From a 'crannog', an ancient artificial island in a Scottish loch, to the militarised artificial islands China is building in the South China Sea, from the disappearing islands that remain the home of Native Central Americans, to the ritzy new islands of Dubai, from Hong Kong and the Isles of Scilly to islands far away and near, all have urgent stories to tell. Alastair Bonnett has a deep knowledge of history and contemporary geopolitics and is a seasoned traveller with a writer's eye for telling detail. He gives us a tour of our terrifying but often beautiful new world. New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate whether for tourism or territorial ambition, while many islands are disappearing or fragmenting because of rising sea levels. It is a strange planetary spectacle, creating an ever-changing map which even Google Earth struggles to keep pace with. In his book the explorer and geographer Bonnett takes us on a compelling tour of the world's newest, most fragile and beautiful islands on an ambitious journey by wing, sail, rubber and road as he respectfully drags geography back to its roots. 249pp, many maps and colour photos and diagrams.

A passionately written clarion call to all who value the quality of beauty in their surroundings which shines light on those inspired to try to reverse the damage done to wildlife and the landscape in the 19th century. The book fizzes with ideas and passion full of stories of politicians and officials who made a difference for good and it shows that politics matters. Fiona Reynolds has lived and worked at the heart of the struggle for more than 30 years and her book is a warning against thoughtless depredation authorised by policymakers who ignore or dismiss the fundamental truth. We live in a world where the drive for economic growth is crowding out everything that can't have a monetary value. Dame Fiona Reynolds DBE is Master of Emmanuele College, Cambridge. She proposes a solution that is at once radical and simple - to inspire us through the beauty of the world around us. Delving into our past, examining landscapes, nature, farming and urbanisation, she shows how ideas about beauty have arisen and evolved, being shaped by public policy, being knocked back and inched forward until they arrive lost in the economically-driven spirit of today. Hers is a passionate, polemical call to arms and she is an optimist. 336pp, paperback with colour photos and other illus, this is a nobler vision for a better world including National Parks and our cultural heritage.

Sub-titled 'What Evolution Teaches Us About Creativity', the book is an impressively brisk intellectual tour through our glory days of early 20th century evolutionary biology. He cuts to the heart of vital questions such as the notion that genomes are set up to explore in the hope of leaping across the adaptive landscape to new peaks. In Darwin's survival of the fittest, each step must be uphill as life progresses towards an evolutionary peak and there is no turning back. So, what happens when life needs to cross a valley? The world-renowned biologist Andreas Wagner draws on pioneering research to explore life's creative process, and how it bears a striking resemblance to how we humans work. A beguiling symmetry links Picasso struggling through 40 versions of Guernica and the way evolution transformed a dinosaur's claw into a condor's wing. This new understanding is already revolutionising our approach to problem-solving across the sciences. In the near future, applied in spheres as diverse as the economy and education, it will enable us to do so much more. Our ability to play, experiment and make mistakes holds an important message for the way we educate our children and run our institutions and societies. Wagner argues that human inventiveness is a reflection not just of human nature but of nature itself. 320pp.

If you love Planet Earth, you will certainly appreciate the birth, death and family lives of giant elephants. Watching a family out for a swim on a hot day, Hannah Mumby sees grandmothers, mothers and sisters exchanging noisy greetings and affectionate touches, keeping up a constant stream of chat as they play with their young children and frequently pause for snack breaks. An interconnected and close family like any other, except that in this family the adults way several tonnes each and the babies wave trunks playfully at one another. This is a family or herd of elephants. Intelligent, sentient beings, much about their day to day lives and abilities remains unknown. How do they communicate with one another over seemingly impossible distances? How do males spend their lives once they have left their mothers' herds? How much do elephants really remember? 'Elephants are keepers of secrets. A rather big secret being that if you can see past the grey skin and the bulk and the majesty and fear of them, then sometimes, in some ways, they are just like you.' Combining lyrical writing with popular science and sensibility, chapters include Samburu Families, Oozies and Elephants, Sex and Baby Hannah, Elephant in the Mirror, Growing Old, and Death and Ivory. Hannah Mumby reverently describes her own elephant encounters alongside an exploration of the most up-to-date discoveries about how elephants live, travel, have sex, raise children and relate to one another as we gain a sense of how they think and feel. 296pp, photos in colour.

The pleasantness of our experiences, the extent to which our desires are fulfilled relates to us feeling good, but what is also important for our wellbeing is our ability to function well psychologically. This is referred to as 'eudaimonic wellbeing', and includes factors such as autonomy, self-acceptance, having a meaning and purpose in life, and recognising personal growth. Distinct from hedonic wellbeing is the emotional state and experience of nature connectedness. Already this is leading towards the change in the way we prescribe treatments and therapies to address mental health. You may recall that our editor Annie is organising a wellness memorial garden in the name of her late husband for exactly these reasons. To appreciate beauty of nature, celebrate its meaning and respond emotionally, we must activate our compassion for nature and be kinder to it. Our spring of surprises germinates into a summer of love for nature which can burst from our balconies, gardens, parks and green places. Megan McCubbin will excite you with some gems of extraordinary new science celebrating some of conservations successes and exploring methods we all have to generate more in our own spaces or communities. It asks you to look at how green your own actions are, how the UK has turned a blind eye to the catastrophic destruction of wildflower meadows with plants, butterflies, moths, dragonflies, damselflies, bees, wasps and beetles which have disappeared from this floral wonderland, together with many mammals and birds. Our remaining native wildflower meadows are vital havens for biodiversity and support those pollinators which service some 35% of the world's human food crop. Also of conservation concern are the lapwing, common snipe and curlews whose numbers are still declining fast. Salmon farming, rodent control, the love of beavers, global warming, through personal stories, conservation breakthroughs and scientific discoveries, the book explores the wonder and solace of nature and the ways in which we can connect with it and protect it. Full of facts and not too preachy. 296pp, paperback.

Can a polytunnel be eco-friendly? Is it better to grow native veg than try exotics? What is vegan gardening? Are traditional herb gardens eco-friendly? How can I attract bees and other pollinators to my veg plot? Is a wormery worth it? How can I avoid gluts? Can planting be too dense for wildlife? Are wildflowers best? Is it ever okay to have a bonfire? Should I stop using plastic pots? How will gardening change in the next 20 years? Fun and fact filled, this guide to greener gardening is packed with more than 100 intriguing questions and practical answers with advice on how water butts, using less plastic and creating a wildlife-friendly garden, and all about ants, birds, slugs, distraction crops, small spaces, this is an environmentally friendly guide for all levels of gardening experience. Packed with colour photos, line art, drawings, in a 224 page beautifully designed hardback with pagemarker. A companion to RHS How Do Worms Work? code 91499.

The story of life on Earth began in the sea which was mostly shallow and very warm and contained a potent blend of the chemicals that were to become the stuff of living organisms. Popularly known as 'primordial soup', molecules mixed and mingled and reacted with one another, creating new copies of itself. Seaweeds have their origins in the very earliest multicellular life on Earth and have been used medicinally by human for centuries. The first fish-like animals were small, jawless creatures known as agnathans and here are examples of Late Jurassic fossils which have clearly preserved the shape of the earliest bony fish. As marine scientists begin to penetrate even the most inaccessible of ocean depths, there has never been a better time to learn about the bizarre and beautiful creatures below water. Produced on very glossy large white pages and with hundreds of colour artworks and photographs, sections cover the major types of marine habitat, sea watching, and a world directory of 600 marine species including sponges, corals, jelly animals, worms, crustaceans, molluscs, echinoderms, fish, reptiles and sea mammals. Read about the plate-like armour of creatures that endure the crash of the incoming tide, the reefs that teem with colourful life, and the formidable creatures that hunt in remote waters. Each profile contains habitat type, size, breeding and feeding behaviour. In over 1000 colour photos, we can meet new creatures like the Lantern Fish, Opah and Ribbon Fish, Crocodilians like the Marine Iguana, the flashily coloured Scorpion Fish like the Red Lionfish, Sawfish and Electric Rays with their razor teeth, stunning starfish to stoutly built Blenny. 256 large pages, 1000 illus and photos.
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By the author of H is for Hawk here is a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to nature. A literary cabinet of curiosities about the wonders and oddities of the natural world, Helen Macdonald's best loved pieces plus new essays range from nostalgia from the countryside of her youth to a true account of a refugee's flight to the UK. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, she observes the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watches tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeks the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. Chapters include Swan Upping, Deer in the Headlights, The Falcon and the Tower, The Observatory, Murmurations, A Cuckoo In the House, The Arrow-Stalk, Berries, Cherry Stones, Rescue and Goats and What Animals Taught Me. In her own words 'Many of the essays here are exercises in interrogating such human ascriptions and assumptions' on how we inevitably view the natural world as a mirror of ourselves reflecting our own world view and needs, thoughts and hopes. As a scientist she explains how migrating birds navigate by visualising the Earth's magnetic field through detecting quantum entanglement taking place in the receptor cells of their eyes. Science does what we would like literature to do - explain an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us. We need to communicate the value of things so that more of us can fight to save them. Desirable US roughcut page edges, 260pp. First edition US.

The Pacific accounts for nearly half the earth's water surface, falling to a depth of seven miles, and this gorgeously illustrated book, divided into the four categories Passionate, Voracious, Mysterious and Violent rises magnificently to the challenge of depicting a major natural phenomenon. Symbolising nature at its most terrible, the Great White Shark is endowed with keen sensory organs, identifying a single drop of blood in 10 billion of water. The Blue Whale is the largest animal ever to have lived on earth, stretching to 30 metres as an adult and with a heart the size of a Volkswagen Beetle car. In social terms Blue Whales are solitary creatures but they have the loudest, strongest vocalisations on the planet, calling to each other across a distance of 1000 miles. Another massive creature is Nomura's Jellyfish, now causing trouble for Japanese fishermen as a result of global warming. The yellow-eyed penguin is one of the world's rarest, a model parent who never leaves the chicks unguarded. One of the most spectacular-looking creatures of the Pacific is the Red Lionfish, striped and bristling with spikes capable of delivering a lethal sting. The Galapagos Archipelago has one of the highest levels of endemism, or species unique to the place, on the planet. A prime example is the Marine Iguana, captured here in close-up with some superb photography. There are also fine pictures of Galapagos tortoises and their predators, the Galapagos Hawks. The white spotted pufferfish creates patterns like crop circles on the seabed, while the Firefly Squid is surrounded by luminescence while spawning. The edge of the Pacific, particularly the northwest, encompasses a volatile geological cauldron known as the Ring of Fire, while the world's largest tidal bore, known as the Silver Dragon, occurs near the Chinese city of Hangzhou. A fascinating and wonderfully illustrated book which blends a wealth of stunning Ultra HD images with spellbinding storytelling to take you into a realm teeming with exotic life rarely witnessed up close, until now. 240pp, landscape format, colour photos on most pages.
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Amphibians and reptiles were the first vertebrates to venture forth from the seas some 300 million years ago. Exactly when and which kind of fish was the first to make the move is not known with any degree of precision, but this was one pioneering piscean! As well as being the first vertebrates to leave the water, they were also the first to mate without using water to transport gametes, colonise the deserts, burrow into the ground, take to the air and, critically, the first to get their oxygen from the air rather than the water. Yet today, having walked the Earth for so long, there are a great many of their species at critical risk of extinction. Here, in this companion book to his 2008 BBCTV series the world's greatest natural history broadcaster travels the world to tell their epic story - their astounding past success and the profound implications of their uncertain future. Having once ruled the planet, their descendants today exhibit some of the most colourful variety, bizarre form and peculiar behaviour in all the animal kingdom. Sumptuously illus in colour throughout, Sir David gets up close and personal with those descendants and through them traces the fascinating history their pioneering ancestors. He explains in his inimitable manner how it is that some of today's amphibians and reptiles have changed little from their prehistoric forebears yet, as we know, some evolved into dinosaurs, then birds and mammals and his eye for the unusual and quirky is as sharp as ever, with hundreds of examples of amazing physiological and behavioural adaptations featured throughout. The camerawork is second to none, with incredible shots of impossibly photogenic crocodiles, axolotls, salamanders, the cutest frogs imaginable and the most threatening snakes, especially the King Cobra which appears to be about to launch itself at you from the page! The finest natural history in 288pp.