Ecology Fiction

Coyote America is both an environmental and a deep natural history of the coyote. It traces both the five-million-year-long biological story of an animal that has become the "wolf" in our backyards and its cultural evolution from a preeminent spot in Native American religions to the hapless foil of the Road Runner. A deeply American tale, the story of the coyote in the American West and beyond is a sort of Manifest Destiny in reverse.

Over the course of one humid summer, as the urge to procreate overtakes the lush countryside, this novel's intriguing protagonists—a reclusive wildlife biologist, a young farmer's wife marooned far from home, and a pair of elderly, feuding neighbors—face disparate predicaments but find connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with whom they necessarily share a place. Their discoveries are embedded inside countless intimate lessons of biology, the realities of small farming, and the final, urgent truth that humans are only one piece of life on earth.

“One of the most important utopian novels of the twentieth century that still has very important lessons to teach us. It will always convey to perfection the wild optimism of that ….

Leopold's essays on conservation will open the mind of any listener who gives them a chance. The first part uses essays for each of the 12 months to share the rhythm of life on his restored Wisconsin farmland, and uses the stories to branch into eye opening lessons on the history of man's use and abuse of it. The second part continues using stories from Leopold's experiences in wild places across North America to expand the lessons to a much wider view. The final part of the work seeks to lay out a better path for humanity, using solid logic and deep philosophical questioning.

Noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau spent two years, two months, and two days chronicling his near-isolation in the small cabin he built in the woods near Walden Pond on land owned by his mentor, the father of Transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Immersing himself in nature and solitude, Thoreau sought to develop a greater understanding of society amidst a life of self-reliance and simplicity. Originally published in 1854, Walden remains one of the most celebrated works in American literature.

One of the most beloved and best-selling novels of spiritual adventure ever published, Ishmael has earned a passionate following. This special 25th anniversary edition features a new foreword and afterword by the author.

Charlie Truganini can’t believe his eyes when on a trip into Tasmania’s wilderness he sees a Tasmanian tiger – a carnivorous marsupial considered by most Australians to be extinct. Charlie has a number of claims to fame – one of those being he’s a direct descendant of one Truganini, the woman considered to be the last full-blooded Aboriginal Tasmanian and whose name he inherited. A close second to that is he’s the great-grandson of one Dingo Truganini, the tracker who helped capture the last known Thylacine cynocephalus – an animal better known as the Tasmanian tiger. It’s ...

When retired Maths teacher Grace is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the Balearics, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

In this masterpiece of nature writing, beautifully narrated by Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm mountains of Scotland. There she encounters a world that can be breathtakingly beautiful at times and shockingly harsh at others. Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this remarkable landscape.

Award-winning environmentalist, author, and journalist Bill McKibben selects twenty science and nature essays that represent the best examples of the form published in the previous year. ” The selections in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2024 reveal a trying year for our planet—from the Lahaina wildfire tragedy to the lush Amazon jungle slowly turning to savanna—while also celebrating the earth’s beautiful and mysterious ways—from the largest beaver dam on earth to the heroic innovation to prevent birds from crashing into Chicago’s expanse of glass buildings.

Beginning with Mt. Vesuvius, whose eruption in Roman times helped spark the science of geology, and ending in a lab in the West of England where mathematical models and lab experiments replace direct observation, Richard Fortey tells us what the present says about ancient geologic processes. He shows how plate tectonics came to rule the geophysical landscape and how the evidence is written in the hills and in the stones. And in the process, he takes us on a wonderful journey around the globe to visit some of the most fascinating and intriguing spots on the planet.

Born in Boston, Stephen Bodio wandered into Magdalena, New Mexico, in the 1970s while on his way to Montana and never left. He was accompanied by Betsy Huntington, who was twenty years his senior; the couple had been inseparable from the day they met. After stumbling upon a vintage home along the highway, they settled into a country life; it was the perfect way for the two of them to make their lives together in an out-of-the-way place.

This audiobook names and describes the offspring of a jaguar, poison arrow frog, macaw, capybara, gibbon, sloth, anteater, and boa constrictor.

Wishing Shelf Book Awards Red Ribbon (2025) — Global Book Awards Silver Medal (2025) Moonchild Irene Slade has nothing left to lose — not family, not home, not even the solace of blame. Alpha Centauri is far from no one she loves. When a disenfranchised pilot, kept at the margins of the mission’s briefings, has an encounter with an intelligent alien species, the result is catastrophic. Lives are lost. Truth is buried. And guilt becomes Irene's legacy. Among the dead was a friend... A sister... An aunt... So Irene bends protocol and invokes her override—bringing two young women into ...

Corn. Chocolate. Fishing hooks. Boats that float. Insulated double-walled construction. Recorded history and folklore. Life-saving disinfectant. Forest fire management. Our lives would be unrecognizable without these, and countless other, scientific discoveries and technological inventions from Indigenous North Americans. Spanning topics from transportation to civil engineering, hunting technologies, astronomy, brain surgery, architecture, and agriculture, Indigenous Ingenuity is a wide-ranging STEM offering that answers the call for Indigenous nonfiction by reappropriating hidden history.

Essayist. Preservationist. Mountain man. Inventor. John Muir may be California’s best-known icon. A literary naturalist and founder of the Sierra Club and Yosemite National Park, Muir left his legacy on the landscape and on paper. But the celebrity of John Muir does not tell the whole story. In Essential Muir, for the first time, Muir's selected writings include those that show his ecological vision without ignoring his racism, providing a more complete portrait of the man.

In Sightlines, Kathleen Jamie reports from the field - from her native Scottish "byways and hills" to the frigid Arctic in 14 enthralling essays. She dissects whatever her gaze falls upon - vistas of cells beneath a hospital microscope, orcas rounding a headland, the aurora borealis lighting up the frozen sea. In so doing, she questions what, exactly, constitutes "nature", and upends the idea that it is always picturesque. Written with precision, subtlety, and wry humor, Sightlines urges the listener: "Keep looking, even when there's nothing much to see."

What if the future looked green, radiant, and cooperative—but was also messy, uneven, and full of contradictions? Rewiring Hope: The Solarpunk Movement and Its Discontents is a provocative exploration of solarpunk, the cultural movement that envisions post-carbon futures through lush art, speculative fiction, grassroots projects, and architectural experiments. Where others predict collapse, solarpunk insists on imagining resilience—but not without cost. This book traces solarpunk’s emergence from the fringes of science fiction and counterculture into a global conversation about ...

A World on the Brink of Collapse The Earth as we know it is unraveling. Unrelenting heat waves scorch the land. Cities crumble beneath rising oceans. Storms of unfathomable fury reshape coastlines overnight. Humanity stands at the precipice of annihilation, trapped in the aftermath of its own reckless consumption. In the heart of this unraveling world, Lila—a brilliant scientist and unyielding survivor—refuses to accept the inevitability of extinction. One Woman’s Fight for the Future Driven by an unshakable vision of renewal, Lila embarks on a perilous quest to restore balance to a ...

Early in the morning, young Tepui walks through the Venezuelan tropical rain forest. Colorful birds call from the treetops, and a tribe of monkeys plays in the branches. But Tepui doesn't have time to enjoy the animals he loves so much. He is going to the Science Laboratory to talk to his scientist friends.