Wildlife & Animal Writing Books

What does it mean to be alive? The slow contortion of a plant towards light, the spear-flight of a hawk towards their quarry - these are purposeful actions. But where does that purpose come from, and what does it tell us about who…

For thousands of years, humans have been the architects of the natural world. Our activities have permanently altered the environment – for good and for bad. In Nature’s Ghosts, award-winning journalist Sophie Yeo exam…

A compendium of 100 of the planet’s weird and wonderful creatures that come at night. Most of us assume that living creatures prefer the sunlit hours of daytime. However, when the sun sets and the stars emerge, the planet truly co…

In The Hidden Seasons, Tristan Gooley shows us how to read the clues that the sun, moon, stars, plants, fungi, animals, water and weather give us - but that we continually miss, because we don't know how and where to look. Autumn …

Following on from its successful launch in 2009, Collins Wild Flower Guide – the ultimate reference book for wild flower enthusiasts – now enters its third edition. It is now completely up to date, including the most recent BSBI c…

The New York Times bestseller After the sudden death of his father, Dara Waldron became disoriented in a world that had once filled him with wonder. A year later, he meets an abandoned border collie called Oscar hiding on a dereli…

Seán Ronayne always knew he was different. Nicknamed 'nature boy' by the other kids, as a child he regularly escaped to the woods and coastlines around his home in Cork. The natural world was his happy place and where he discovere…

From the creators of the internationally bestselling, award-winning, multi-adapted phenomenon The Lost Words: a dazzling celebration of birdlife in Britain, re-imagining the classic field guide for a new generation of nature lover…

Whether you are a beginner or an expert, this beautifully detailed field guide to the common birds of Ireland will give invaluable advice on how to identify each species: their calls, songs, diets and habitats, as well as up-to-da…

The deep sea is one of humanity's last frontiers. For most of our history it has been a remote realm, invoking awe and terror as it lays shrouded in darkness. But here, where the light cannot reach, lies a strange, wonderful and b…

In 1879, King Leopold II of Belgium launched an ambitious plan to plunder Africa’s resources. The key to cracking open the continent, or so he thought, was its elephants ? if only he could train them.And so he commissioned the cha…

The majority of the world now lives in some form of urban environment. But as the human footprint of brick, concrete and metal expands, our proximity to nature decreases. This is a problem; nature isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity.…

Animals rarely treat sex as a simple or mutually beneficial transaction. Choosing a mate is often a transcendent event to be approached with reverence, suspicion, angst and quite a bit of violence.For Matt Ridley, nowhere is this …

From the forageable to the bizarre, this book is an introduction to 50 of the fungi kingdom’s most interesting mushrooms. Mushrooms have existed for millennia, which can make it overwhelming to dip into mycology. Used throughout h…

Uncover the myths, legends and secrets of the world’s most iconic trees. Did you know that laurel is said to protect against snakebites and shield against witchcraft? Or that yews are often planted near graveyards to keep the devi…

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTIONNo matter where we live, 'we are all ocean people,' Helen Scales observes in her bracing yet hopeful exploration of the futur…

Fossils plants allow us to touch the lost worlds from billions of years of evolutionary backstory. Each petrified leaf and root show us that dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and even humans would not exist without the evolutionary e…

Acclaimed wildlife author Conor W. O’Brien travels the country in search of Ireland’s extinct wildlife and our greatest conservation success stories.

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later,…

A thought-provoking overview of contemporary bird photography, featuring the work of more than 50 internationally recognized photographers in an enthralling odyssey that both captures the splendour of birds and highlights the comp…

From your window you can see the stars and distant planets: light years away, it's easy to think that our existences and theirs will never intersect. Yet meteorites - mysterious, irregular rocks of sometimes immense value - connec…

A colourful visual journey from the shoreline to the ocean’s depths to celebrate the sheer diversity of life beneath the waves. Three quarters of the ocean has never been seen by humans. Drawing on the recent success of Trees, thi…

The perfect countryside and armchair companion to the wild flowers of the British Isles.Illustrator Angie Lewin and author Christopher Stocks follow up the success of The Book of Pebbles with The Book of Wild Flowers, a celebratio…

The perfect armchair and gardening companion to the garden flowers of the British Isles. Christopher Stocks tells the fascinating tales of nineteen cultivated flowers and their journeys from distant corners of the world to British…

A journey through the great mass-extinction events that have shaped our Earth: 'Deeply informed and readable' Nature In this vast sweep of our Earth’s history, Michael Benton brings the deep past to life as never before. Deploying…

Slow Looking: The Art of Nature takes readers on a meditative journey from fields, mountains, forest and glaciers to lakes, ponds, waterfalls and rivers and on to sunrises, rainbows, comets, clouds, constellations and so much more…

Celebrate the wonder of wildlife with hidden gems from the Royal Collection. This charming album includes 80 detailed and lifelike illustrations of animal life from around the world. Discover the work of some of the greatest artis…

Birds with Personality is a fun gift book that takes you around the world through the eyes of some of the most charismatic bird species on the planet. Across Earth’s diverse ecosystems – from the deserts of Mexico to the rainfores…

Humankind’s fascination with the animal kingdom began as a matter of survival – differentiating the edible from the toxic, the ferocious from the tractable. Since then, our compulsion to catalogue wildlife has played a key role in…

A beautiful and profound natural history of snow from the bestselling, award-winning Swedish environmentalist Sverker Sörlin, exploring the cultural, scientific, artistic and existential significance of what is, due to climate-cha…