Books by Helen Macdonald

Shaler's Fish: Poems

by Helen Macdonald

Before Helen Macdonald rose to international acclaim with her "beautiful and nearly feral" (New York Times) bestselling memoir H Is for Hawk, she wrote a collection of poetry, Shaler's Fish.

In robust, lyrical verse, Shaler's Fish roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet's universe, seamlessly fusing reflections on language, science, and literature, with the loamy environments of the natural worlds around her. Moving between the epic—war, history, art, myth, philosophy—and the specific—CNN, Ancient Rome, Auden, Merleau-Ponty—Macdonald examines with humor and intellect what it means to be awake and watchful in the world. These are poems that probe and question, within whose nimble ecosystems we are as likely to encounter Schubert as we are "a hand of violets," Isaac Newton as a "winged quail on turf." Nothing escapes Macdonald's eye and every creature herein—from the smallest bird to the loftiest thinker—holds a significant place in her poems.

This is an unparalleled collection from one of greatest nature writers, and a poet of dazzling music and vision.

Copies

No copies available.

Shaler's Fish: Poems

by Helen Macdonald

Before Helen Macdonald rose to international acclaim with her "beautiful and nearly feral" (New York Times) bestselling memoir H Is for Hawk, she wrote a collection of poetry, Shaler's Fish.

In robust, lyrical verse, Shaler's Fish roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet's universe, seamlessly fusing reflections on language, science, and literature, with the loamy environments of the natural worlds around her. Moving between the epic—war, history, art, myth, philosophy—and the specific—CNN, Ancient Rome, Auden, Merleau-Ponty—Macdonald examines with humor and intellect what it means to be awake and watchful in the world. These are poems that probe and question, within whose nimble ecosystems we are as likely to encounter Schubert as we are "a hand of violets," Isaac Newton as a "winged quail on turf." Nothing escapes Macdonald's eye and every creature herein—from the smallest bird to the loftiest thinker—holds a significant place in her poems.

This is an unparalleled collection from one of greatest nature writers, and a poet of dazzling music and vision.

Copies

No copies available.

H Is for Hawk

by Helen Macdonald

One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year
ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)
The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of nature's most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's own state of grief after her father's death, and together raptor and human "discover the pain and beauty of being alive" (People). H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying debut from one of our most unique and transcendent voices.

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H Is for Hawk

by Helen Macdonald

One of the New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of the Year

One of Slate's 50 Best Nonfiction Books of the Last 25 Years

ON MORE THAN 25 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR LISTS: including TIME (#1 Nonfiction Book), NPR, O, The Oprah Magazine (10 Favorite Books), Vogue (Top 10), Vanity Fair, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle (Top 10), Miami Herald, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Minneapolis Star Tribune (Top 10), Library Journal (Top 10), Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Slate, Shelf Awareness, Book Riot, Amazon (Top 20)

The instant New York Times bestseller and award-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising one of nature's most vicious predators has soared into the hearts of millions of readers worldwide. Fierce and feral, her goshawk Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's own state of grief after her father's death, and together raptor and human "discover the pain and beauty of being alive" (People). H Is for Hawk is a genre-defying debut from one of our most unique and transcendent voices.

Copies

No copies available.

Vesper Flights

by Helen Macdonald

From the New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction, comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world.
Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.
In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.
Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.
By one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

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Vesper Flights

by Helen Macdonald

From the New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction, comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world.
Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.
In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.
Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.
By one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

Copies

No copies available.

Prophet

by Michael Koryta, Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché

Adam Austin hasn't spoken to his brother in years. When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman, working so close to the town's criminal fringes that he sometimes seems a part of them.

Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Kent's team has a shot at the state championship, a welcome point of pride in a town that has had its share of hardships.

Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered. As details emerge that connect the crime to the Austin brothers, the two must confront their buried rage and grief-and unite to stop a killer.

Michael Koryta, widely hailed as one of the most exciting thriller authors at work today, has written his greatest novel ever -- an emotionally harrowing, unstoppably suspenseful novel that Donald Ray Pollock has called "one of the sharpest and superbly plotted crime novels I've read in my life."

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No copies available.

Prophet

by Michael Koryta, Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché

NOSTALGIA HAS NEVER BEEN MORE DEADLY
“Fabulous . . . Present-day science fiction that feels like the best sort of spy novel." —Neil Gaiman

From the extraordinary minds of award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author of H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald and first time author Sin Blaché, Prophet is their electric debut, a tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi and a slow burn queer romance—set in a universe just one perilous step from our own.
Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things—about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives.
In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people’s fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet. As the unlikely twosome battles this strange new reality, Prophet’s victims’ memories are materializing in increasingly bizarre forms: favorite games, beloved pets, fairground rides, each more malevolent than the next. Prophet is like no enemy Adam and Rao - or the world - have ever come up against.
A tension-shot odd-couple romance, an unflinching send-up of corporate corruption, and a genre-bending tour de force, Prophet is a triumph of storytelling by a new writing duo with a thrilling future.

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Prophet

by Michael Koryta, Helen Macdonald, Sin Blaché

From the extraordinary minds of award-winning and New York Times–bestselling author of H Is for Hawk Helen Macdonald and first time author Sin Blaché, Prophet is their electric debut, a tantalizing adventure fusing noir, sci-fi and a slow burn queer romance―set in a universe just one perilous step from our own.
Adam Rubenstein and Sunil Rao have been reluctant partners since their Uzbekistan days. Adam is a seemingly unflappable American Intelligence officer and Rao is an ex-MI6 agent, an addict and rudderless pleasure hound, with the uncanny ability to discern the truth of things―about everyone and everything other than Adam. When an American diner turns up in a foggy field in the UK after a mysterious death, Adam and Rao are called in to investigate, setting into motion the most dangerous and otherworldly mission of their lives.
In a surreal, action-packed quest that takes Adam and Rao from secret laboratories in Colorado, to a luxury lodge in Aspen, to the remote Nevada desert, the pair begins to uncover how and why people’s fondest memories are being weaponized against them by a spooky, ever-shifting substance called Prophet. As the unlikely twosome battles this strange new reality, Prophet’s victims’ memories are materializing in increasingly bizarre forms: favorite games, beloved pets, fairground rides, each more malevolent than the next. Prophet is like no enemy Adam and Rao - or the world - have ever come up against.
A tension-shot odd-couple romance, an unflinching send-up of corporate corruption, and a genre-bending tour de force, Prophet is a triumph of storytelling by a new writing duo with a thrilling future.

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Poems on Nature

by Helen Macdonald, Gaby Morgan

None

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Poems on Nature (Macmillan Collector's Library)

by Helen Macdonald, Gaby Morgan

The poems in Poems on Nature are divided into spring, summer, autumn and winter to reflect in verse the changes of the seasons and the passing of time.

Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library, a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket-sized classics with gold-foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition features an introduction by Helen Macdonald, author of the international bestseller, H is for Hawk.

Since poetry began, there have been poems about nature; it’s a complex subject which has inspired some of the most beautiful poetry ever written. Poets from Andrew Marvell to W. B. Yeats to Emily Brontë have sought to describe the natural environment and our relationship with it. There is also a rich tradition of songs and rhymes, such as ’Scarborough Fair’, that hark back to a rural way of life which may now be lost, but is brought back to life in the lyrical verses included in this collection.

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Falcon (Animal)

by Helen Macdonald

Before best-selling author Helen Macdonald told the story of the goshawk in H Is for Hawk, she told the story of the falcon, in a cultural history of the masterful creature that can “cut the sky in two” with the “perfectly aerodynamic profile of a raindrop,” as she so incisively puts it. In talon-sharp prose she explores the spell the falcon has had over her and, by extension, all of us, whether we’ve seen them “through binoculars, framed on gallery walls, versified by poets, flown as hunting birds, through Manhattan windows, sewn on flags, stamped on badges, or winnowing through the clouds over abandoned arctic radar stations.”
Macdonald dives through centuries and careens around the globe to tell the story of the falcon as it has flown in the wild skies of the natural world and those of our imagination. Mixing history, myth, and legend, she explores the long history of the sport of falconry in many human cultures—from Japan to Abu Dhabi to Oxford; she analyzes the falcon’s talismanic power as a symbol in art, politics, and business; and she addresses the ways we have both endangered and protected it. Along the way we discover how falcons were mobilized in secret military projects; their links with espionage, the Third Reich, the Holy Roman Empire, and space programs; and how they have figured in countless stories of heroism and, of course, the erotic.
Best of all, Macdonald has given us something fresh: a new introduction that draws on all her experience to even further invigorate her cherished subject. The result is a deeply informed book written with the same astonishing lyrical grace that has captivated readers and had everyone talking about this writer-cum-falconer.

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Falcon (Animal)

by Helen Macdonald

A sacred god, a military tool, an erotic symbol: the falcon is a natural wonder of speed, power, beauty, and ferocity that has become embedded in human cultures in myriad ways. Helen Macdonald's Falcon examines the diverse symbolism and roles attached to the falcon throughout the centuries.

Macdonald presents a cultural and natural history of the falcon that spans the globe and several millennia. Her wide-ranging survey considers the many facets of the falcon, including conservation efforts; the sport of falconry; and the use of falcons in secret military projects by the Third Reich and the U.S. space program. Falcon also explores the rich imagery of the falcon over history, including the veneration of falcons as gods in ancient Egypt, their role in erotic stories, and even the use of falcons in advertising to promote photocopiers and jet planes.

Filled with illustrations and a wealth of fascinating facts, Falcon will be an enjoyable guide for ornithologists, amateur birdwatchers, and nature lovers alike.

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Shaler's Fish

by Helen Macdonald

Product Description


Before Helen Macdonald rose to international acclaim with her "beautiful and nearly feral" ("New York Times") bestselling memoir "H Is for Hawk," she wrote a collection of poetry, "Shaler's Fish."
In robust, lyrical verse, "Shaler's Fish" roams both the outer and inner landscapes of the poet's universe, seamlessly fusing reflections on language, science, and literature, with the loamy environments of the natural worlds around her. Moving between the epicwar, history, art, myth, philosophyand the specificCNN, Ancient Rome, Auden, Merleau-PontyMacdonald examines with humor and intellect what it means to be awake and watchful in the world. These are poems that probe and question, within whose nimble ecosystems we are as likely to encounter Schubert as we are "a hand of violets," Isaac Newton as a "winged quail on turf." Nothing escapes Macdonald's eye and every creature hereinfrom the smallest bird to the loftiest thinkerholds a significant place in her poems.
This is an unparalleled collection from one of greatest nature writers, and a poet of dazzling music and vision."


About the Author


Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. She is the author of the bestselling "H Is for Hawk," as well as a cultural history of falcons, titled "Falcon," and three collections of poetry, including "Shaler's Fish." Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for the "New York Times Magazine." Twitter: @HelenJMacdonald

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