Archives de catégorie : Animals

BÖSE TIERE de Markus Bennemann

Adultery, blackmail, murder – the animal kingdom is bursting with transgressive energy…

BÖSE TIERE
[Nasty Beasts]
by Markus Bennemann
Goldmann/PRH Germany, November 2026

Markus Bennemann loves our fellow creatures. But he also knows they can be anything but loveable.

Following his bestselling « Böse Bäume » (‘Nasty trees’), the nature and science writer sheds light on the nastiest criminals in the animal kingdom, from five-limbed burglars and safe-crackers with jug ears to scaly sharpshooters, feathered serial killers and sexually motivated killer women lurking in the grass.

Blackmailers and adulterers, mass murderers and accomplices – animals are no strangers to true crime. And they’re more sneaky, inventive and bonkers than any crime writer could come up with.

Markus Bennemann couldn’t decide whether to major in literature or biology. In the end, he chose literature, and now writes books about… well, biology. His most recent book is the bestselling Böse Bäume (‘Bad trees’).

THE LOVE OF BEAVERS de Matthew Perry

The author’s extensive, long-term tracking of wild beaver colonies documents intimate family relationships and complex colony hierarchies highlighting how beavers serve as primary forces against drought and climate shifting by engineering vital, biodiverse wetlands.

THE LOVE OF BEAVERS
by Matthew Perry
Atria Books, March 2028
(via Writers House)

When conservationist and naturalist Matthew Perry arrived at Spring Farm CARES Nature Sanctuary in central New York, he believed he had been hired to restore a damaged landscape by hand—replanting forests, repairing streams, rebuilding bird habitat after two centuries of agricultural depletion. Instead, on his very first day, he met the true agents of restoration: a young pair of beavers newly released onto the land. Within months, they accomplished what no human-designed plan could, transforming a narrow farm stream into a living wetland system.

What began as a practical collaboration became a twenty-six-year relationship spanning three generations of beavers—and a profound shift in how to understand wildlife, restoration, and intelligence beyond the human realm. THE LOVE OF BEAVERS chronicles the lives of a single, multi-generational beaver colony with rare intimacy, following individuals, family lines, and learned traditions across decades of floods, droughts, loss, recovery, and renewal.

The world is just becoming hip to the importance and appeal of beavers. Perry’s posts of ongoing field observations, images, and short-form narrative videos regularly draw hundreds of thousands to millions of views, including a single beaver-focused post that has reached more than 10 million viewers.

As the beavers go about their lives, the land responds. The book documents this transformation from the inside, revealing rewilding not as a technical intervention but as a relationship—one rooted in patience, trust, and shared time.

Matthew Perry has served for over twenty-five years as Conservation Director and Resident Naturalist at Spring Farm CARES Nature Sanctuary, overseeing a 260-acre rewilding project shaped largely by beaver-engineered wetlands. He is President of Beavers: Wetlands & Wildlife, a national nonprofit dedicated to coexistence-based conservation, and President of the Utica Peregrine Falcon Project. The Spring Farm beavers will be featured in an upcoming PBS documentary, and the BBC has expressed interest in filming the colony in 2026.

THE PERSISTENCE OF WILD THINGS d’Emily Sohn

Discover a new wilderness, where animals survive—and thrive—in damaged, developed, and disturbed environments.

THE PERSISTENCE OF WILD THINGS:
How Life Endures in the Most Unexpected Places
by Emily Sohn
Sourcebooks, July 2027
(via DeFiore and Company)

Along highways in the United States, monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed during long-distance migrations, even as vehicles fly past at 70 mph. In a swirling mass of waste in the ocean called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, fantastic and otherworldly creatures float alongside and on top of milk jugs. On the border of Israel and Syria, wolves find safety in minefields in the Golan Heights, where fragile explosives keep people away. And on a small Swedish island, the quiet presence of bird-watching tourists protects a lively seabird population from predators.

In THE PERSISTENCE OF WILD THINGS, award-winning journalist Emily Sohn takes readers on an investigative journey around the world to explore pockets of wildlife thriving in unexpected places. She speaks with researchers and scientists, digging into deeply complex questions surrounding modern relationships between people and wild animals. Through conversations and visits to unusual field sites, she reveals how our best efforts to help the environment may sometimes cause harm. Along the way, we begin to see the potential for a new approach to conservation, one that acknowledges the reality of today’s ecosystems and sees humans as a part of nature, not apart from it.

Although coverage of environmental issues often induces despair, THE PERSISTENCE OF WILD THINGS leads with optimism. The natural world is filled with stories of resilience, and wilderness is everywhere. If we learn to notice the bright spots and silver linings, we can cultivate a new kind of hope for the future.

Emily Sohn is an award-winning health and science journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic, Outside, Nature, Scientific American, Audubon, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Discovery, Science News, and many other publications. Her stories have accumulated awards from the National Association of Science Writers, the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and more. She has appeared on podcasts, radio programs, and TV shows, including NPR’s All Things Considered, the BBC World News, and All Sides with Ann Fisher.

INSECT SAFARI de Margie Patlak

Join a veteran science writer on a fascinating adventure as she explores the ever-more-astounding world of insects – all in her own backyard.

INSECT SAFARI:
Exploring the Wondrous World of Everyday Bugs
by Margie Patlak
Workman Publishing, June 2026
(via The Martell Agency)

When science writer Margie Patlak was inspirited to take a quick close-up snapshot of a bee in her backyard, it was the start of a years-long obsession with cataloging and understanding the tiny creatures that were all around her.

The essays in her book showcase the superpowers, alien anatomies, and striking untold behaviors and thinking abilities of bugs hidden in plain sight in backyards, parks, gardens, and even in the flowerpots that dot city courtyards and balconies. Each essay focuses on a specific bug and explores the big ideas these little bugs raise, such as whether the maternal instinct is truly instinctual, the value of a short life, whether to blend in or alter your environment, and whether you can have altruism without tribal atrocities.

But what perhaps makes INSECT SAFARI the most intriguing is its reporting on the plethora of recent scientific findings revealing there’s more to the inner lives and behaviors of insects than people ever thought possible. Who knew wasps use tools and recognize faces, bees play with balls and do math, ants invented farming way before we did, and even fruit flies mull over their mating choices?

These findings reinforce the notion that we aren’t the only intelligent beings on Earth and tap into people’s curiosity about the alien life right here on their own planet.

Margie Patlak is a science writer, memoirist, and photographer. Her book More Than Meets the Eye: Exploring Nature and Loss on the Coast of Maine was given an “Outstanding Book” award by the American Society of Journalists and Authors in 2022. Her photo book Wild and Wondrous: Nature’s Artistry on the Coast of Maine was published in 2023, and her photographs have been featured in several solo and group exhibits. She has also written articles for a number of newspapers and magazines, including Discover, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and her essays have been published in a number of literary journals. Patlak divides her time between Down East Maine and Philadelphia.

THE LAST WHALE HUNTER de Justin Vibbert

A gripping work of narrative nonfiction that transports readers to the remote island of Bequia and into a battle for the soul of the Caribbean.

THE LAST WHALE HUNTER
by Justin Vibbert
Diversion Books, March 2027
(via Kaplan/DeFiore Rights)

Bequia—a volcanic speck in the Lesser Antilles—finds itself in crisis. Chinese-backed infrastructure now stretches from Jamaica to Trinidad; meanwhile, U.S. developers are scrambling to counter Beijing’s influence with luxury resorts. The result: local workers, displaced by foreign labor and priced out of their homes, are migrating south down the chain of islands in search of jobs. For former fishermen and port workers Nico, Junior, Baby, and Eustace, whaling isn’t about preserving tradition: it’s about staying afloat.

The man they sail with, and the heart of this book, is Bruce Ollivierre, whose family has hunted whales for generations. In THE LAST WHALE HUNTER, we journey alongside Ollivierre and his crew of economic migrants as they battle millionaire environmentalists, crumbling ocean ecosystems, and an ancient foe five hundred times their size.

Diving deep into Bequia’s resilient past, Vibbert details the epic story of Ollivierre’s enslaved ancestors, who built a whaling industry from scratch after British landowners abandoned the island and its failing sugar plantations. Now, as new empires carve up the Caribbean, Ollivierre has just days left in the season to land a whale and bring in enough money to keep schools open and his people housed and fed. All eyes turn to the 2025 Easter Regatta, where a final, high-risk hunt unfolds in full view of locals, yachting tourists—and Louise Mitchell, the island’s most powerful anti-whaling crusader, bent on shutting Ollivierre down for good. Failure could mean death for him and his men—and the end of whaling on Bequia altogether.

Justin Vibbert is a journalist and English Instructor at the City University of New York. His embedded reporting on underworld figures inspired the Off-Broadway play Royal Oak, now in development as a limited TV series. Justin has extensive magazine connections and has already been approached by The Explorers Club to give a presentation upon publication. This project has drawn early interest from Robert Downey Jr. and Gregg Bello, as well as documentary filmmaker Sasha Kneller (National Geographic, Discovery Channel). In addition to his writing, Justin is a model who has appeared in major brand campaigns for Ralph Lauren, American Express, and Google.