Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser. Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones—dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted.In Bitch, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn‘t your grandfather’s evolutionary biology. It’s more inclusive, truer to life, and simply more fun.

Far away and long ago, when dragons still existed and the only arcade game was ping-pong in black and white, a wizard cautiously entered a smoky tavern in the evil, ancient, foggy city of Morpork...A truly unmissable, beautifully illustrated collection of unearthed stories from the pen of Sir Terry Pratchett: award-winning and bestselling author, and creator of the phenomenally successful Discworld series.Twenty early short stories by one of the world's best loved authors, each accompanied by exquisite original woodcut illustrations.These are rediscovered tales that Pratchett wrote under a pseudonym for newspapers during the 1970s and 1980s. Whilst none are set in the Discworld, they hint towards the world he would go on to create, containing all of his trademark wit, satirical wisdom and fantastic imagination.Meet Og the inventor, the first caveman to cultivate fire, as he discovers the highs and lows of progress: haunt the Ministry of Nuisances with the defiant evicted ghosts of Pilgarlic Towers: visit Blackbury, a small market town with weird weather and an otherworldly visitor: and go on a dangerous quest through time and space with hero Kron, which begins in the ancient city of Morpork...

Bored of Wordle? Try being a sleuth with these murder mystery puzzles.G. T. Karber, the creator of the popular online daily mystery game Murdle, presents the second collection of 100 original murder mystery logic puzzles - the perfect gift for armchair detectives and puzzlers to hone their minds and solve a crime.- Who committed the ghastly deed?- What weapon was used to dispatch the victim?- Where did the calculated demise occur?Join Detective Logico and investigate murders most foul in More Killer Puzzles.These humorous mini-mystery puzzles challenge you to find whodunit, how, where, and why. Examine the clues, interview the witnesses, and use the power of deduction to complete the grid and catch the culprit. Packed with illustrations, codes, and maps, this is the must-have detective casebook for the secret sleuth in everyone.

It all starts with an innocuous curiosity: at the Hotel de Verbier, a luxury hotel in the Swiss Alps, there is no Room 622. This anomaly piques the interest of Joël Dicker, Switzerland's most famous literary star, who flees to the Verbier to recover from a bad breakup, mourn the death of his publisher, and begin his next novel. Before he knows it, he's coaxed out of his slump by a fellow guest, who quickly uncovers the reason behind Room 622's erasure: an unsolved murder. The attendant circumstances: a love triangle and a power struggle at the heart of Switzerland's largest private bank, a mysterious counter-intelligence unit known only as P-30, and a shadowy émigré with more money than God. A Russian doll of a mystery crafted with the precision of a Swiss watch, The Enigma of Room 622 is Joël Dicker's most diabolically addictive thriller yet.

"A model of popular-science writing" STEVEN POOLEWho was "the first speaker" and what was their first message?An erudite, tightly woven and beautifully written account of one of humanity's greatest mysteries - the origins of language.Drawing on evidence from many fields, including archaeology, anthropology, neurology and linguistics, Sverker Johansson weaves these disparate threads together to show how our human ancestors evolved into language users. The Dawn of Language provides a fascinating survey of how grammar came into being and the differences or similarities between languages spoken around the world, before exploring how language eventually emerged in the very remote human past.Our intellectual and physiological changes through the process of evolution both have a bearing on our ability to acquire language. But to what extent is the evolution of language dependent on genes, or on environment? How has language evolved further, and how is it changing now, in the process of globalisation? And which aspects of language ensure that robots are not yet intelligent enough to reconstruct how language has evolved?Johansson's far-reaching, authoritative and research-based approach to language is brought to life through dozens of astonishing examples, both human and animal, in a fascinatingly erudite and entertaining volume for anyone who has ever contemplated not just why we speak the way we do, but why we speak at all.Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry