Animal Science

Salamandastron, under the guardianship of old Lord Stonepaw, is under threat from an enemy of immense and terrifying power. Ungatt Trunn, the wildcat who can make the stars fall from the sky, has attacked with his Blue Hordes and is determined that the fortress should be his. The mountain's defences are weak and it seems that nothing can stand in his way. Nothing, that is, but the badger Lord Brocktree, who is drawn to Salamandastron by an undeniable sense of duty. But if he is to rescue the mountain from Trunn, he must gather about him an army capable of defeating them in battle.

The Earth is being invaded, but no one knows about it. When Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, and Marco stumble upon a downed alien spaceship and its dying pilot, they're given an incredible power - they can transform into any animal they touch. With it, they become Animorphs, the unlikely champions in a secret war for the planet. And the enemies they're fighting could be anyone...even the people closest to them.

In 1908, near Folsom, New Mexico, a cowboy discovered the remains of a herd of extinct giant bison. By examining flint points embedded in the bones, archeologists later determined that a band of humans had killed and butchered the animals 12,450 years ago. This discovery vastly expanded America's known human history but also revealed the long-standing danger Homo sapiens presented to the continent's evolutionary richness. Distinguished scholar Dan Flores's ambitious history chronicles the epoch in which humans and animals have coexisted in the "wild new world" of North America.

Mousemaid Mariel and her bellmaker father are besieged and tossed into the sea by vicious pirate rat Gabool and his thugs. Washed ashore, Mariel is taken in by the kind animals of Redwall Abbey. But Mariel cannot find her father and is certain he has lost his life. With a motley band of adventurers, she swears revenge and begins a perilous quest straight into the heart of Gabool's stronghold, where a few surprises await.

In their New York Times best-selling book The Genius of Dogs, husband-and-wife team Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods lay out landmark discoveries from the Duke Canine Cognition Center and other research facilities around the world to reveal how your dog thinks and how we humans can have even deeper relationships with our best four-legged friends.

If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains—eating, pooping, and dying along the way—are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.

America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than 200 years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals".

It’s bright and early when the magic tree house spins Jack and Annie to Monterey Bay, California. It’s their mission to collect sea urchins in the underwater kelp forests! But they know nothing about collecting sea urchins—can a grouchy boat captain help them? Maybe. But Jack and Annie have another problem when Annie finds a badly injured sea otter. They’re not supposed to help the otter. . . but it’s the right thing to do. Can they convince the grouchy boat captain to help them?

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.

When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the "Cambrian explosion", many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin's Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life.

Do you know the new rules for profit in today's land and livestock game? Using successful grass farmers as examples, Allan explains how leasing land can add up to profits with lower risk than ownership, and can be a means for young people to get into grassland agriculture today. For more insight and analysis into land-based financial issues such as protecting yourself from falling real estate prices without selling your ranch, order Land, Livestock, & Life: A Grazier's Guide to Finance.

Fish that look like cartoons. Lizards that squirt blood from their eyes. These are not your ordinary creatures. Get ready to learn about some of the world’s strangest animals.

They have always lived by the code—but only change can keep the peace. A new age is dawning on the warrior Clans. Now a new generation of warriors rises—one wrestling with the legacy of his great ancestor Firestar, one seeking to protect her troubled Clan, and one yearning to prove herself as a medicine cat—as leaders from all five Clans agree that the Warrior Code must be reformed.

Half-witch Kiki never runs from a challenge. So when her 13th birthday arrives, she's eager to follow a witch's tradition: choose a new town to call home for one year. Brimming with confidence, Kiki flies to the seaside village of Koriko and expects that her powers will easily bring happiness to the townspeople.

Louis is a Trumpeter Swan, but he has no voice. Leaving his wild and beautiful home, he finds a young human friend, Sam Beaver, who helps him learn to read and write. When he returns to the lake, Louis discovers his education isn't enough: the beautiful swan he loves, Serena, can't read his declarations of love, and he can't trumpet them. Louis' resolution to win the swan of his desire launches him on an adventure that will take him far from home and lead where fate and love have a few surprises in store.

In Hiccup the Viking's misadventures, the stakes have never been higher, and it's friend versus foe to decide the fate of the world. In this, the penultimate title in the amazing story arc that began with How to Train Your Dragon, Hiccup is faced with a personal dilemma against the backdrop of an impending battle and the possible destruction of everything he knows.

In 2016, Amy Tan grew overwhelmed by the state of the world: Hatred and misinformation became a daily presence on social media, and the country felt more divisive than ever. In search of peace, Tan turned toward the natural world just beyond her window and, specifically, the birds visiting her yard. But what began as an attempt to find solace turned into something far greater—an opportunity to savor quiet moments during a volatile time, connect to nature in a meaningful way, and imagine the intricate lives of the birds she admired.

Book two left off with Gregor reading the Prophecy of Blood: a prophecy that calls for Gregor and Boots to return to the Underland to help ward off a plague. But this time, Gregor's mother refuses to let Gregor return to the Underland...until the rat Ripred assures the family that Gregor and Boots are needed only for a short meeting, which the crawlers will attend only if their "princess" Boots is present.

Prue McKeel’s life is ordinary. At least until her brother is abducted by a murder of crows and taken to the Impassable Wilderness, a dense, tangled forest on the edge of Portland. No one’s ever gone in – or at least returned to tell of it. So begins an adventure that will take Prue and her friend, Curtis, deep into the Impassable Wilderness. There they uncover a secret world in the midst of violent upheaval - a world full of warring creatures, peaceable mystics, and powerful figures with the darkest intentions.

We keep dogs and are kept by them. We love dogs and (we assume) we are loved by them. We buy them sweaters, toys, shoes; we are concerned with their social lives, their food, and their health. The story of humans and dogs is thousands of years old but is far from understood. In Our Dogs, Ourselves, Alexandra Horowitz explores all aspects of this unique and complex relationship that “dog lovers will savor and absorb” (Shelf Awareness). As Horowitz considers the current culture of dogdom, she reveals the odd, surprising, and contradictory ways we live with dogs.