Natural Science

Growing up in Alabama, Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents - her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father - and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver.

What newly married couple doesn't dream of a romantic retreat where they can escape the world for a while - but what happens when supernatural forces intrude on their wedded bliss? Nine of today's hottest paranormal authors answer that question in this all-star collection of supernatural stories.

1 Dead in Attic is a collection of stories by Times-Picayune columnist Chris Rose, recounting the first harrowing year and a half of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Celebrated as a local treasure and heaped with national praise, Rose provides a rollercoaster ride of observation, commentary, emotion, tragedy, and even humor - in a way that only he could find in a devastated wasteland. They are stories of the dead and the living, stories of survivors and believers, stories of hope and despair.

Do you love rocks, gems, and fossils? Have you ever thought about where they come from and how they form? Do you want to learn more about rock hunting and collecting but are unsure where to start? If you answered yes to any of these questions, get ready because Rockhounding is exactly what you need. Whether a novice or a seasoned rockhound, this audiobook contains all the knowledge and tools you need to get started.

In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision - especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate.

Reed Timmer is one of the most successful and most extreme storm chasers in the world. His is a job that requires science and bravado, knowledge and instinct just to survive, never mind excel. It's a job some people would kill for. But most prefer to let Timmer take the risks while they watch from the safety of their homes. Reed Timmer is a star of Storm Chasers, one of the Discovery Channel's top-rated shows. Into the Storm is Timmer's dramatic account of his extraordinary profession.

Jacob Compass is stuck in the human world, navigating a peaceful treaty so that supernaturals are not exposed. Justice Winter reluctantly finds herself helping him with this task, all the while dreaming about punching him in his perfect, smug face. Suffice it to say, their coexistence is a challenge in many ways. Turns out, though, that during this battle against an enemy that they can't just kill and get rid of - annoying as it may be - they learn that they have more in common than just their fey race.

John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning.

There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented writing. There are Douglas firs as tall as skyscrapers and a banyan tree in Calcutta as big as a football field. From the tallest to the smallest, trees inspire wonder in all of us, and in The Tree, Colin Tudge travels around the world - throughout the United States, the Costa Rican rain forest, Panama and Brazil, India, New Zealand, China, and most of Europe - bringing to life stories and facts about the trees around us.

Power outages, natural disasters, such as earthquakes and tornadoes, and even manmade disasters strike without warning. Talks of civil unrest and economic collapse are on the rise, too. By investing in food storage now, you are taking control of your survival and ensuring your family's safety and wellbeing before it's too late. Here's the secret most don't want you to know: food storage isn't about having a lot of food - it's about having the right food.

Trapped in the demon world, Louis, one of the most powerful sorcerers in existence, will find himself struggling with the darkness that has seeped into his soul. His family are determined to save him, but they have no idea what the demons have unleashed. And when a sorcerer of his strength loses control, there's a chance that no one will survive the fallout.

With warmth and compassion, Denworth weaves together past and present, field biology and cutting-edge neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed to make friends, the process by which social bonds develop, and how a drive for friendship underpins human (and nonhuman) society. With its refreshingly optimistic vision of the evolution of human nature, this book puts friendship at the center of our lives.

Green Growth That Works is the first practical guide to bring together pragmatic finance and policy tools that can make investment in natural capital both attractive and commonplace. The authors present six mechanisms that demonstrate a range of approaches used around the globe to conserve and restore earth's myriad ecosystems, including: government subsidies; regulatory-driven mitigation; voluntary conservation; water funds; market-based transactions; and bilateral and multilateral payments.

The Supernatural Academy nearly killed me my freshman year, so when my sophomore year rolls around, I’m determined for things to be different. Sure, Rowan’s a mess, but he’s still studying magic and taking me on hot dates, and that’s all that matters. But what I don’t realize is how freaking obsessed he's become with finding a cure to reverse his new curse. He wants magic back, and he’s willing to do anything to get it. It’s not enough that I sign a blood pact with him, giving him access to my magic. And it’s not enough when he loses control.

A quiet revolution has been underway in recent years, with study after study revealing substantial same-sex sexual behavior in animals. Join celebrated author Eliot Schrefer on an exploration of queer behavior in the animal world—from albatrosses to bonobos to clownfish to doodlebugs. In sharp and witty prose Schrefer uses science, history, anthropology, and sociology to illustrate the diversity of sexual behavior in the animal world. Interviews with researchers in the field offer additional insights for readers and aspiring scientists.

Last week, I inherited every cent of the multi-billion-dollar Le Spyre estate. But tequila is far easier to swallow than the coincidence of my beloved grandmother’s death. I’m over this supernatural game, yet walking away from Kyros isn't simple with the damn mate thing on the cards. The Indebted need my help. My grandmother deserves justice. And, uhm, the third blood exchange did something to me. It's official. I’m done playing by paranormal rules. I’m making my own - and playing to win. Because if I enter Ingenium on my terms, there's no turning back.

In a field of PhDs, Tim Samaras didn’t attend a day of college in his life. He chased storms with brilliant tools of his own invention and pushed closer to the tornado than anyone else ever dared. When he achieved what meteorologists had deemed impossible, it was as if he had snatched the fire of the gods. Yet even as he transformed the field, Samaras kept on pushing.

Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero. Kendra's family raised their children to thrive in this harsh landscape, forever at the mercy of wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Most of all, the Atleework children were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. But it came at a price.

In the middle of the Mojave Desert, Las Vegas casinos use billions of gallons of water for fountains, pirate lagoons, wave machines, and indoor canals. Meanwhile, the town of Orme, Tennessee, must truck in water from Alabama because it has literally run out.Robert Glennon captures the irony - and tragedy - of America’s water crisis in a book that is both frightening and wickedly comical.

Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why, after all, are roughly the same number of men and women born into the world? What led the famous Dr. Down to his theory of mongolism, and its racist residue? What do the panda's magical "thumb" and the sea turtle's perilous migration tell us about imperfections that prove the evolutionary rule? The wonders and mysteries of evolutionary biology are elegantly explored in these and other essays by the celebrated natural history writer Stephen Jay Gould.