'I didn't want to die, and I especially didn't want to be killed by a crocodile. But there was no escape.' A robber has kidnapped Sam Fox and his cousin Nissa during a tropical cyclone. When the getaway car crashes into the raging Crocodile River, Sam and Nissa must face one ordeal after another to survive against incredible odds. Sam fights to keep his head above water and Nissa out of the jaws of certain death. As the waters rise and the crocodiles close in, Sam must push himself to the limits of endurance. An action-packed rollercoaster ride, Crocodile Attack is the first book in a thrilling new series! Visit puffin.com.au/extreme for more.
'Help me!' I gasped. 'My name is Sam Fox and I'm trapped in a truck . . . There's a bushfire all around me!' It's the holidays and Sam Fox has gone to the high country to stay with his grandparents. While trying to stop cattle rustlers from stealing a stud bull, an injured Sam is isolated in the mountains during a horrific bushfire. To survive, he must rely on his courage; ingenuity, and the help of Chainsaw – a mad old rodeo bull! An action-packed rollercoaster ride, Bushfire Rescue is the second book in a thrilling new series! Visit puffin.com.au/extreme for more.
There isn't really a word to describe the noise a volcano makes when it erupts. You don't just hear it, you feel it. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! A class trip to Borneo starts off with a bang – a visit to a real-life volcano! But when Mount Bako erupts, Sam Fox is left stranded with his teacher, Mr Griffin, who's suffering from a heart attack. They make it down the mountain to the cool blue sea – only to be hemmed in by blood-thirsty sharks . . . An action-packed adventure, Monkey Mountain is the hottest Extreme Adventure yet! Visit puffin.com.au/extreme for more.
Val Plumwood was an eminent environmental philosopher and activist who was prominent in the development of radical ecophilosophy from the early 1970s until her death in 2008. Her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1992) has become a classic. In 1985 she was attacked by a crocodile while kayaking alone in the Kakadu national park in the Northern Territory. She was death rolled three times before being released from the crocodile’s jaws. She crawled for hours through swamp with appalling injuries before being rescued. The experience made her well placed to write about cultural responses to death and predation. The first section of The Eye of the Crocodile consists of chapters intended for a book on crocodiles that remained unfinished at the time of Val’s death. The remaining chapters are previously published papers brought together to form an overview of Val’s ideas on death, predation and nature.
As thrilling as any novel, as taut and exciting as any adventure story, Peter Hathaway Capstick’s Death in the Long Grass takes us deep into the heart of darkness to view Africa through the eyes of one of the most renowned professional hunters. Few men can say they have known Africa as Capstick has known it—leading safaris through lion country; tracking man-eating leopards along tangled jungle paths; running for cover as fear-maddened elephants stampede in all directions. And of the few who have known this dangerous way of life, fewer still can recount their adventures with the flair of this former professional hunter-turned-writer. Based on Capstick’s own experiences and the personal accounts of his colleagues, Death in the Long Grassportrays the great killers of the African bush—not only the lion, leopard, and elephant, but the primitive rhino and the crocodile waiting for its unsuspecting prey, the titanic hippo and the Cape buffalo charging like an express train out of control. Capstick was a born raconteur whose colorful descriptions and eye for exciting, authentic detail bring us face to face with some of the most ferocious killers in the world—underrated killers like the surprisingly brave and cunning hyena, silent killers such as the lightning-fast black mamba snake, collective killers like the wild dog. Readers can lean back in a chair, sip a tall, iced drink, and revel in the kinds of hunting stories Hemingway and Ruark used to hear in hotel bars from Nairobi to Johannesburg, as veteran hunters would tell of what they heard beyond the campfire and saw through the sights of an express rifle.
The amazing story of a groundbreaking scientific quest over five continents to study our modern dinosaurs—that ends up changing a life, as well as our understanding about crocodiles and their relatives. A born naturalist and a fearless traveler, Vladimir Dinets wrote travel guides, conducted field research, and lived a couple of lives before he was accepted into the PhD program in zoology at the University of Miami. He thought crocodiles were a dead-end research topic—survivors from the age of the dinosaurs but not much else—until he witnessed groups of up to seventy alligators performing mating choruses that included infrasound vibrations—a form of communication extremely rare in nature—and a “dance” unknown in the scientific literature but that resembled a scene from Jurassic Park. To prove his thesis about the language of crocodiles, he spent the next six years traveling around the world on shoestring budgets and in extreme circumstances, studying almost every living species. At the same time, as a man desiring companionship in life, he sought love. With adventures on five continents, Dragon Songs is his account of this quest. It includes an escape from a boiling lava lake in the Afar Desert, being chased up a tree by a tiger in India, hitching a ride with a cocaine smuggler in Bolivia, and diving with giant Greenland sharks—all in the name of studying crocodiles, among which he routinely paddled in his inflatable kayak. Of course, not everything went according to plan. But, in the end, his ground-breaking research helped change the field. And during the course of his adventures, he met and courted his future wife.
'Suddenly I was back in the blurry green undersea world. And the shark was there, too. Coming straight at me. Fast!' Sam Fox is on holidays at the Great Barrier Reef when he and a young Japanese tourist are swept off a coral shelf by a freak wave. Before they know it, a strong current has pushed them out into open water. First Sam must fight to keep himself and his new friend from drowning; then, as night falls over the inky black ocean, the underwater predators start moving in . . . An action-packed rollercoaster ride, Shark Bait is the most thrilling (and scary) Extreme Adventure yet! Visit puffin.com.au/extreme for more.
A stunning new mythical adventure, set in a troubled world where one young girl may hold the key to healing old wounds and restoring life to the drought-ridden land a book to set alongside Pullman, Nicholson, Le Guin and other fantasy greats.
It's the holidays and Sam Fox has gone to the high country to stay with his grandparents. While trying to stop cattle rustlers from stealing a stud bull, an injured Sam is isolated in the mountains during a horrific bushfire. To survive, he must rely on his courage; ingenuity, and the help of Chainsaw--a mad old rodeo bull!
'I was lost in the desert. Without transport. Without water. Without a hope.' Sam Fox is on a caving expedition in the desert when the roof collapses, trapping his brother Nathan beneath tonnes of rubble. Nathan is in a bad way, and Sam's his only hope. But when he reaches the cave exit, Sam discovers a sea of huge, angry scorpions! And that's just the first deadly obstacle he will have to face if he's to get his brother out alive . . . An action-packed rollercoaster ride, Scorpion Sting is the fourth book in a thrilling new series! Visit puffin.com.au/extreme for more.
