This extensively illustrated book showcases and explores a selection of the best art of the ‘Age of Discovery’, drawn from a collection held in the Royal Library in Windsor Castle. From the 15th century onwards, European explorers were encountering exotic plants and wildlife in places such as Africa and the Americas. Specimens were shipped back home, providing intriguing material for artists, some of whom were then inspired to travel to these new places and capture the wonders first-hand. These intricately observed illustrations and watercolours have been selected with help from the contemporary world’s most famed observer of the natural world, Sir David Attenborough, who also contributes a thoughtful and engaging introduction.

Compiled by the art collections manager of the library of the Natural History Museum in London, Art of Nature traces the depiction of the natural world by naturalists, botanists and artists over the past 300 years. All the talented names in natural history art are here, including Audubon, Gould and present-day artists including New Zealander Bryan Poole. Magee’s informative text reveals the compulsions that led naturalists and artists to study the natural world and embark on potentially hazardous journeys to do so. Packed with beautifully drawn and detailed illustrations of familiar and unfamiliar animals, birds, insects, reptiles, flowers, plants and people, the book is divided thematically into the continents of the Americas, Australasia, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Numbers, said Pythagoras, rule the universe, and author Jamie Buchan sets out to prove the point with a light-hearted investigation into ‘stuff about numbers that isn’t (just) maths’. Numbers in language, religion, mythology, maths and science are all covered, and thankfully there’s plenty of irreverence and playfulness to balance out the more weighty themes. If you do feel a flashback of school maths-induced panic coming on, just head for the numbers in fiction chapter and read up about 007 and Hawaii Five-0, or discover why buses have the annoying habit of coming in threes in the culture chapter. If you’ve never previously given much thought to numbers, this book will have you viewing the world of digits and numerals in a very different light.

Writer Richard Allen and photographer Kimbal Baker take us on a tour of Australia’s 50 oldest, largest and most unusual trees. The result of what must have been a difficult choice is a marvellous collection covering every type of tree, from Australian natives and introduced exotics to privately owned and historically significant specimens. Full-colour photographs capture the magnificence of the trees included in the selection (for example, the Wollemi pine, described as one of the greatest living fossils discovered in the 20th century) and just as captivating are the accompanying stories, anecdotes and background text.

This companion volume to the bestselling Bedside Book of Birds blends the best writing about animals and their prey with a wealth of extraordinary illustration. Among the writers included are Simon Armitage, Margaret Atwood, Walter Benjamin, Italo Calvino, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, Gerald Durrell, Henri Fabre, E. M. Forster, Jean Giono, Zbigniew Herbert, W. H. Hudson, Ted Hughes, Franz Kafka, Galway Kinnell, Rudyard Kipling, Barry Lopez, Konrad Lorenz, Haruki Murakami, Robert Musil, Theodore Roosevelt, Leo Tolstoy and Laurens van der Post. Illustrations include prehistoric cave paintings, outstanding wildlife photography and works by Audubon, Robert Bateman, William Blake, Mark Catesby, Francisco de Goya, Thomas Landseer, Rene Magritte, Peter Paul Rubens and Henri Rousseau.

US neurosurgeon Sanjay Gupta chronicles the death-defying medical achievements made possible by modern-day science. Focusing on the dramatic stories of several case studies, Gupta reveals that severe cold can save rather than take a life, and that performing chest compression on cardiac arrest patients can be more successful than mouth-to-mouth CPR. He discusses the REM nature of near-death experiences, and the facts and fiction of ‘brain death’. Using uncomplicated, accessible language, he analyses the role of prayer in health and medicine, and the truth behind medical miracles. Ultimately, Gupta sees death as a process rather than a single moment that ends life, hence the opportunities to ‘cheat’ that final outcome.

Ornithologist Glen Chilton describes himself as having been an obsessive child who grew into an equally obsessive adult. The proof of the pudding is in this quirky boy’s own adventure, the part travelogue, part kooky detective tale of one man’s obsession to track down each and every stuffed specimen and egg of the extinct Canadian Labrador duck in existence. The hapless Labrador duck became extinct in the late 19th century and only 55 specimens remain in museums scattered around the world. Chilton’s tale is peppered with anecdotes, comical character studies and an offer of US$10,000 to the first person who can point him in the direction of a genuine Labrador duck specimen he hasn’t yet seen. Get looking!

When many of us think of insects, we think of pests. But entomologist Gilbert Waldbauer has been enthralled by the insect world ever since, as a schoolboy, he watched a spectacular moth emerge from a cocoon he’d found and hoarded. That schoolboy enthusiasm and wonder are still at the core of his passion for insects, and – along with his mastery of his subject – infuse every page of this delightful book. Fireflies, Honey and Silk is a celebration of the insect world, the pleasure we take from it and the ways in which human culture has been enriched by it over the centuries. Enlivened with personal anecdotes and interwoven with history, mythology, literature and medicine, this book details the products insects have given us, their discovery, and their uses.

Disheartened by the shrink-wrapped state of contemporary supermarket fruits and vegetables, many shoppers hark back to a time when foods were naturally produced rather than processed – and tasted different as a consequence. But in this book, Noel Kingsbury draws on anecdotal, historical and scientific accounts to reveal that those foods of our childhood memories were themselves far from natural; rather, they represent the end of a millennia-long history of selective breeding and hybridisation. Starting his story at the birth of agriculture, Kingsbury traces the history of human attempts to make plants more reliable, productive and nutritious.

It will surprise many to learn that Goethe, one of Germany’s foremost literary figures, considered his most significant life achievement to be his scientific research and writing. This short book, first published in 1790, was his attempt to explain ‘the truth about the how of the organism’. It was to prove deeply influential – Charles Darwin cited Goethe’s theories of ‘morphology’, developed here, in many works, including The Origins of the Species; and it was also a crucial influence on Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry Thoreau. This beautiful illustrated edition has been carefully and methodically matched with exquisite photographs taken to illustrate Goethe’s points, as well as his own early sketches, and a selection of illustrations from previous editions.

No Small Matter takes an imaginative, intimate and often metaphorical look at nanoscience – structures so tiny they’re invisible to a microscope’s lens. Living cells, DNA, microprocessors, quantum dots, nanotubes – the uses and possibilities, applications and implications of micro- and nanotechnology touch a wealth of areas, including computing and biomedicine. In elucidating concepts that are on the very frontier of modern science, the authors are particularly interested in the often-alien forms that nano-sized mechanisms can take at such a tiny scale. The images by scientific photographer Felice C. Frankel help us to envisage the invisible, while text by George M. Whitesides, who directs a research group into nanoscience, describes the unseeable. A picture book with a difference.

Dawkins’ absorbing anthology of the best writing penned by professional scientists since the 20th century unites science and literature to brilliant effect. Accessible and enlightening, the collection follows a roughly thematic rather than chronological structure, divided into four parts: what scientists study, who scientists are, what scientists think and what scientists delight in. Contributions are preceded by illuminating introductory notes by Dawkins and cover a wealth of subjects from astronomy to quantum mechanics. Authors include Rachel Carson, Stephen Jay Gould, Francis Crick, Primo Levi and Carl Sagan. Dawkins is the author of The Selfish Gene (OUP. PB. $32.95) and The God Delusion (Black Swan. PB. $27.95).

The premise is straightforward: expose yourself to a variety of chemicals encountered in everyday life and compare the results with a series of before and after blood and urine tests. Canadian environmentalists Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie take a Super Size Me approach, playing guinea pigs to expose themselves to a mixed bag of toxic chemicals we are regularly exposed to in and around the home. Test results show that levels of chemicals all increased in the body after short-term exposure, sometimes dramatically so. Scary, when you consider that the range of potential side-effects include cancer and testicular dysfunction in children. This controversial work is a must-have for anyone interested in knowing about (and seeking to avoid) the toxic chemicals we encounter in our daily life.

This engrossing book draws on history and science – and employs the narrative force of a novel. Richard Hamblyn tells the stories of four large-scale natural disasters: the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the weather-panics of the summer of 1783, the eruption of Krakatau in 1883 and the Hilo tsunami of 1946. He uses historical sources and eyewitness accounts to report the damage they wrought, and follows the journey of scientists and policy-makers in tracing the probable causes, rebuilding the damaged societies and taking valuable lessons from the disasters. The settings of each disaster are sharply alive, from the ‘aromas of burning tobacco and caramelised sugar’ that pervaded the fires of the Lisbon earthquake to the corpses piled in an icehouse after the Hilo tsunami.

The story of how a scientist and a parrot discovered a hidden world of animal intelligence – and formed a deep bond in the process.

A hilarious and informative journey through the world of the wrong or misleading science that regularly appears in advertising and the media.

This celebration of our amazing bird varieties features stunning full-colour photographs.

In Catching Fire, anthropologist and chimpanzee-expert Richard Wrangham poses the idea that humanity’s breakthrough from monkey to mankind wasn’t due to the development of language or the importance of having an opposable thumb – instead, it was the invention of fire and the creation of cooking. The book begins by debunking the usefulness of raw food, outlining our failure to thrive on a raw-food diet and our vulnerability to bacteria in uncooked foods. Wrangham goes on to trace the beginnings of cooking with fire, and posits the belief that using fire led to an increase in the size of our brains by freeing up time for things other than hunting and chewing. It’s a fascinating and controversial theory of evolution that also sheds light on the traditionally accepted role of women as homemakers.

This gripping work portrays the Darwinian revolution as a collective enterprise forged in Australasia by Darwin and three other 19th-century naturalists.

The fiery science/religion debate continues as Dawkins, world-renowned evolutionary biologist and famous atheist, takes on the Creationists.

An authorised biography of James Lovelock, an iconic figure in British science and the father of Gaia theory. NB: December release.

A revised and expanded edition of the popular book of David Quammen’s lively writings about science and nature.

A lifelong bird enthusiast explores the lives of some of our most extraordinary fellow creatures with authority and wry humour.

An accessible exploration of the science of the everyday world from New Scientist writer, Marcus Chown. NB: December release.

Honeybees are dying. Here, two keen amateur apiarists investigate the situation and ask whether there is any possible way of saving the species.