There's more than one kind of Texas native-we share our magnificent state with numerous other species some with four legs or more and some with no legs at all. Naturalist Jim Harris has studied most of them, and in Lone Star Menagerie he shares some little-known facts, fascinating tales, and amusing personal experiences with these creatures that we live alongside.
A young poet and artist by the name of William Blake traveled to the Tower from his Lambeth home to paint and rhapsodize about a Tower tiger and its "fearful symmetry"; a lion named Crowly received frequent visits from an enamored Samuel Pepys; and one visitor seen dropping in on the creatures of the Menagerie in 1389 was the man in charge of Tower upkeep during the reign of King Richard II, Geoffrey Chaucer." "Daniel Hahn's history of the Royal Menagerie in the Tower of London tells the story of the many exotic creatures who found a home in one of the world's most forbidding and infamous fortresses, and explores the way in which the concept of animal captivity for the purposes of entertainment, enlightenment, and science evolved over hundreds of years." "The Tower Menagerie provides survey of our changing attitudes toward animals, and a hugely entertaining journey through six centuries of British history."--BOOK JACKET.
Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James finds he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. And when he meets Helen, the beautiful daughter of a local farmer, all the training and experience in the world can't help him...
Presents the author's selection of his best short stories, as well as a new piece, in a collection that includes "The Man Who Ended History: A Documentary," "Mono No Aware" and "The Waves."
London, 1857. Meet Jaf, a young street urchin who survives an encounter with an escaped tiger in the city’s East End and stumbles into a job with its owner, Mr. Jamrach, a collector and seller of wild animals. Commissioned by Jamrach to find and capture a mysterious, exotic creature, Jaf joins a whaling ship bound for the South Seas and begins a wonder-filled voyage of discovery. But when disaster befalls the crew, Jaf ’s journey becomes a desperate survival tale that pushes love, friendship and humanity to their outermost limits. Beautifully written and utterly spellbinding, Jamrach’s Menagerie conjures the smells, sights and flavours of the 19th century, from the squalor of Victorian London to the lush islands of the Dutch East Indies. A great, salty, historical adventure, with an extraordinary story of love and sacrifice at its core, this is an astonishing literary achievement.
Texas - or the Lone Star State, as it is affectionately and widely known - is the second largest U.S. state in both area and population, and contains both colorful and majestic landscapes that range from desert to plains, and forest to wild canyons. But that is not all: all across Texas there lurks a wide array of monsters, mysterious beasts and diabolical creatures that science tells us do not exist - but that a significant percentage of the good folk of Texas certainly know otherwise.
For Beth Lindstrom, the rundown caf? she inherited in the small town of Lone Wolf was simply a means to an end. Selling it and moving on was the young widow's only hope of a fresh start for her and her five-year-old daughter– though she doubted there was any place on earth they'd feel really safe ever again.
