Describes the author's effort to connect with George Carpenter, her long-estranged septuagenarian father, a homesteader, classical guitarist, and war veteran whose views on freedom prompted a life of solitude.

THE END OF CIVILIZATION WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING... A worldwide chemical attack brings society to its knees. The toxin affects all mammals who are exposed to it, driving them into a cannibalistic rage. Known as 'ferals, ' the infected humans and animals are not zombies. They're something else entirely. Living creatures who have lost their ability to think and reason. Mindless killers with a lust for flesh. Amid the ruins, the remains of a U.S. Marine Corps unit do their best to lead a group of survivors in the daily struggle for existence. The Marines are trained and battle hardened warriors, but nothing they learned on the killing fields of Afghanistan could prepare them for this. The world as they knew it is a thing of the past. The human race has gone feral... "Nulty has a phenomenal way of depicting pulse pounding terror, descriptive action and grisly detail that never fails to accentuate unease. Fair warning, his action scenes are not for the faint of heart. A certain passage comes to mind utilizing a discarded femur to puncture a car tire comes to mind. Fans of the zombiefare genre will not be disappointed." -HorrorNews.net

A non-fiction narrative describing my experience of long-term camping in a Lake District wood, whilst working at an outdoor shop. It's also about fell-running, and an account of a 50-mile round, starting and finishing in Ambleside. Overall it's a story that celebrates the wild in Nature, as opposed to the tamed and commodified of modern society.

A tiny American town's plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town's thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton's neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale of what happens when a government disappears into the woods. Complete with gunplay, adventure, and backstabbing politicians, this is the ultimate story of a quintessential American experiment -- to live free or die, perhaps from a bear.

As an investigative journalist, Monbiot found a mission in his ecological boredom, that of learning what it might take to impose a greater state of harmony between himself and nature. He was not one to romanticize undisturbed, primal landscapes, but rather in his attempts to satisfy his cravings for a richer, more authentic life, he came stumbled into the world of restoration and rewilding. When these concepts were first introduced in 2011, very recently, they focused on releasing captive animals into the wild. Soon the definition expanded to describe the reintroduction of animal and plant species to habitats from which they had been excised. Some people began using it to mean the rehabilitation not just of particular species, but of entire ecosystems: a restoration of wilderness. Rewilding recognizes that nature consists not just of a collection of species but also of their ever-shifting relationships with each other and with the physical environment. Ecologists have shown how the dynamics within communities are affected by even the seemingly minor changes in species assemblages. Predators and large herbivores have transformed entire landscapes, from the nature of the soil to the flow of rivers, the chemistry of the oceans, and the composition of the atmosphere. The complexity of earth systems is seemingly boundless."

A cat groomer tails a killer who’s gone wild for feral felines in this cozy mystery by the author of The Persian Always Meows Twice—“a cat lover’s delight” (Publishers Weekly). When her friend Dawn starts an organization to protect a colony of stray cats in Chadwick, New Jersey, cat groomer Cassie McGlone is happy to help. The residents of a local condo community have got their backs up over the cat invasion, and Dawn needs someone with feline finesse to talk them down off the limb. Not everyone's against the cats. Eccentric Sabrina Ward has even created makeshift shelters for them in the nearby woods. But after Cassie and Dawn make their proposal at a heated community meeting, Sabrina turns up dead. While the police declare it an accident, Cassie smells a rat. And now she’s determined to collar the killer before another cat lover has a fatal accident. “It doesn’t take a cat lover to fall in love with this perfectly crafted cozy series.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on The Bengal Identity

Urban and rural collide in this wry, inspiring memoir of a woman who turned a vacant lot in downtown Oakland into a thriving farm Novella Carpenter loves cities-the culture, the crowds, the energy. At the same time, she can't shake the fact that she is the daughter of two back-to-the-land hippies who taught her to love nature and eat vegetables. Ambivalent about repeating her parents' disastrous mistakes, yet drawn to the idea of backyard self-sufficiency, Carpenter decided that it might be possible to have it both ways: a homegrown vegetable plot as well as museums, bars, concerts, and a twenty-four-hour convenience mart mere minutes away. Especially when she moved to a ramshackle house in inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door. She closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes, a beehive, and a chicken coop. What started out as a few egg-laying chickens led to turkeys, geese, and ducks. Soon, some rabbits joined the fun, then two three-hundred-pound pigs. And no, these charming and eccentric animals weren't pets; she was a farmer, not a zookeeper. Novella was raising these animals for dinner. Novella Carpenter's corner of downtown Oakland is populated by unforgettable characters. Lana (anal spelled backward, she reminds us) runs a speakeasy across the street and refuses to hurt even a fly, let alone condone raising turkeys for Thanksgiving. Bobby, the homeless man who collects cars and car parts just outside the farm, is an invaluable neighborhood concierge. The turkeys, Harold and Maude, tend to escape on a daily basis to cavort with the prostitutes hanging around just off the highway nearby. Every day on this strange and beautiful farm, urban meets rural in the most surprising ways. For anyone who has ever grown herbs on their windowsill, tomatoes on their fire escape, or obsessed over the offerings at the local farmers' market, Carpenter's story will capture your heart. And if you've ever considered leaving it all behind to become a farmer outside the city limits, or looked at the abandoned lot next door with a gleam in your eye, consider this both a cautionary tale and a full-throated call to action. Farm City is an unforgettably charming memoir, full of hilarious moments, fascinating farmers' tips, and a great deal of heart. It is also a moving meditation on urban life versus the natural world and what we have given up to live the way we do.