Book picks similar to
So You Think You Know About Diplodocus? by Ben Garrod


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My Mom's a Mortician (Kevin Kirk Chronicles, Vol. 1)


Patricia Wiles - 2004
    After all, normal people don’t live in houses with dead bodies downstairs! Once in Armadillo, Arkansas, Kevin tries to adapt to the family business. When he’s targeted by the biggest bully in the seventh grade, Kevin begins to “hear” advice from an unlikely source — Cletus McCulley, an old Mormon fisherman and one of his mother’s dead customers. Cletus’s messages from beyond the grave lead Kevin to uncover not only the bully’s secrets, but the truth about a family tragedy that shattered his parents’ faith and led them away from God. It’s up to Kevin to find the courage to face the bully, and to find a way to help his family heal. Winner of the 2004 Middle Grade Fiction Award from the Association for Mormon Letters.“This portrayal of small-town Mormon life sets an excellent example for future children’s novels set outside the highly-concentrated Mormon communities of the West.”—Association for Mormon Letters

The Real Silent Witnesses: Shocking cases from the World of Forensic Science


Wensley Clarkson - 2021
    How do you identify a serial killer?What are the tell-tale signs of guilt?Can we now solve the unsolvable?Since even before the first season of Silent Witness in 1996, forensic science has played an increasingly important role in the investigation of violent crimes.With a boom in cold-blooded cases throughout the 1980s, police began to rely on DNA evidence to help them find perpetrators and since then forensic science has taken off as a powerful tool in solving murders. Bestselling true crime author Wensley Clarkson takes us beyond the headlines to examine the real-life stories where forensics have played a crucial role. He speaks to experts who have worked on the most gruesome, most chilling and most shocking crime scenes and explains how notorious criminal cases from across the world were solved.And he shows how the silent witness is often the one who screams the loudest.

We Hunt the Flame


Hafsah Faizal - 2019
    People died because he lived.Zafira is the Hunter, disguising herself as a man when she braves the cursed forest of the Arz to feed her people. Nasir is the Prince of Death, assassinating those foolish enough to defy his autocratic father, the sultan. If Zafira was exposed as a girl, all of her achievements would be rejected; if Nasir displayed his compassion, his father would punish him in the most brutal of ways. Both Zafira and Nasir are legends in the kingdom of Arawiya--but neither wants to be.War is brewing, and the Arz sweeps closer with each passing day, engulfing the land in shadow. When Zafira embarks on a quest to uncover a lost artifact that can restore magic to her suffering world and stop the Arz, Nasir is sent by the sultan on a similar mission: retrieve the artifact and kill the Hunter. But an ancient evil stirs as their journey unfolds--and the prize they seek may pose a threat greater than either can imagine.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry: A Guide for Book Clubs (The Reading Room Book Group Notes)


Kathryn Cope - 2014
    Fikry. A comprehensive guide to Zevin's wonderful celebration of the world of literature, this book includes useful literary context; a full plot summary, discussion of themes and symbols; character notes; 15 thought-provoking discussion questions; recommended further reading and a quick quiz. **Amazon Reviews for the Reading Room Book Group Notes:** "Belong to a small book club and we had our liveliest, best discussion ever over this book." (Jeanne McCloskey) "I would definitely recommend it to other book groups." (Book Addict) "Insightful and made the discussion easy to begin." (C. Childress) "I'm in a book club that read this and it was SO helpful!" (AvidReaderAllGenres) The Reading Room Book Group Guides are designed to help you get the absolute best from your book club meetings. An invaluable reference tool, they provide a wealth of useful information on your chosen novel. *THIS BOOK IS A COMPANION GUIDE, DESIGNED TO BE READ IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE ORIGINAL NOVEL. PLEASE BE AWARE, IT DOES NOT CONTAIN THE ORIGINAL TEXT OF THE NOVEL.*

The Silent Boy


Lois Lowry - 2003
    She joins him on his rounds and has a keen interest in the people around her. She's especially intrigued by Jacob, a gentle, silent boy who has a special sensitivity toward animals. While Jacob never speaks to or looks at Katy, they develop an unusual friendship and understanding. The townspeople dismiss Jacob as an imbecile. Katy just thinks of him as someone special who has a way of communicating with the animals through his sounds and movements.   And only Katy comes to realize what the gentle, silent boy did for his family. He meant to help, not harm. It didn't turn out that way.

Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures


Merlin Sheldrake - 2020
    It can be microscopic, yet also accounts for the largest organisms ever recorded, living for millennia and weighing tens of thousands of tonnes. Its ability to digest rock enabled the first life on land, it can survive unprotected in space, and thrives amidst nuclear radiation.In this captivating adventure, Merlin Sheldrake explores the spectacular and neglected world of fungi: endlessly surprising organisms that sustain nearly all living systems. They can solve problems without a brain, stretching traditional definitions of ‘intelligence’, and can manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties, which have influenced societies since antiquity, have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. The ability of fungi to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet they live their lives largely out of sight, and over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into this hidden kingdom of life, and shows that fungi are key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel and behave. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.

Professor Maxwell’s Duplicitous Demon: The Life and Science of James Clerk Maxwell


Brian Clegg - 2019
    But ask a physicist and there’s no doubt that James Clerk Maxwell will be near the top of the list.  Maxwell, an unassuming Victorian Scotsman, explained how we perceive colour. He uncovered the way gases behave. And, most significantly, he transformed the way physics was undertaken in his explanation of the interaction of electricity and magnetism, revealing the nature of light and laying the groundwork for everything from Einstein’s special relativity to modern electronics.   Along the way, he set up one of the most enduring challenges in physics, one that has taxed the best minds ever since. ‘Maxwell’s demon’ is a tiny but thoroughly disruptive thought experiment that suggests the second law of thermodynamics, the law that governs the flow of time itself, can be broken. This is the story of a groundbreaking scientist, a great contributor to our understanding of the way the world works, and his duplicitous demon.

The Consolations of Philosophy


Alain de Botton - 2000
    Drawing inspiration from six of the finest minds in history - Socrates, Epicurus, Seneca, Montaigne, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - he addresses lack of money, the pain of love, inadequacy, anxiety and conformity. De Botton's book led one critic to call philosophy 'the new rock and roll'.

Prism


Faye Kellerman - 2009
    Set in New Mexico and California, the novel features three teens who fall through a cave at Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico while on a field trip. They are plunged into a frightening parallel universe—seven weeks in the past, in which their "normal" worlds of family and high school remain the same…except for the fact that no medicine exists and when people die in the street they are picked up and disposed of.

Birdseye: The Adventures of a Curious Man


Mark Kurlansky - 2012
    However, he observed that fresh vegetables wetted and left outside in the Arctic winds froze in a way that maintained their integrity after thawing. As a result, he developed his patented Birdseye freezing process and started the company that still bears his name. Birdseye forever changed the way we preserve, store, and distribute food, and the way we eat. Mark Kurlansky’s vibrant and affectionate narrative reveals Clarence Birdseye as a quintessential “can-do” American inventor—his other patents include an electric sunlamp, a harpoon gun to tag finback whales, and an improved incandescent lightbulb—and shows how the greatest of changes can come from the simplest of ideas and the unlikeliest of places

Ancient Earth Mysteries


J.C. Vintner - 2011
    It's extremely selfish to think we are the only existing intelligent life. Science and religion are on the verge of discovering the truth. Super ancient societies and their archaeological evidence uncovered to this day is a vault of stored information waiting to be unlocked. All we need to do is find the key. Help us uncover the truth by learning about Ancient Earth Mysteries.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives


Leonard Mlodinow - 2008
    From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, Mlodinow's intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives will intrigue, awe, and inspire.

The Rise of Kyoshi


F.C. Yee - 2019
    C. Yee’s The Rise of Kyoshi delves into the story of Kyoshi, the Earth Kingdom–born Avatar. The longest-living Avatar in this beloved world’s history, Kyoshi established the brave and respected Kyoshi Warriors, but also founded the secretive Dai Li, which led to the corruption, decline, and fall of her own nation. The first of two novels based on Kyoshi, The Rise of Kyoshi maps her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar.

The Misfit


Rosie Goodwin - 2012
    She's adopted, but her new father can't warm to her, and her mother can't succeed in turning the plain, unresponsive child into the little princess she longs for. When her adoptive mother dies, her greedy aunt takes her in, but hers is not a happy home, and soon Rebecca's life is worse than ever. She longs to escape to the circus that visits her town, with its carefree life and freedom from her past - but will she ever find happiness?

Understanding Air France 447


Bill Palmer - 2013
    Written by A330 Captain, Bill Palmer, this book opens to understanding the actions of the crew, how they failed to understand and control the problem, and how the airplane works and the part it played. All in easy to understand terms.Addressed are the many contributing aspects of weather, human factors, and airplane system operation and design that the crew could not recover from. How each contributed is covered in detail along with what has been done, and needs to be done in the future to prevent this from happening again.Also see the book's companion website: UnderstandingAF447.com for supplemental materials referred to in the book or to contact the author.