English wood engraver Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) is best known for the two-volume History of British Birds and his book A General History of Quadrupeds, which showcased his groundbreaking engraving tec
The Celts called them “fairy cattle” and the Greeks associated them with the hunter goddess Artemis, but for most people today, deer are seen as cute, like Bambi, or noble, like the Monarch of the Gle
From Flipper to SeaWorld, dolphins have long captured our hearts. We love these friendly, intelligent mammals, and they seem to return our feelings—they enjoy interacting with swimmers and have been k
We may think of bamboo only as a snack for cuddly panda bears, but we use the plant as food, clothing, paper, fabric, and shelter. Drawing on a vast array of sources, this book builds a complete pictu
Handcuffs, paddles, whips—the words alone are enough to make a person blush. Even by our society’s standards, the practice of things like BDSM is still very hush-hush, considered deviant sexual behavi
Titian is best known for paintings that embodied the tradition of the Venetian Renaissance—but how Venetian was the artist himself? In this comprehensive new study, Tom Nichols probes the tensions bet
Sand. Cacti. Lizards. Mirages. Deserts call to mind exotic places, a sense of adventure and freedom, but also thirst and desolation. In Desert, Roslynn D. Haynes takes a fresh look at this geographica
The yew is the oldest and most common tree in the world, but it is a plant of puzzling contradictions: it is a conifer with juicy scarlet berries, but no cones; deer can feast on its poisonous foliage
From the flood that remade the earth in the Old Testament to the 1931 China floods that killed almost four million people, from the broken levees in New Orleans to the almost yearly rising waters of r
As forms of drawing go, scribbling is the most basic: it is seen as playing a formative role in the drawings of both children and primates. Doodling, while still being a widespread phenomenon, is larg
This is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history: a decade of unleashed passions that came close to destroying the parliamentary system and to causing civil war in
strong>First English translation of an amazing debut novella by a major and incredibly prolific Japanese authorBullfight is a Japanese modern classic, a tense story about post-war Japan and its people
A superb early postmodern classic by one of Nabokov's fellow emigre writers, rediscovered after more than half a century"A masterpiece of modern literature" Die Zeit"If Proust had been a Russian taxi
When DI Jack Carrigan and DS Geneva Miller arrive at the scene they discover eleven bodies, yet there were only supposed to be ten nuns in residence. It's eleven days before Christmas, and despite the
Shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize 2013. In September 1943, Nazi troops advance on the ancient gates of Gjirokaster, Albania. The very next day, the Germans vanish without a trace.
Presents poetry that is concerned with permeability: voices, places, the real and the dreamed, the present and the past, colliding and intersecting and spilling over into each other.
Libertus accepts a contract to install a pavement for Genialis, a self-important citizen from a nearby town, in the house of the customer's intended but unwilling and young bride, Silvia. However, the
When Maggy Thorsen and her husband set out on a theatrical recreation of Murder on the Orient Express on a train ride through the Everglades, a real life mystery soon unfolds.
After the death of her father, Georgiana Hartley returns home to England - only to be confronted with the boorish advances of her cousin. Knowing no one, she flees to Dominic Ridgely's state, hoping t
