From celebrated author Jay Griffiths comes a unique and heartfelt insight into the healing nature of our relationship with animals

All animal-lovers instinctively know that animals heal. This book offers the evidence, drawing widely on scientific discoveries, history, and Indigenous knowledge.

Original, playful and wise, How Animals Heal Us explores how animals can have a role in every level of healing, from the individual to the collective, guiding us in how we might create societies that are healthier, fairer and kinder. From a pot-bellied pig who saved her owner's life to dogs who can smell cancer; from birdsong healing the hurt psyche to wolves teaching humanity ethics, How Animals Heal Us puts animals at the heart of a restorative vision of health.

‘Fascinating’ Observer

‘Marvellous, urgently important and compellingly readable’ Charles Foster

'If you know what to look for, a lion’s face tells you everything. The eyes, the scars, the shape.

Because once you’ve really learned how to look at a lion, and understood the story written across its face, walking away stops being an option.'

When Cam’s grandparents bought a dilapidated zoo, once known as the worst in the UK, and brought it back to life, they also created a home for their family.

Cam grew up on the grounds, now known as Hertfordshire Zoo, in a bedroom overlooking the tiger enclosure. His childhood playground, where he and his brothers would play hide-and-seek after hours, was filled with endangered species from around the world. He built deep connections with the animals in their care, even hand-rearing a lion cub called Zara, an experience which inspired a lifelong fascination with big cats.

Over the years, the family business expanded as they also took on The Big Cat Sanctuary with Cam taking the helm as director. He and the sanctuary made global headlines for leading a high-risk rescue mission of five abandoned lions from war-torn Ukraine. The lions were found in states of shellshock and malnourishment and had likely been used for illegal breeding. After ten months of dedicated effort, Cam united Rori, Yuna, Vanda, Amani and Lira in their forever home at the sanctuary and gave them the freedom to walk on grass for the very first time. A momentous milestone in a lifetime dedicated to animal welfare, conservation and rescue.

This enchanting little book is brimming with hedgehog magic, from curious facts and snippets of folklore to charming quotes and delightful illustrations. Discover easy tips for making your garden a welcoming haven, including removing common perils and adding hog houses or feeding stations – because these tiny creatures need a little help on their nightly adventures.

A celebration of one of our best-loved woodland creatures, this is the perfect gift for animal lovers, garden potterers and anyone who believes the world is brighter with hedgehogs in it.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER.

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Hope taught me the meaning of life, Tina taught me the meaning of love.

It's not everyday you meet a golden retriever in Thailand.

When Niall came across a dog shackled to a short chain and in a poor state of health something reminded him of his personal battle with addiction. He knew he had to rescue her immediately – golden retrievers are rare in Thailand – but there was just something about this dog in particular that told him she was destined for more.

He named her Tina, and what she did next is an incredible tale of survival, hope and love. Despite her terrible treatment at the hands of humans, she refused to distrust them or feel sorry for herself, and only opened her heart wider – always with a grin (yes dogs can smile) and a reassuring wag of her shaggy yellow tail.

From the minute Tina was free of her chains, she got on with what needed to be done, inspiring a dog hospital to be built and named after her and helping dogs from all over the world – whether they're street dogs from Thailand or rescue pups in Montana. The movement behind Tina has not stopped.

This is her story.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION WRITING
SHORTLISTED FOR SCOTLAND'S NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS FOR NON-FICTION

For nearly four billion years, life on Earth has found new ways to adapt, reproduce and thrive. Now, in the face of climate change, nature is modelling ingenuity as never before.

David Farrier guides us through unexpected and hopeful examples of nature’s genius: whether urban pigeons building nests in the spiked structures meant to deter them or tomcod in the Hudson River that have become immune to highly toxic chemicals, coral used to make a natural and self-healing cement or computer chips derived from mycelium skin. Farrier shows us how nature is offering a blueprint that could help us design sustainable cities, remake our economies, solve our waste problem, rescue animals from the brink of extinction and choose a better future.

A mind-expanding deep dive into how animals have shaped us, from the palaeolithic to the present day.

In Animate, science writer Michael Bond explores how animals have profoundly influenced our minds and cultures. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology, anthropology, literature and neuroscience, Bond traces the varied ways their lives have affected ours, from our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose brains were rewired by the prey they hunted and the predators they feared, to the medieval and Enlightenment thinkers who used animals to promote notions of human supremacy.

Scientists today are challenging the assumption that we are separate from and superior to animals, showing that they too possess intelligence, empathy, creativity and even the ability to use tools. If everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures, where does that leave us? And if we are not as exceptional as we thought, how should we be treating the animals we live alongside?

A fascinating exploration of what it means to be both human and animal, Animate shows that to better understand ourselves, we must pay more attention to the other beings with whom we share our world.

A true story of Bird and writer Candida Meyrick, set on Anglesey – and a fable for us all to find a way to fly.

The twelve-week-old Harris Hawk, Sophia Houdini Whitewing – aka Bird – is trained over the following months by the author and her children to be most herself: a skilled hunter and dazzling aerial gymnast, whose flights enrapture the family and set the author on a deepening love affair with life on the wing.

Working with her Harris Hawk over the following years reveals a new world: confronting mortality daily, moving through a liminal landscape, part sky-, part earth-bound. And every day’s hunting brings a new life-lesson. Bird opens up a way of being that is everything the author most longs to be: courageous, compassionate, independent, full of joy – free as a bird.

Be More Bird charts this deepening relationship between bird and woman, set in one of Britain’s wildest landscapes. It reveals the subtle dynamic possible between human and bird, illuminating the ancient, worldwide art of falconry and its urgent relevance for the modern mind: the importance of untethering our souls and belief-systems and re-establishing a connection with the wilder world.

Structured around a series of ‘life lessons’, Be More Bird transports readers into the wildness hidden within themselves and to think profoundly about our connections with nature and our lives.

Be More Bird is a true story, still unfolding, of a wild predator who by choice flies in partnership with a woman as her earth-bound helper. Bird crosses boundaries: between species, cultures, sky and earth. In this way, Be More Bird is a fable for our times.

Dare to be more. Be more Bird.

‘An intelligent and enlightening book’ MICHAEL MORPURGO

‘Wonderful’ THE SPECTATOR

Plague-carriers. Filth-spreaders. Villains. Vermin. No animal is more maligned than the rat – or more misunderstood.

Rats inspire fear and fascination in equal measure – everyone has a rat story. In Stowaway, Joe Shute travels to some of the most heavily infested cities in the world to unpick the myths we tell ourselves about our rodent neighbours.

From sub-Saharan Africa to the Rocky Mountains, he delves into the hidden world rats inhabit beneath our feet, learns about their role in natural ecosystems and discovers how their extraordinary intelligence is saving lives. And through his own pet rats, he overcomes his own prejudices and experiences the deep emotional bonds rats can form with humans when given the chance.

Rats have shaped human history – and with so many of them living alongside us, there’s no future without them. Is there a better way to coexist with them in the modern age? And what can the lives of rats teach us about our own?

Anthropomorphism – the irresistible desire to apply human characteristics to animals, natural phenomena and even inanimate objects – is as natural as breathing.

And it gets weirder? Million-dollar industries have sprung up to provide ‘cosmetic enhancements’ for dogs who’ve had the snip – their (inevitably male) owners wracked with guilt that their pets might be missing out on? something. Similarly, Justin Gregg, a researcher with the Dolphin Communication Project, regularly receives emails from mothers-to-be convinced that dolphins would make excellent midwives (spoiler alert: they definitely wouldn’t).

Diving into the strange way anthropomorphism shapes our understanding of the world, Gregg offers an eye-opening journey through human perception. From cinema’s obsession with talking animals to the way we interact with our soon-to-be robot overlords, Humanish takes a hilarious journey through the strange world of anthropomorphism and explores what it reveals about this weird and wonderful bias within us all.