The best ice age books

INVERSION is a contemporary, action oriented speculative science fiction/military saga that explores the creation of a new society and the courageous woman at its center.

Awakening from a coma as vulnerable as a baby gasping its first breath, Angela’s survival in a dangerous world relies on how well she handles the hard choices that come quickly. Suddenly faced with two perilous options, one will take her back to a life she feared. The other will thrust her into a future molded by her will to shape it. To survive, weakness and fear must be shed and replaced with courage, tenacity, and strength. But what if she was never meant to survive?  Nefarious forces beyond her understanding are closing steadily around her.

Naira Khoum has only known life in Lagusa, a quiet village at the desert's end. But to the rest of the world, Lagusa is a myth, its location shrouded in secrecy. While war rages to the north led by power-hungry Sothpike and his army of undead monsters called Dambi, Naira's people live in peace. Until the impossible happens—Lagusa is attacked by a Mistress sent to do Sothpike's bidding with a hoard of Dambi under her control. The Mistress is looking for something, and she's willing to let her Dambi destroy Lagusa to get it.

Naira convinces her twin brother Nez and handsome refugee Kal to join the newly formed resistance with her. Together, they'll have to figure out what the Mistress wants—before there's nothing left of Lagusa to save.

Young Alma and her cat, Oyster, live in the dreary, rain-soaked village of Boville. Everyone grumbles through the puddles, except for Alma’s friend, Zephira, a strange old woman living under the mountain which blocks the sun from Boville. Zephira tells Alma tales of magic and enchantment, and Alma recounts her own observations of the odd “Hateful Sleeper,” this mountain surrounding Boville.

Zephira suggests that Alma ask the mountain why the weather in Boville is so unpleasant. Alma knows that climbing the Sleeper is dangerous, and forbidden, but her curiosity gets the better of her. She and Oyster bravely inch up the fearfully steep, slippery rocks to pose her question to the mountaintop. Earth-changing results occur from her courageous quest - and “Boville” becomes “Beauville.”

Meltdown: The Earth Without Glaciers is about our changing climate and about glacier vulnerability. It’s a dive into the cryosphere and how melting glaciers in remote areas of the planet will drastically change our lives. I connect the dots between climate change and the drastic impacts of glacier melt on our global ecosystems, including sea-level rise, intense heat from decreased reflectivity, glacier tsunamis from crumbling ice, ocean and atmospheric disruptions due to massive glacier freshwater infusions into our oceans, melting permafrost that can unleash an unlivable Hot House Earth environment, and invisible glaciers residing deep under the Earth that you have probably never heard of, but that will survive our visible surface glaciers once they’ve melted away.

My purpose of writing Meltdown was to draw attention to the predicament of glacier vulnerability and to awaken society to glacier demise if we do not stop climate change soon. 

AD 1224, remote Connacht, Ireland, is a volatile island poised for civil war, with England always threatening. Dahlquin and Scragmuir are bitter enemies, locked in a feud older than memory, neighboring Ashbury is an equal, neutral ally with both. Eloise, sole heir of Dahlquin rebels against her patriarchal society, preferring her horse and hounds to spinning and ledgers until a treasonous siege catapults her and a stranger from her ancestral home, launching them on a perilous journey and spiritual quest across Ireland. Confronting self and societal doubts Eloise must take on far more than she ever expected, finding love and conflict as she comes of age in this historical epoch.  

The Roman Empire has survived in its classical form until 1218 AD, and has now discovered North America. Transported by Norse longboats, a Roman legion crosses the great ocean to Nova Hesperia, enters an endless wilderness, and faces a cataclysmic clash of worlds, cultures, and warriors.

Gaius Marcellinus and his 33rd Legion expect easy victories over the native inhabitants, but on the shores of the Mississippi River the Legion clashes with a unique civilization armed with weapons and strategies no Roman has imagined. As Marcellinus learns more about the Mississippian mound-building culture he can’t help but be drawn into their society, forming an uneasy friendship with the people of the city-state of Cahokia. But threats Roman and Native assail them, and Marcellinus will struggle to keep the peace while the rest of the continent surges toward certain conflict.

Join Sophie and Matt as Aunt Jodie takes you on an imagination-expanding journey back in time. Learn about evolution in two different species, millions of years apart: the Plesiads, ancient lemur-like creatures from 55 million years ago, and colour-changing Peppered Moths from the 1800s. What happens to the Plesiads when a volcano erupts? How do the moths survive when their camouflage stops working? Discover the secrets that help all creatures transform and develop when big changes happen in the world around them. For anyone new to science, Aunt Jodie’s Guides also include an easy-to-read glossary, explaining the scientific terms used in the book, and how to pronounce them. 

This book is available on the author's website.

In this first book on Paleolithic archaeology of the Americas written from an Indigenous perspective, Steeves, a (Cree-Metis) archaeologist, mines evidence from archaeology sites and Paleolithic environments, landscapes, and mammalian and human migrations to make the case that people have been in the Western Hemisphere not only just prior to Clovis sites (10,200 years ago) but for more than 60,000 years, and likely more than 100,000 years.

Steeves discusses the political history of American anthropology to focus on why pre-Clovis sites have been dismissed by the field for nearly a century. She explores supporting evidence from genetics and linguistic anthropology regarding First Peoples and time frames of early migrations. Additionally, she highlights the work and struggles faced by a small yet vibrant group of American and European archaeologists.

When seeing the Giza pyramids for the first time in 1963 I listened carefully to what the tour guide had to say. And then I looked at the Great Pyramid and to me, as an engineer, it did not add up. Since then, I've looked at other sites across the globe and again, nothing made sense. When I retired, I put it all down on paper which ended up as two controversial books on the subject.

My own research came up with credible arguments on both sides of the Darwin v Creation debate and by comparing three other massive construction projects from our own era to the Giza complex, I showed that only a very advanced hi-tech society could be responsible. It also showed irrefutable links to other sites across the globe.

Across the world, we find stories about lands under the ocean said to have once been occupied by people just like us. Most of us think this just cannot be true, so we dismiss these stories as ‘myths and legends’, entertaining yet baseless. Yet after the end of the last great ice age, melting land ice raised the ocean surface 120 meters (almost 400 feet) over several thousand years. This so traumatized coastal peoples that they encoded their memories of land loss in oral traditions which morphed into ‘myths and legends’ to reach us today. 

Our ancestors’ encounters with rising oceans can be reconstructed and, as this book shows, help us rationalize and cope with expected future sea-level rise.