An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham was only at home in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyri...

What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong? In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to...

Enough plastic is thrown away every year to circle the world 4 times. More than 8 million tonnes of plastic enter the oceans each year. 300 million tonnes of new plastic is produced every year. An estimated 15-51 trillion pieces of plastic now litter the world's oceans. 38.5 million plastic bottles are used every day in the UK. Without big action,...

Sunday Times Bestseller 'A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement' Charles Foster Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (September) Are trees social beings? How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? In The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben makes the case that the forest is a social network. He...

How does it feel to orbit the earth ten times faster than a speeding bullet? What's it like to eat, sleep and go to the toilet in space? And where to next - the Moon, Mars or beyond? Ask an Astronaut is Tim's personal guide to life in space, based on his historic Principia mission, and the thousands of questions he has been asked since his return t...

In January 2006, a month or two after my father died, I thought I saw him again - a momentary impression of an old man, a little stooped, setting off for a walk in his characteristic fawn corduroys and shabby quilted jacket. After teenage rifts it was walking that brought us closer as father and son; and this 'ghost' of Dad has been walking at my e...

The Times SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2017 ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE What if intelligent life on Earth evolved not once, but twice? The octopus is the closest we will come to meeting an intelligent alien. What can we learn from the encounter? In Other Minds, Peter Godfrey-Smith, a distinguished philosopher of science and a skilled scuba diver, tel...

Penguin presents the audio edition of The Order of Time by Carlo Rovelli, read by Benedict Cumberbatch. The bestselling author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics takes us on an enchanting journey to discover the meaning of time Time is a mystery that does not cease to puzzle us. Philosophers, artists and poets have long explored its meaning while sc...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Tamed, written and read by Alice Roberts. The extraordinary story of the species that became our allies. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancestors depended on wild plants and animals for survival. They were hunter-gatherers, consummate foraging experts, taking the world as they found it. The...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Secret Life of the Owl by John Lewis-Stempel, read by Roy McMillan. 'Dusk is filling the valley. It is the time of the gloaming, the owl-light. Out in the wood, the resident tawny has started calling, Hoo-hoo-hoo-h-o-o-o.' There is something about owls. They feature in every major culture from the...

For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed the wood. He coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it from the bottom of its beech roots to the tip of its oaks, and to know all the animals that lived there - the fox, the pheasants, the wood mice, the tawny...

Environmental thought and politics have become parts of mainstream cultural life in Britain. The wish to protect wildlife is now a central goal for our society, but where did these 'green' ideas come from? And who created the cherished institutions, such as the National Trust or the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, that are now so embedde...

What is the nature of space and time? How do we fit within the universe? How does the universe fit within us? There's no better guide through these mindexpanding questions than acclaimed astrophysicist and bestselling author Neil deGrasse Tyson. But today, few of us have time to contemplate the cosmos. So Tyson brings the universe down to Earth suc...

The world-famous cosmologist leaves us with his final thoughts on the universe's biggest questions in this brilliant posthumous work. Throughout his extraordinary career, Stephen Hawking expanded our understanding of the universe and unravelled some of its greatest mysteries. But even as his theoretical work on black holes, imaginary time and multi...

"Lively and provocative... Mr. Hawking clearly possesses a natural teacher's gifts-easy, good-natured humor and an ability to illustrate highly complex proposition with analogies plucked from daily life." -The New York Times "Charming and Lucid...( A book of) sunny brilliance". - The New Yorker "This book marries a child's wonder to a genius...

Meet the forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd. He solves the mysteries of unexplained or sudden death. He's a detective in his own right. And he has one, ultimate and pressing question to answer: How did this person die? Unnatural Causes is an unputdownable record of an extraordinary life, a unique insight into a remarkable profession, and abo...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of Blueprint written and read by Robert Plomin. The blueprint for our individuality lies in the 1% of DNA that differs between people. Our intellectual capacity, our introversion or extraversion, our vulnerability to mental illness, even whether we are a morning person - all of these aspects of our personality...

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of What Dementia Teaches Us About Love written and read by Nicci Gerrard. Dementia is an unmaking, a de-creation - an apocalypse of meaning. Since my father's slow-motion dying, and his actual death in November 2014, I have been much preoccupied with dementia: by those who have it, by those who look after them...

We seem to have given up on any serious effort to prevent catastrophic climate change. Exposing the work of ideologues on the right who know the challenge this poses to the free market all too well, Naomi Klein also challenges the failing strategies of environmental groups. It's time to stop running from the full implications of the crisis and begi...

Award-winning science writer David Adam reveals how frontier neuroscience can enhance your intelligence.What if the route to better brain power is not hard work or thousands of hours of practice but to simply swallow a pill? In The Genius Within, best-selling author David Adam explores the groundbreaking neuroscience of cognitive enhancement. Shari...

From intelligence to emotion, for centuries science has told us that men and women are fundamentally different. But this is not the whole story. Shedding light on controversial research and investigating the ferocious gender wars in biology, psychology and anthropology, Angela Saini takes listeners on an eye-opening journey to uncover how women are...