Every one of Earth's teeming ecosystems is an evolutionary cauldronChristopher Wills's claim has its roots in an insight from Charles Darwin: the interactions between species in an ecosystem are a powerful driver of evolution. In this book Wills describes how, by using the latest genetic techniques, we are probing ecosystems and discovering that even the most apparently barren of them are rich in variety, especially of microbes. Exploring the many ways in which eco...

How our growing knowledge of the evolution of complex ecosystems, using the latest genetic tools, can help us heal them - and survive This is not another Chicken Little book about the environment. Every reader already knows how overpopulation, ignorance and tribalism are contributing to environmental destruction and breakdowns in public health. We are all aware of the grim possibility that during our lifetimes the Earth might "flip" to a new ecological equilibrium, threate...

In Green Equilibrium, Christopher Wills explains the rules by which ecosystems maintain a diversity of interdependent species, in particular the balance of predators and prey. Wills is both an eminent academic and a hugely experienced field-biologist. In presenting the concept of 'green equilibrium', he draws on a fascinating range of examples, including coral reefs off the densely populated Philippines, the isolated and densely forested valleys of Papua New Guinea, the changing H...

In this remarkable account, evolutionary biologist Christopher Wills takes us on a voyage of discovery through the exotic pasts of the viruses and bacteria that periodically emerge with such disastrous results for our species. It is our knowledge of their secret lives, the eons spent quietly passing in and out of myriad other life forms, mutating and coadapting, that gives us hope of taming them. By putting these organisms—from bubonic plague to Ebola—at center-stage, Wills shows how we wi...

In this magnificently illustrated book, Christopher Wills takes us on a series of adventures. From the underwater life of Indonesia's Lambeh Strait to a little valley in northern Israel, to an earthquake in the coral reef off the island of Yap and the dry valleys of western Mongolia, Wills demonstrates how ecology and evolution have interacted to yield the world we live in. Each chapter features a different location and brings out a different and important message. With the author's own st...

Are we still evolving?Scientists have grappled with this question since the time of Darwin. Now, in this provocative book, biologist Christopher Wills argues that we are not only continuing to evolve but that our pace of change is accelerating. He examines the rapid, short-term evolutionary change taking place in people living at the earth's extremes (even as babies, Tibetans can draw in more oxygen than lowlanders), and the new physiology of those who participate in extreme sports...

Have you ever loved someone whos mortally wounded you? Phineas Poe, disgraced cop and morphine addict, has just been released from a psych ward when he meets a beautiful woman named Jude in a hotel bar. Red dress, black hair, body like a knife. He takes her back to his room and wakes up the next morning in a bathtub full of blood and ice, missing a kidney. Falling for her is the start of a twisted love story that takes him from the snowy streets of Denver to the high plains of Texas, where...

Kidnapping, snuff films, amputee geeks, and a requiem for lost love... Cast adrift after the blood symphony of Penny Dreadful, Phineas Poe is looking for answers in the form of a woman. He tracks Jude to San Francisco, where he finds her involved with John Ransom Miller, a wealthy sociopath with a mysterious hold over her. Jude is nursing her own revenge fantasy, but she needs Millers help, and in exchange Miller wants Jude to help him with an unspeakable crime. Alone and outgunned, Poe hopes...

To play the 'Game of Tongues', you must first understand the caste system. Phineas Poe, antihero of 'Kiss Me, Judas', returns to Denver to find reality rewritten and the laws of reason fractured. When Poe is enlisted by his old ally, Detective Moon, to find a missing cop named Jimmy Sky, he is drawn into the 'Game of Tongues', a violent fantasy game played out by disaffected college drones, hacker kids, and Goth refugees in underground punk clubs, on rooftops, and in sewers. Everyone he meets...

An exuberant biography of the life of the iconic photographer and naturalist Peter Beard, whose life and work captured the cultural imaginationPeter Beard lived an astonishing life. The artist, wildlife photographer, and bon vivant enthralled and inspired both because of his work and his legendary lifestyle. A scion of American industry turned explorer of Africa and environmental advocate, Beard embodied the extremes of his time: grand adventurer and sexually vorac...

City banker Joseph Ashcroft has stolen £1.34 billion from his own bank. He has given it - untraceably - to impoverished strangers worldwide, and has fled. Why has he done this? And will he get away with it? Joseph knows that if he leaves the country, he will easily be tracked down. So he opts for hiding close by - first in the city, then in the woods near the home of his estranged family. An ex-soldier, he's adept at the art of camouflage. On Joseph's trail is Ben Lancaster, the bank's hea...

When the TARDIS materialises in medieval Worcester, the Doctor finds the city seemingly deserted. He soon discovers its population are living in a state of terror, afraid of meeting their doom at the hands of the legendary Devil’s Huntsman. For months, people have been disappearing, and the Sheriff has imposed a strict curfew across the city, his militia maintaining control over the superstitious populace with a firm hand, closing the city to outsiders. Is it fear of attack from beyond the...