Dog Science

When Judith Summers' husband and father both died within the space of two weeks, she found herself floundering. Life for her and her eight-year-old son, Joshua, seemed relentlessly bleak. Then George bounced into their lives. A loving Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with film-star looks, George reawoke their joie de vivre.

When his time came to pass from this earth, Dumas was given the choice of becoming just a dead pooch or continuing here as a dog spirit. For reasons only known to Dumas, or Dumb ass, as the angels are prone to calling him, he chose to become a spirit.

Humans have been lucky enough to call dogs our best friends ever since one brave wolf dared sneak food scraps from a campfire more than 20,000 years ago - but we're not the only creatures to experience the joy of canine companionship. In A Dog's Best Friend, Laura Greaves introduces inseparable buddies for whom species is no barrier to unconditional love. They may be unusual pairings, but they are as deep, true and devoted as any human twosome. These uplifting stories of dogs and their unlikely mates are living proof of the life-changing power of friendship.

The continuing crisis in Syria has raised a question mark over the common perception of Middle Eastern affairs as an offshoot of global power politics. To Western intellectuals, foreign-policy experts, and politicians, "empire" and "imperialism" are categories that apply exclusively to the European powers and more recently to the United States of America. Lacking an internal dynamic of its own, the view of such people is that Middle Eastern history is the product of its unhappy interaction with the West.

I survived a job for royal vampires with my life and identity intact. That means I can return to my normal life as a knight, right? Wrong. When a group of werewolves goes berserk in our local pub, there’s a new threat in the city, and the local pack hires me to find out what it is. Unfortunately, that decision draws the attention of a certain vampire prince who likes to keep tabs on the most powerful pack in the city. Just when I thought I was free of the Demon of House Duncan, we’re embarking on a road trip together to investigate.

The dazzling, inimitable Molly Ivins is back with a new collection of withering and hilarious pieces on the worst politics has to offer. This audiobook features a rogue's gallery of politicians: everyone from George W. Bush and the Democratic presidential contenders to Arnold Schwarzenegger. This career retrospective contains Ivins's funniest, most outrageous (and outraged) work on "the best of the worst", in a volume sure to delight those on the left and infuriate the right.

Meet Nosewise. He's spunky. He's curious. And he's a dog who can't understand why his packmates Merlin and Morgana spend all day practicing magic tricks. If it's a trick they want, he's the dog to ask! He can already Sit!, Stay!, and Roll Over! But there's no way Nosewise is Stay!ing when his master and best friend, Merlin, is kidnapped. There's nothing Nosewise won't do to get Merlin back, even if it means facing the strange Fae people and their magic-eating worms or tangling with the mysterious Sword in the Stone.

Jules Cavanaugh is settling nicely into her new Florida home and learning to use her magic, but with a power-hungry witch and wizard gunning for her, she feels like she's waiting for the other shoe to drop. Unfortunately for them, she's done letting other people dictate her future. Even though she's exhausted and battered from the first attack, the fate of the magical world rests on her shoulders. If nearly 50 years of life has taught her anything, it's that no matter how many aches and pains you have, life won't wait for the Advil to kick in.

I'll never forget that day. The horror, fear and the uncertainty of what was to come are still etched on my memory. But I didn't know that in that moment, somewhere off the M1 in a place that seemed as unnerving as it was eerie, I would find something so precious that would change my life forever. That was the day I discovered my Buddy, abandoned in a crate, unable to move and so frail that he only had moments to live. He stopped me in my tracks, and without pausing to think I scooped him up and quickly ran from the scene. This was no place for people or animals.

More than anything else, this is a book about love. In this deeply moving account, you will hear about Rambo, a sheep who informs the staff when another animal is in trouble; and Paulie, a former cockfighting rooster who eats lunch with humans; Dino, an old toothless pony who survived a fire; and many more. Alongside these horses, roosters, pigs, sheep, rabbits, cows, and other animals is a staff of loving humans for whom every animal life, even that of a frog rushed to the vet for emergency surgery, has merit.

In 1992, two Russian moviemakers left a cryptic note for New Mexican writer Stephen Bodio at his local bar. It led him to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, where he saw a film about the ancient breed of Central Asian sight hounds known as tazis. He would end up chasing these leads to Kazakhstan, where these beautiful dogs may have existed 6,000 years ago.

Picking up where she left off in Where the Blind Horse Sings, Kathy Stevens regales us with more tales of the rescued animals at Catskill Animal Sanctuary (CAS), some touching, some hilarious, all provocative. We meet Barbie, the broiler hen found hiding under a blue Honda in Brooklyn who falls for the animal ambassador Rambo, a ram with an uncanny sense of what others need. Then there’s Norma Rae, the turkey rescued from a "turkey bowl" just before Thanksgiving.

Half-angel Rose has always flown solo, and that's just how she likes it. Trained since youth by her angelic father in the ways of battle, she flees the heartache of a broken childhood by hunting the nightmarish creatures that hide in the shadows. When she discovers a nefarious plot involving a mysterious witch and her parade of grisly horrors in an abandoned California town, she eagerly treks out to see what blood can be spilled, only to discover that a boy from her past—now grown to manhood—has sniffed out the same prize.

It’s odd the way some things work out. You expect to wake up dead, and instead, you wake up to the beautiful face of your wife. I was confused. I had died...or at least I sure as heck thought I had. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining. I’ve been alive for a number of years now and to be honest...I’m quite fond of it. I just didn’t understand "how" I was alive. My name is Fleet Admiral Jeremy Riker...but my friends call me Dog. This is the rest of my story.

The people won and now Mareth is Lord Protector of Edland. But winning an election is a lot different than governing a country, especially when the empire of Pyrfew is expanding into the Sapphire Sea. In the interests of peace, Mareth must dispatch Alana to Ioth, city of a thousand lights, to convince the ruling merchants to turn their back on the empire. Neenahwi, armed with the knowledge revealed in her coming of age ceremony, desperately wants to determine Pyrfew's plans and to take the fight to the emperor.

Disbelief and shock fill eleven-year-old Jake when a stranger grabs his beloved dog. Jake and his twin Ava chase the scruffy teen down their suburban street, but the thief simply vanishes. So … what is this ancient-looking skeleton key Jake finds in the street? Turning it in the air takes the twins—somewhere else!

In 1995, Wilma Melville volunteered as a canine search-and-rescue (SAR) handler with her black Labrador Murphy in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing. At the time, there were only 15 FEMA-certified SAR dogs in the US. Believing in the value of these remarkable animals to help save lives, Wilma knew many more were needed in the event of future major disasters. She made a vow to help 168 dogs receive search-and-rescue training in her lifetime - one for every Oklahoma City victim.

In Trust the Dog, the Fidelco Guide Dog Foundation introduces listeners to a group of extraordinary people who, thanks to their guide dogs, flourish in a world that assumes the ability to see. Among them are a brother and sister who lost their sight at a very young age and whose dogs essentially helped them grow up, a Serbian girl who fled civil war to find new hope in America, and a newly blind single father determined to keep his family together against all odds.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully launched Sputnik I, the first artificial satellite into orbit around the Earth. Little more than a month later, the Soviets launched Sputnik II. News of Sputnik created panic in Washington, D.C. Within days, the U.S. military began a madcap race to space full of crashes, skullduggery, and backstabbing - until Eisenhower's secret civilian program surpassed the Soviets by putting the first American, a hero monkey named Gordo, into orbit.

Remember the stories your grandfather used to tell you about way back when? Remember laughing out loud as the stories got deeper? If you like to LOL, then this really is a book for you. Here you'll find some observations on life in general and people in particular, as seen through a collection of newspaper columns, presenting skewed, offbeat, semiserious, and sometimes amusing views of the world.