Animal Science

Beasts in My Belfry is the wonderfully funny memoir about Gerald Durrell's time at Whipsnade Zoo and his experiences as a young zookeeper. Following the Second World War, Durrell joined Whipsnade Zoo as a junior keeper - an opportunity that fulfilled a lifelong dream. Thanks to Rupert Degas's brilliant voicing, which captures all of Durrell's charm and wit, the listener can enjoy being taken behind the scenes of one of the world's very first zoos. This is a delightful portrait of the animals who lived there and those who looked after them.

One rat, popping up here and there, squeaking loudly, and taking a bath in the cream, could be a plague all by himself. After a few days of this, it was amazing how glad people were to see the kid with his magical rat pipe. And they were amazing when the rats followed hint out of town. They'd have been really amazed if they'd ever found out that the rats and the piper met up with a cat somewhere outside of town and solemnly counted out the money.

For millennia, lions, tigers, and their man-eating kin have kept our dark, scary forests dark and scary, and their predatory majesty has been the stuff of folklore. But by the year 2150 big predators may only exist on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. Their gradual disappearance is changing the very nature of our existence. We no longer occupy an intermediate position on the food chain; instead we survey it invulnerably from above - so far above that we are in danger of forgetting that we even belong to an ecosystem.

Harper lives in the City of Clouds, an enchanting place where it rains every day and an umbrella is always a good idea. With her aunt Sassy, her beloved cat, Midnight, and all of her neighbors in the Tall Apartment Block, every day is full of possibility. But when every cat in the city goes missing - including Midnight - Harper is determined to find all of the precious pets. And she’ll need a magic, flying umbrella to help in her search.

Birds. Over 9,000 species, the most widespread of all animals: on icebergs, in the Sahara or under the sea, at home in our gardens or flying for over a year at a time. Earthbound, we can only look and listen, enjoying their lightness, freedom and richness of plumage and song. David Attenborough has been watching and learning all his life. His classic book, now fully updated with the latest discoveries in ornithology, is a brilliant introduction to bird behaviours around the world: what they do and why they do it.

It began as a dream, a quest for the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, a mythic place where each night an order of owls rises to perform noble deeds. There Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger hope to find inspiration to fight the evil that dwells in the owl kingdom.

The journey is long and harrowing. When Soren and his friends finally arrive at the Great Ga'Hoole Tree, they will be tested in ways they never dreamed and face challenges they never imagined.

To learn if she truly is the last dairne in the world - the endling - Byx and her friends must travel into the snow-covered mountains of the country of Dreyland, where they hope to uncover the truth behind the legend of a hidden dairne colony. But the threat of war across the lands continues to grow with each passing day. As the group confronts untold dangers at every turn, they will ultimately uncover a treacherous plot that involves the other powerful governing species.

When a fortuneteller’s tent appears in the market square of the city of Baltese, orphan Peter Augustus Duchene knows the questions that he needs to ask: Does his sister still live? And if so, how can he find her? The fortuneteller’s mysterious answer (An elephant! An elephant will lead him there!) sets off a chain of events so remarkable, so impossible, that Peter can hardly dare to believe it. But it is - all of it - true.

With three of the goddess Durga's quests behind them, only one prophecy now stands in the way of Kelsey, Ren, and Kishan breaking the tiger's curse. But the trio's greatest challenge awaits them: A life-endangering pursuit in search of Durga's final gift, the Rope of Fire, on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. It's a race against time - and the evil sorcerer Lokesh - in this eagerly anticipated fourth volume in the best-selling Tiger's Curse series.

In this sequel to The Last Archer and The First Fowler, Jo Shanks is charged with aiding Emma on her mission to unite the secret citadels in their fight against the Preylord slavers. Alongside Cole and Heyna Blackstar, Jo and Emma must enter into the heart of a community in confusion. Something is wrong at Blackstone Citadel. Can Jo and his friends solve the mystery and enlist Blackstone's aid in time to rendezvous with their allies fighting for the Mended Wood?

As the snow melts and the spring approaches, the animal kingdom awakens. In Summer World, Bernd Heinrich, the best-selling author of Winter World, brings us an up-close and personal view of that awakening and rebirth.

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They've given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.

Cat Warren is a university professor and former journalist with an admittedly odd hobby: She and her German shepherd have spent the last seven years searching for the dead. Solo is a cadaver dog. What started as a way to harness Solo’s unruly energy and enthusiasm soon became a calling that introduced Warren to the hidden and fascinating universe of working dogs, their handlers, and their trainers.

What does it take to raise a great dog? This was the question that husband-and-wife team Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods hoped to answer when they enrolled one hundred and one puppies in the Duke Puppy Kindergarten. With the help of a retired service dog named Congo, Brian, Vanessa, and their team set out to understand the secrets of the puppy mind: What factors might predict whether a puppy will grow up to change someone’s life?

Frostpaw was told to trust no cat, but a brutal attack has left her gravely injured, and she’ll need to depend on someone. When help arrives in the form of a young warrior, she convinces him to protect her as she follows StarClan’s cryptic directions toward the roots of RiverClan, where Riverstar has promised she’ll find the answers she’s been so desperately seeking.

The last winged horses are on the brink of extinction. At a sanctuary for threatened creatures, the home of a young dragon rider and his silver dragon, three foals lie curled up in their eggs. The foals are in great danger, and the only cure seems to be the sun-feather of a griffin. But griffins, creatures with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, are a dragon's fiercest enemy, and they live far across the world in the sweltering jungle. A dangerous and exciting adventure begins....

The Chicken Chick's Guide to Backyard Chickens covers all aspects of keeping pet chickens in a beautifully illustrated, no-nonsense format. Kathy addresses everything needed to keep chickens simply, including coops, chick care, breed selection, chicken health, and beyond!

A cowardly retired athlete is asked to go above and beyond the call of duty when an alien animal finds its way into the country. Will he regret his decision to pretend to be brave or finally get his mission to space like he's dreamed of?

Twelve-year-old Sophie Brown feels like a fish out of water when she and her parents move from Los Angeles to the farm they’ve inherited from a great-uncle. But farm life gets more interesting when a cranky chicken appears and Sophie discovers the hen can move objects with the power of her little chicken brain: jam jars, the latch to her henhouse, the entire henhouse.

Clay has had his fill of home life. A global plague has brought the world to a screeching halt, and with little to look forward to but a summer of video-calling friends, vying with annoying sisters for the family computer, and tuning out his parents’ financial worries, he’s only too happy to retreat to the woods. From the moment the elegant little dog with the ornate collar appears like an apparition among the trees, Clay sees something uncanny in her.