrated south for the winter this year. Is this a miraculous message from God, or a spectacular sign of climate change. Entomology expert, Ovid Byron, certainly believes it is the latter. He ropes in…
The three books listed above are very serious, as befits the genre. To lighten the mood a little, albeit with sardonic wit, go back to the 1970s, when this novel was first published. The novel became so well known that it spawned the use of the term ‘monkey wrench’ to mean ecologically-motivated sabotage. The four main characters are misfits, led by Vietnam veteran George Hayduke, who target industrial interests threatening the ecosystems of the southwest USA. They burn billboards, sabotage machinery, and eventually plan the destruction of a dam. The law inevitably closes in. It’s good fun but with a serious message—and may well have influenced the current Extinction Rebellion movement.
'Revolutionary ... An extravagant, finely written tale of ecological sabotage' The New York Times
Audacious, controversial and hilarious, The Monkey Wrench Gang is Edward Abbey's masterpiece - a big, boisterous and unforgettable novel about freedom and commitment that ignited the flames of environmental activism.
Throughout the vast American West, nature is being vicitimized by a Big Government / Big Business conspiracy of bridges, dams and concrete. But a motley gang of individuals has decided that enough is enough. A burnt-out veteran, a mad doctor and a polygamist join forces in a noble cause: to dismantle the machinery of progress through…
When sixteen-year-old Ashlee Sutton's home life falls apart, she is beset by a rare mental illness that makes her believe she's clairvoyant. While most people scoff at her, she begins demonstrating an uncanny knack for sometimes predicting the future, using what could either be pure luck or something more remarkable.…
I’ve come full circle by returning to my own book’s genre—crime fiction. This new take on the genre sees an ecologist playing Miss Marple. The author draws upon years of experience in ecology to weave a whodunnit in which main character Dr. Nell Ward finds herself at the center of a murder investigation. She must employ all her skills as an amateur detective and ecologist to clear her name. It’s the first in a series of eco-whodunnits from the author, mixing crime fiction with romance.
Dr Nell Ward is an ecologist, not a detective. But when she's the prime suspect in a murder, only her unique set of skills could help to clear her name...
In the sleepy village of Cookingdean, Dr Nell Ward is busy working in the grounds of a local manor house. Whilst inspecting an old tunnel, she did not expect to overhear a murder. As the only person with any clues as to what happened, Nell soon finds herself in the middle of the investigation.
Desperate to clear her name Nell, along with her colleague Adam, set out solving the murder…
Green Shoots is an eco-thriller— a conspiracy thriller with an environmental focus, set in Britain and South America. A man determined to solve the mystery of his wife's death finds himself drawn into a lethal plot. Grieving journalist John Adamson is brought back from the brink of suicide by a mysterious phone call claiming his wife Christina's death in Ecuador wasn't what it seemed. John is desperate to find out what happened, but is persuaded by the man on the phone to also investigate a series of murders in London. The deaths are connected to industries exploiting the rainforest where his wife was researching—oil, timber, and farming. John has to work out the connections between these killings and his wife’s death, but it's difficult and dangerous.
We all want peace. We all want a life of joy and meaning. We want to feel blissfully comfortable in our own skin, moving through the world with grace and ease. But how many of us are actively taking the steps to create such a life?
Inspiring historical fiction based on the real life of Bertha Benz, whose husband built the first prototype automobile, which eventually evolved into the Mercedes-Benz marque.
"Unfortunately, only a girl again."
From a young age, Cäcilie Bertha Ringer is fascinated by her father's work as a master builder in Pforzheim, Germany.…
