Book picks similar to
Beautiful Joe's Paradise by Marshall Saunders
fiction
1st-read-as-child-or-adolescent
animals
b-dont-have-yet
Sarah & Zoey
Linda Watkins - 2017
Trapped in a marriage to an abusive alcoholic, her only pleasure was in tossing a ball to a skinny dog she’d adopted from the local shelter.Sarah & Zoey is the tale of these two women and the one remarkable dog who saved them both.It is a story of the power of unconditional love.
They Called Him Kinardley - The Best Dog I Ever Had
Gerald Hartenhoff - 2013
(Short story)"Everybody in the little town of Emery knew who Kinardley was. The few times they would unchain him from the tree for a little exercise; he would take off and be gone for days. During the time he was gone he would get into fights, flirt with the girl dogs and get into people's garbage."
White Fang
Jack London - 1906
In his lonely world, he soon learns to follow the harsh law of the North--kill or be killed. But nothing in White Fang's life can prepare him for the cruel owner who turns him into a vicious killer. Will White Fang ever know the kindness of a gentle master?
The Case Of Billy B
Cindy Vine - 2010
Abandoned by his own mother, rejected by all but his loving father, Billy B is thrust into a silent hell alone, branded a freak and a misfit. Billy becomes the ultimate life spectator in a game of survival. Who can he count on to save him, when all seems lost?
Miracle on Wolf Hollow Lane
Blake O'Connor - 2015
One snowy night, exhausted parents Evelyn and Gabe Mitchell have just put their colicky four month old baby, Abigail, to sleep in the nursery of their farmhouse. Afraid their large mixed breed dog, Girl, will wake the baby, they unsuccessfully try to coax her out from under the crib where she has slept since the baby was born. Girl refuses to budge, because Girl senses what nobody else knows: something is catastrophically wrong. Told in lean, luminous prose, and inspired by a real life rescue, Miracle on Wolf Hollow Lane is a riveting story about one dog’s power of fortitude and gritty determination to live, to beat the odds, to return home, and maybe, just maybe, save the family from impending tragedy.OTHER BEST SELLING AND AWARD-WINNING BOOKS BY BLAKE O'CONNOR:Trust MeUnspoken Bond
The Patron Saint of Eels
Gregory Day - 2005
When Stellanuova's inhabitants emigrate to Australia in the post World War II migrations of the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the immortal saint is left looking down on an abandoned town. To fulfil his calling, he decides in heaven to migrate with his countrymen and now looks down on the state of Victoria, where he intercedes in matters relating to eels.In the southern Victorian town of Mangowak, Noel Lea lives with the melancholy inheritance of a place undergoing the gentrifications of contemporary Australia. Along with his oldest friend, Nanette Burns, he longs for a time when life was less complex and unexpected magic seemed to permeate the ocean town and its people. When spring rains flood a nearby swamp and hundreds of eels get trapped in the grassy ditches around Noel's family home, he and Nanette encounter the vibrant Fra Ionio and get more magic than they bargained for.A beautifully written, charming and evocative book by Gregory Day, who also authored
Trace
, in collaboration with photographer, Robert Ashton.
Wolf: The Journey Home
Asta Bowen - 1997
Told believably from Marta's point of view, the story takes the reader deep into a wolf's world, as Marta's determination to protect her pups and find their way home takes her on adventures that are by turns heart warming, perilous, and ultimately tragic.
Cast-Off Cocker Spaniels
Becky Corwin-Adams - 2013
This book highlights her foster and forever dogs' antics and challenges.A portion of proceeds is donated back to Cocker Spaniel rescue.Excerpt: Nine-year-old Rags was found roaming the streets as a stray. When she landed at the shelter, she needed six baths to free her from the oil in which she was covered. Her little rear had no fur, and the skin in that area was as tough as leather. Her issues were severe, including water-filled blisters on her feet and legs.Poor Rags was the saddest-looking Cocker I had ever seen. Her eyes were downcast and droopy, and the fur around them was gone. She certainly was not very attractive.For many long months we treated Rags with antibiotics, and we bathed her three times a week with medicated shampoo. She was a good patient, never complaining even though she had to soak in the bathtub for 10 minutes each time.Finally, our efforts paid off, and a new dog emerged. At adoption events, people commented on Rags' beauty and her soulful face. This was progress! Now, our task was to convince some special person to look beyond her age...Does Rags find a home? Buy the book to find out!
The Call of the Wild
Lloyd S. Wagner - 2010
His life changes when he is suddenly kidnapped and sold into service during the Klondike gold rush, for he is made to haul heavy sleds through the deep snow fields. Being in a new environment, he soon discovers his dominant primordial instinct. He learns not only to survive, but also flourishes in it. Jack London's The Call of the Wild is a masterpiece in both its style, which set a standard for generations to come, and for its genre, raising adventure writing to the level of classic literature. While being exciting and entertaining, Buck's story is also intelligent and thought provoking - a story for all ages.
The Tusk That Did the Damage
Tania James - 2015
Manu, the studious younger son of a rice farmer, loses his cousin to the Gravedigger’s violence and is drawn, with his wayward brother Jayan, into the sordid, alluring world of poaching. Emma is a young American working on a documentary with her college best friend, who witnesses the porous boundary between conservation and corruption and finds herself in her own moral gray area: a risky affair with the veterinarian who is the film’s subject. As the novel hurtles toward its tragic climax, these three storylines fuse into a wrenching meditation on love and betrayal, duty and loyalty, and the vexed relationship between man and nature.With lyricism and suspense, Tania James animates the rural landscapes where Western idealism clashes with local reality; where a farmer’s livelihood can be destroyed by a rampaging elephant; where men are driven to poaching. In James’ arrestingly beautiful prose, The Tusk That Did the Damage blends the mythical and the political to tell a wholly original, utterly contemporary story about the majestic animal, both god and menace, that has mesmerized us for centuries.
Saving Ferris
A.R. Kennedy - 2018
It was the life of her golden retriever, Ferris, a dog she's only warming to after her husband's death. If it had been up to her, they would never have gotten a pet.Police Chief Holden Owens thinks Cecilia acted lawfully, but few agree. The law says that pets are property, and that one can't use lethal force to protect property. Is his attraction to Cecilia clouding his judgment?The prosecutor sees Cecilia's case as his ticket to a better job. He has the law on his side, and a more personal reason to want to win as well.Now, as the case draws to a close, Cecilia is finding she needs Ferris as much as he needs her. But will she be able to stay out of prison?Saving Ferris is a story that makes us consider what, exactly, pets mean to us.
Cold Coast
Robyn Mundy - 2021
She must prove to Anders Sæterdal, her trapping partner who makes no secret of his disdain, that a woman is fit for the task. Over the course of a Svalbard winter, Wanny and Sæterdal will confront polar bears, traverse glaciers, withstand blizzards and the dangers of sea ice, and hike miles to trap Arctic fox, all in the frigid darkness of the four-month polar night. For Wanny, the darkness hides her own deceptions that, if exposed, speak to the untenable sacrifice of a 1930s woman longing to fulfil a dream. Alongside the raw, confronting nature of the trappers’ work, is the story of a young blue Arctic fox, itself a hunter, who must eke out a living and navigate the trappers’ world if it is to survive its first Arctic winter.
Reaper
Ben Mezrich - 1997
In Vermont, a young woman watching her favorite sitcom meets the same grisly fate, as does a group of sewer workers in Washington, D.C. Whatever has killed these people is spreading fast, and the task of eradicating it falls to young virologist Samantha Craig and paramedic Nick Barnes, whose brilliant surgical career was ruined by a crippling hand injury.When Nick and Samantha discover that the virus, named Reaper, is spread through TVs and PCs, they realize that the information superhighway will become a killing field, with tens of millions dead, unless they can root Reaper out.Their search employs a dazzling array of real-life wizardry, from Mylar body paint to Stealth helicopters to CIA-bred swarms of insects. At the core of Reaper’s madness, they find a suavely megalomaniacal, up-from-the-slums, high-tech billionaire, an icily ingenious hacker, and a high-powered cabal that will do anything to save the world from technology, even if that means annihilating the world.