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The World Beneath Our Feet | Frank Ashwood

 

In The World Beneath Our Feet, scientist and macro-photographer Frank Ashwood takes us on an unforgettable journey into the ecosystems of the underground. Travelling from the ancient forests of New Zealand to the vast black soils of the US and China, he reveals a world teeming with life: miniature engineers, microscopic predators, vast fungal networks and billions upon billions of microbes. A single teaspoon of soil can contain up to six billion organisms.

Meet earthworms that transform the ground as they move through it, pinhead-sized pseudoscorpions, almost indestructible tardigrades and nematode worms that may be the most abundant animals on Earth. Together, these extraordinary creatures help sustain life above ground, recycling nutrients and supporting the soils that feed our crops, store water and sustain our forests. Soil microbes have even given us life-saving medicines, including antibiotics.

Soil stores more carbon than all the world’s plants and atmosphere combined, yet degradation, erosion and climate change are putting this vital ecosystem under increasing pressure.

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The Rewilding | Donna M Cameron

 

Donna M Cameron’s novel is a striking hybrid of thriller, love story, family reckoning, and sly polemic about a planet on fire. Jagger Eckerman, on the run from his billionaire father and his hit men, hides deep in a rain forest in a cave already occupied by Nia — a woman on a mission to save the planet. But Nia isn’t just the story’s love interest: she is also its conscience, challenging Jagger’s first-world faith in technofixes and steadily dismantling them. Cameron’s gripping narrative is proof that cli-fi doesn’t have to choose between urgency and heart.

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Tree Full of Wonder | Anna Smithers

 

This delightful children’s book introduces young readers to the magnificence and importance of trees. Through lyrical prose and gorgeous illustrations, Tree Full of Wonder explores the many ways that trees enrich our lives—providing shade, food, homes for wildlife, and even helping to combat climate change. Blending wonder with practical knowledge, children will appreciate trees not just as background elements of nature, but as vital, living beings that sustain ecosystems. It’s a gentle yet powerful reminder of the interconnectedness of all life and a call to protect these natural treasures.

Perfect for bedtime stories or independent exploration. Suitable for ages 3-8.

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The Savage Landscape | Cal Flyn

 

A modern  journey into the heart of what we call wilderness, The Savage Landscape weaves together adventure, philosophy and personal reflection, asking urgent questions about humanity’s relationship with the natural world and the meaning of wild places in an era when no corner of the planet remains untouched. Flyn’s lyrical prose carries readers from the ocean floor to volcanic peaks, blending awe-inspiring landscapes with deep historical and cultural insights.

What makes this book exceptional is its refusal to romanticise wilderness. Instead, Flyn confronts the complexities of how humans have shaped—and been shaped by—the wild, challenging readers to reconsider their own relationship with the untamed. The result is a work that is as intellectually stimulating as it is beautifully written, leaving you with a sharper understanding of the wild’s enduring, if complicated, hold on the human spirit.

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No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies | Julian Aguon

 

‘A powerful, beautiful book. Its fierce love – of the land, the ocean, the elders and the ancestors – warms the heart and moves the spirit.’ – Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple

Part memoir, part manifesto, Chamorro climate activist Julian Aguon’s No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies is a coming-of-age story and a call for justice-for everyone, but in particular, for Indigenous peoples.

Aguon beautifully weaves together stories from his childhood in the villages of Guam with searing political commentary about matters ranging from nuclear weapons to global warming. Bearing witness and reckoning with the challenges of truth-telling in an era of rampant obfuscation, he culls from his own life experiences to illuminate a collective path out of the darkness.

A powerful and bold voice writing at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmental justice, Aguon is entrenched in the struggles of the people of the Pacific who are fighting to liberate themselves from colonial rule, defend their sacred sites and obtain justice for generations of harm.

In No Country for Eight-Spot Butterflies, Aguon shares his wisdom and reflections on love, grief, joy and triumph, and extends an offer to join him in a hard-earned hope for a better world.

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The Dark Frontier: Unlocking the Secrets of the Deep Sea | Jeffrey Marlow

 

The deep sea is one of our planet’s last frontiers. Here, where the light cannot reach, lies a strange, wonderful and breathtaking world, teeming with scientific marvels and lessons for the future of life on this planet. In The Dark Frontier, marine microbiologist and explorer Jeffrey Marlow plunges us into the ocean’s depths and invites us to witness close-up encounters with its hidden brilliance. Translucent shrimp dance through sulphurous vents, crabs stretch twelve feet from claw to claw and the eerie chalk-white towers of the ‘Lost City’ loom.

Immersive and illuminating, Marlow’s journeys reveal alarming warning signs as well: we are irrevocably changing the deep sea before we have even had a chance to understand it. This book offers insights into the ways in which the twinned forces of exploration and exploitation have shaped our relationship with the ocean. It shows how life can thrive in even the most extreme conditions, and reveals critical links between the deep sea and life on land.

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Dream State | Eric Puchner

 

Puchner’s engrossing multi-generational portrait of a groups of family and friends in Montana is a thoughtful examination of love, loss, and the enduring effects of past choices. But it is in its depiction of the desecration of wildlife and the creeping effects of climate breakdown that it excels. The story starts by an idyllic Montana lake in the present era, with the quickly-doomed wedding of Ceci and Charlie. But as the decades go by, we see how the lives of the bride, the groom, his best man and their families are shaped by good or bad luck, critical decisions, betrayals – and the creeping effects of wildlife habitat loss and climate breakdown. Like the best novels that deal with environmental issues, it’s in specifics – like the sinking water level in the once-pristine lake, or the disappearance of the native wolverine – that the present and the near-future are brought to poignantly exquisite life.

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The Signature of All Things | Elizabeth Gilbert

 

Elizabeth Gilbert may be best known for her searching memoirs, but her curiosity extends, in this enthralling historical novel, to the world of plants. The story follows Alma Whittaker, a brilliant and observant woman born into a botanical family in Philadelphia, who dedicates herself to the study of mosses. Through years of meticulous observation, she begins to notice patterns in how the plant spreads, competes, and adapts to its environment, and leads her to ideas resembling evolution and natural selection – years before Darwin’s Origin of Species.

Through one woman’s devotion to biological science, Gilbert shows how even the smallest forms of life can expose deep truths about survival, time, and the complexity of existence.

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Raising Hare | Chloe Dalton

 

When Dalton, a high-flying political advisor at Westminster, discovers an abandoned leveret near her home in the English countryside, she debates what to do. Should she leave it where it is, or try to save its life? Stories of human-animal relationships are almost a genre now – think H is for Hawk and My Octopus Teacher – and Dalton’s book, beautifully written and superbly illustrated by Denise Nestor, is a fine addition to the canon. Dalton rescues the animal, but she wisely refrains from naming or caging it. And in studying hare history and observing its development into maturity, she discovers how much it has teach her: “I was moved by the leveret’s dignity, the sense of well-being and calm it spread, and the simplicity of its life.”

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How Flowers Made our World | David George Heskell

 

Humans, animals and insects are all attracted to flowers – and that’s exactly what flowers want, because with their gorgeous colours, enticing smells and alluring shapes, they are on a mission. Biologist and environmental scientist David George Haskell casts flowers as dynamic “revolutionaries” whose evolution triggered a cascade of biodiversity, transforming oceans, creating new habitats, and even altering the climate. Blending vivid storytelling and cutting-edge science, Haskell’s vibrant book shows how flowers are both portals into deep time and essential players in our ecological future.