
Vanishing Treasures
A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
3 months free
Buy for $13.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Lenny Henry
-
Katherine Rundell
About this listen
A Most Anticipated Book from Boston Globe, Parade, & Literary Hub • From the award-winning author Katherine Rundell comes a “rare and magical book” (Bill Bryson) reckoning with the vanishing wonders of our natural world
The world is more astonishing, more miraculous, and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this brilliant and passionately persuasive book, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's most awe-inspiring animals currently facing extinction.
Consider the seahorse: couples mate for life and meet each morning for a dance, pirouetting and changing colors before going their separate ways, to dance again the next day. The American wood frog survives winter by allowing itself to freeze solid, its heartbeat slowing until it stops altogether. Come spring, the heart kick-starts itself spontaneously back to life. As for the lemur, it lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what’s known as a lemur ball, paws and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel.
But each of these extraordinary animals is endangered or holds a sub-species that is endangered. This urgent, inspiring book of essays dedicated to 23 unusual and underappreciated creatures is a clarion call insisting that we look at the world around us with new eyes—to see the magic of the animals we live among, their unknown histories and capabilities, and above all how lucky we are to tread the same ground as such vanishing treasures.
Full of inimitable wit and intellect, Vanishing Treasures is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck, to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness.
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
What the Chicken Knows
- A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird
- By: Sy Montgomery
- Narrated by: Sy Montgomery
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable creatures: only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run, and peck; relationships are important to them and the average chicken can recognize more than one hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least twenty-four distinct calls.
-
-
Real stories
- By Elaine on 12-05-24
By: Sy Montgomery
-
Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
-
-
One of the few books I will return
- By Amazon Customer on 06-28-25
-
The Serviceberry
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 1 hr and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity.
-
-
Engaging and optimistic
- By Steve on 12-18-24
-
Rooftoppers
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive - but “almost impossible” means “still possible.” And you should never ignore a possible.
-
-
WOW
- By Beth on 01-09-16
-
The Poisoned King
- Impossible Creatures, Book 2
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christopher Forrester woke to find a dragon chewing on his face—and his heart leapt for joy! He’d been dreaming of going back to the Archipelago, the secret cluster of islands where all the creatures of myth still live, and here was his summons. But there is a poison spreading in the Archipelago. Rooting it out will involve a daring rescue mission on the back of a sphinx, a stealthy entrance to a dragon’s lair, and a death-defying plan to save a prisoner held in the heart of a castle.
-
The Dead of Winter
- Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures
- By: Sarah Clegg
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis, Sarah Clegg
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When you think about Christmas, you likely picture mangers, glowing fireplaces, sweet carolers, and snow-blanketed hills. But behind all this bright magic, there’s something much darker lurking in the shadows. In The Dead of Winter, Cambridge-trained historian Sarah Clegg delves deep into the folklore of the Christmas season in Europe, detailing the way its terrifying and often debaucherous past continues to haunt and entertain us now in the twenty-first century.
-
-
Maglcal
- By Karin Conti on 12-23-24
By: Sarah Clegg
-
What the Chicken Knows
- A New Appreciation of the World's Most Familiar Bird
- By: Sy Montgomery
- Narrated by: Sy Montgomery
- Length: 2 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this short, delightful book, Sy takes us inside the flock and reveals all the things that make chickens such remarkable creatures: only hours after leaving the egg, they are able to walk, run, and peck; relationships are important to them and the average chicken can recognize more than one hundred other chickens; they remember the past and anticipate the future; and they communicate specific information through at least twenty-four distinct calls.
-
-
Real stories
- By Elaine on 12-05-24
By: Sy Montgomery
-
Is a River Alive?
- By: Robert Macfarlane
- Narrated by: Robert Macfarlane
- Length: 10 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.
-
-
One of the few books I will return
- By Amazon Customer on 06-28-25
-
The Serviceberry
- By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
- Length: 1 hr and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As Indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most? Our economy is rooted in scarcity, competition, and the hoarding of resources, and we have surrendered our values to a system that actively harms what we love. Meanwhile, the serviceberry’s relationship with the natural world is an embodiment of reciprocity.
-
-
Engaging and optimistic
- By Steve on 12-18-24
-
Rooftoppers
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive - but “almost impossible” means “still possible.” And you should never ignore a possible.
-
-
WOW
- By Beth on 01-09-16
-
The Poisoned King
- Impossible Creatures, Book 2
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christopher Forrester woke to find a dragon chewing on his face—and his heart leapt for joy! He’d been dreaming of going back to the Archipelago, the secret cluster of islands where all the creatures of myth still live, and here was his summons. But there is a poison spreading in the Archipelago. Rooting it out will involve a daring rescue mission on the back of a sphinx, a stealthy entrance to a dragon’s lair, and a death-defying plan to save a prisoner held in the heart of a castle.
-
The Dead of Winter
- Beware the Krampus and Other Wicked Christmas Creatures
- By: Sarah Clegg
- Narrated by: Hannah Curtis, Sarah Clegg
- Length: 4 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When you think about Christmas, you likely picture mangers, glowing fireplaces, sweet carolers, and snow-blanketed hills. But behind all this bright magic, there’s something much darker lurking in the shadows. In The Dead of Winter, Cambridge-trained historian Sarah Clegg delves deep into the folklore of the Christmas season in Europe, detailing the way its terrifying and often debaucherous past continues to haunt and entertain us now in the twenty-first century.
-
-
Maglcal
- By Karin Conti on 12-23-24
By: Sarah Clegg
-
The Birds That Audubon Missed
- Discovery and Desire in the American Wilderness
- By: Kenn Kaufman
- Narrated by: Mack Sanderson
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.
-
-
I LOVE the audible version of this book
- By NYC person on 10-01-24
By: Kenn Kaufman
-
Regeneration
- By: Pat Barker
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon's "sanity" and sending him back to the trenches.
By: Pat Barker
-
Cabinet of Curiosities
- A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre
- By: Aaron Mahnke, Harry Marks - contributor
- Narrated by: Aaron Mahnke
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The podcast, Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. Now, in Cabinet of Curiosities the book, learn the fascinating story of the invention of the croissant in a country that was not France, and relive the adventures of a dog that stowed away and went to war, only to help capture a German spy.
-
-
Cool stories, annoying conversation
- By Margaret on 11-26-24
By: Aaron Mahnke, and others
-
Pests
- How Humans Create Animal Villains
- By: Bethany Brookshire
- Narrated by: Courtney Patterson
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don’t expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It’s no longer an animal. It’s a pest. At the intersection of science, history, and narrative journalism, Pests is not a simple call to look closer at our urban ecosystem. It’s not a natural history of the animals we hate. Instead, this book is about us.
-
-
Amazing Conclusion!
- By Anonymous User on 01-29-23
-
Wild Life
- Finding My Purpose in an Untamed World
- By: Rae Wynn-Grant
- Narrated by: Rae Wynn-Grant
- Length: 8 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Wild Life follows Rae on her adventures and explorations in some of the world’s most remote locales. Hers is a story about a nearly twenty-year career in the wild—carving a niche as one of very few Black female scientists—and the challenges she had to overcome, expectations she had to leave behind, and the many lessons she learned along the way.
-
-
Honest and Inspirational
- By Debbie A Bettis on 02-09-25
By: Rae Wynn-Grant
-
Phantom Plague
- How Tuberculosis Shaped History
- By: Vidya Krishnan
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan
- Length: 8 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Phantom Plague, Vidya Krishnan, traces the history of tuberculosis from the slums of 19th-century New York to modern Mumbai. In a narrative spanning century, Krishnan shows how superstition and folk remedies made way for scientific understanding of TB, such that it was controlled and cured in the West.
-
-
Excellent
- By M. Flanigan on 06-07-23
By: Vidya Krishnan
-
When the Earth Was Green
- Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance
- By: Riley Black
- Narrated by: Wren Mack
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Riley Black brings us back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides listeners along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.
-
-
No argument
- By Anonymous User on 05-20-25
By: Riley Black
-
Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party
- How an Eccentric Group of Victorians Discovered Prehistoric Creatures and Accidentally Upended the World
- By: Edward Dolnick
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland.
-
-
Wonderful narration of an awesome history
- By BB on 09-26-24
By: Edward Dolnick
-
Twelve Trees
- The Deep Roots of Our Future
- By: Daniel Lewis
- Narrated by: Kaleo Griffith
- Length: 9 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The world today is undergoing the most rapid environmental transformation in human history—from climate change to deforestation. Scientists, ethnobotanists, indigenous peoples, and collectives of all kinds are closely studying trees and their biology to understand how and why trees function individually and collectively in the ways they do. In Twelve Trees, Daniel Lewis, curator and historian at one of the world’s most renowned research libraries, travels the world to learn about these trees in their habitats.
-
-
lots of detail
- By David M Hazelton on 03-06-25
By: Daniel Lewis
-
The People's Hospital
- Hope and Peril in American Medicine
- By: Ricardo Nuila MD
- Narrated by: Ricardo Nuila MD
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? In The People’s Hospital, physician Ricardo Nuila’s stunning debut, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care.
-
-
Ben Taub Nurse
- By Patricia Gonzales on 05-11-23
By: Ricardo Nuila MD
-
The Wood at Midwinter
- By: Susanna Clarke
- Narrated by: Susanna Clarke
- Length: 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scot is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods. One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.
-
-
Fun
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-25
By: Susanna Clarke
-
Custodians of Wonder
- Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive
- By: Eliot Stein
- Narrated by: Danny Hughes
- Length: 12 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Eliot Stein has traveled the globe in search of remarkable people who are preserving some of our most extraordinary cultural rites. In Custodians of Wonder, Stein introduces listeners to a man saving the secret ingredient in Japan's 700-year-old original soy sauce recipe. In Italy, he learns how to make the world's rarest pasta from one of the only women alive who knows how to make it. And in India, he discovers a family rumored to make a mysterious metal mirror believed to reveal your truest self.
-
-
Awonderful uplifting book!
- By Cheryl on 04-29-25
By: Eliot Stein
Critic reviews
“A poignant survey of animal species whose survival is threatened by humans . . . Rundell approaches her subjects with reverence, as when she writes that blind, iridescent golden moles ‘burrow and breed and hunt, live and die under the African sun, unaware of their beauty, unknowingly glowing.’ Animal lovers will cherish this.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[Rundell] illuminates this collection of essays with fable, legend, myth, and truth stranger than fiction... Although it is a sobering glimpse at the destruction humanity has wrought on other living things, Vanishing Treasures is ultimately an uplifting and inspiring exploration of the wonder left in the world and how humanity can fit within it, and add to its extraordinary quality.”
—Shelf Awareness
“This world, even as we degrade it, remains almost unimaginably beautiful and interesting, as this remarkable bestiary makes clear. Here are a bunch of very very good reasons to actually try and hold on to as much of the Pleistocene as we can.”
—Bill McKibben, author The End of Nature
Editorial Review
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
The Explorer
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Katherine Rundell comes an exciting new novel about a group of kids who must survive in the Amazon after their plane crashes. Fred, Con, Lila, and Max are on their way back to England from Manaus when the plane they're on crashes and the pilot dies upon landing. For days they survive alone, until Fred finds a map that leads them to a ruined city, and to a secret.
-
-
Mostly good but what age group?
- By Lyric G. Eads on 05-20-25
-
Rooftoppers
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive - but “almost impossible” means “still possible.” And you should never ignore a possible.
-
-
WOW
- By Beth on 01-09-16
-
Parallel Lines
- A Novel
- By: Edward St. Aubyn
- Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the bestselling and award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose novels, a hilarious and moving story about a group of wildly different characters whose fates are improbably yet inextricably linked—a novel about extinction and survival, inheritance and loss, written with St. Aubyn’s trademark wit and inimitable style
By: Edward St. Aubyn
-
Playing Possum
- How Animals Understand Death
- By: Susana Monsó, Mark Rowlands - foreword
- Narrated by: Lisa S. Ware
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom.
-
-
Absolutely intolerable narration
- By K. Arford on 11-03-24
By: Susana Monsó, and others
-
The Poisoned King
- Impossible Creatures, Book 2
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christopher Forrester woke to find a dragon chewing on his face—and his heart leapt for joy! He’d been dreaming of going back to the Archipelago, the secret cluster of islands where all the creatures of myth still live, and here was his summons. But there is a poison spreading in the Archipelago. Rooting it out will involve a daring rescue mission on the back of a sphinx, a stealthy entrance to a dragon’s lair, and a death-defying plan to save a prisoner held in the heart of a castle.
-
Cabinet of Curiosities
- A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre
- By: Aaron Mahnke, Harry Marks - contributor
- Narrated by: Aaron Mahnke
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The podcast, Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. Now, in Cabinet of Curiosities the book, learn the fascinating story of the invention of the croissant in a country that was not France, and relive the adventures of a dog that stowed away and went to war, only to help capture a German spy.
-
-
Cool stories, annoying conversation
- By Margaret on 11-26-24
By: Aaron Mahnke, and others
-
The Explorer
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Boston Globe-Horn Book Award winner Katherine Rundell comes an exciting new novel about a group of kids who must survive in the Amazon after their plane crashes. Fred, Con, Lila, and Max are on their way back to England from Manaus when the plane they're on crashes and the pilot dies upon landing. For days they survive alone, until Fred finds a map that leads them to a ruined city, and to a secret.
-
-
Mostly good but what age group?
- By Lyric G. Eads on 05-20-25
-
Rooftoppers
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Narrated by: Nicola Barber
- Length: 5 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive - but “almost impossible” means “still possible.” And you should never ignore a possible.
-
-
WOW
- By Beth on 01-09-16
-
Parallel Lines
- A Novel
- By: Edward St. Aubyn
- Narrated by: Benedict Cumberbatch
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the bestselling and award-winning author of the Patrick Melrose novels, a hilarious and moving story about a group of wildly different characters whose fates are improbably yet inextricably linked—a novel about extinction and survival, inheritance and loss, written with St. Aubyn’s trademark wit and inimitable style
By: Edward St. Aubyn
-
Playing Possum
- How Animals Understand Death
- By: Susana Monsó, Mark Rowlands - foreword
- Narrated by: Lisa S. Ware
- Length: 7 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When the opossum feels threatened, she becomes paralyzed. Her body temperature plummets, her breathing and heart rates drop to a minimum, and her glands simulate the smell of a putrefying corpse. Playing Possum explores what the opossum and other creatures can teach us about how we and other species understand mortality, and demonstrates that the concept of death, far from being a uniquely human attribute, is widespread in the animal kingdom.
-
-
Absolutely intolerable narration
- By K. Arford on 11-03-24
By: Susana Monsó, and others
-
The Poisoned King
- Impossible Creatures, Book 2
- By: Katherine Rundell
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Christopher Forrester woke to find a dragon chewing on his face—and his heart leapt for joy! He’d been dreaming of going back to the Archipelago, the secret cluster of islands where all the creatures of myth still live, and here was his summons. But there is a poison spreading in the Archipelago. Rooting it out will involve a daring rescue mission on the back of a sphinx, a stealthy entrance to a dragon’s lair, and a death-defying plan to save a prisoner held in the heart of a castle.
-
Cabinet of Curiosities
- A Historical Tour of the Unbelievable, the Unsettling, and the Bizarre
- By: Aaron Mahnke, Harry Marks - contributor
- Narrated by: Aaron Mahnke
- Length: 12 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The podcast, Aaron Mahnke’s Cabinet of Curiosities, has delighted millions of listeners for years with tales of the wonderful, astounding, and downright bizarre people, places, and things throughout history. Now, in Cabinet of Curiosities the book, learn the fascinating story of the invention of the croissant in a country that was not France, and relive the adventures of a dog that stowed away and went to war, only to help capture a German spy.
-
-
Cool stories, annoying conversation
- By Margaret on 11-26-24
By: Aaron Mahnke, and others
-
Secrets of the Octopus
- By: Sy Montgomery, Warren K. Carlyle IV - contributor, Alex Schnell - foreword
- Narrated by: Sy Montgomery
- Length: 4 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Remarkable new discoveries affirm the octopus as one of nature’s most intelligent and complex animals. This new book brings us closer than ever to these elusive creatures. The companion to the highly anticipated National Geographic television special, this book explores the alluring underwater world of the octopus—a creature that resembles an alien lifeform, but whose behavior has earned it a reputation as one of the most intelligent animals on the planet.
-
-
Fascinating!
- By Ms.INTP on 06-30-25
By: Sy Montgomery, and others
-
Raising Hare
- A Memoir
- By: Chloe Dalton
- Narrated by: Louise Brealey
- Length: 6 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality.
-
-
A beautiful reading of a heartfelt story. I didn’t want it to end.
- By Sparrow on 04-02-25
By: Chloe Dalton
-
Mavericks
- Life Stories and Lessons of History's Most Extraordinary Misfits
- By: Jenny Draper
- Narrated by: Jenny Draper
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her first book, popular TikTok historian J Draper uses her characteristic wit and intellect to introduce us to extraordinary figures marginalized by history, and the lessons we can learn from them. Witty and engaging TikTok historian J.D. Draper digs out unusual stories of individuals that have shaped the world, and discovers the lessons their unique experiences can teach us. Breaking away from history as told through the lens of kings, queens and nobles, this book instead lifts the lid on 24 fascinating stories of little-known underdogs, mavericks, trailblazers and oddballs.
-
-
excellent writing
- By Anonymous User on 05-04-25
By: Jenny Draper
-
Show Don't Tell
- Stories
- By: Curtis Sittenfeld
- Narrated by: Michael Crouch, Curtis Sittenfeld, George Newbern, and others
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her second story collection, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels. In these dazzling stories, she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends, laying bare the moments when their long held beliefs are overturned.
-
-
Always a pleasure
- By joshua simons on 03-21-25
-
Money, Lies, and God
- Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
- By: Katherine Stewart
- Narrated by: Patricia Rodriguez
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why have so many Americans turned against democracy? In this deeply reported book, Katherine Stewart takes us to conferences of conspiracy-mongers, backroom strategy gatherings, and services at extremist churches, and profiles the people who want to tear it all down.
-
-
Describes a well funded international fascist cult
- By marwalk on 03-24-25
-
What Kind of Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Janelle Brown
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Helen Laser
- Length: 11 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Growing up in an isolated cabin in Montana in the mid-1990s, Jane knows only the world that she and her father live in: the woodstove that heats their home, the vegetable garden where they try to eke out a subsistence, the books of nineteenth-century philosophy that her father gives her to read in lieu of going to school. Her father is elusive about their pasts, giving Jane little beyond the facts that they once lived in the Bay Area and that her mother died in a car accident, the crash propelling him to move Jane off the grid to raise her in a Waldenesque utopia.
-
-
What a great story!
- By Jeannine on 06-22-25
By: Janelle Brown
Amazing Book
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Important
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Sweet bestiary of memorable critters
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Wonder
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Loved this little gem!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Passionate and Impassioning
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
excellent
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Interesting
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Fun facts and folklore but a bit preachy
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.