Environment

[close] Edgar finalist Paul Doiron's superb new novel featuring Game Warden Mike Bowditch and a beautiful, enigmatic woman whose mission to save the Maine wilderness may have incited a murder

On an unseasonably hot October morning, Bowditch is called to the scene of a bizarre crime: the corpses of seven moose have been found senselessly butchered on the estate of Elizabeth Morse, a wealthy animal rights activist who is buying up huge parcels of timberland to create a new national park.

What at first seems like mindless slaughter—retribution by locals for the job losses Morse's plan is already causing in the region—becomes far more sinister when a shocking murder is discovered and Mike's investigation becomes a hunt to find a ruthless killer. In order to solve the controversial case, Bowditch risks losing everything he holds dear: his best friends, his career as a law enforcement officer, and the love of his life.

The beauty and magnificence of the Maine woods is the setting for a story of suspense and violence when one powerful woman’s missionary zeal comes face to face with ruthless cruelty. [close]

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In his bestselling book THE WORLD WITHOUT US, Alan Weisman considered how the Earth could heal and even refill empty niches if relieved of humanity's constant pressures. Behind that groundbreaking thought experiment was his hope that we would be inspired to find a way to add humans back to this vision of a restored, healthy planet-only in harmony, not mortal combat, with the rest of nature.

But with a million more of us every 4½ days on a planet that's not getting any bigger, and with our exhaust overheating the atmosphere and altering the chemistry of the oceans, prospects for a sustainable human future seem ever more in doubt. For this long awaited follow-up book, Weisman traveled to more than 20 countries to ask what experts agreed were the probably the most important questions on Earth-and also the hardest: How many humans can the planet hold without capsizing? How robust must the Earth's ecosystem be to assure our continued existence? Can we know which other species are essential to our survival? And, how might we actually arrive at a stable, optimum population, and design an economy to allow genuine prosperity without endless growth?

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[close] Eric Horton has been having visions - terrible dreams that wake him up at night - of explosions and fire and someone screaming.

On the soccer field, he’s been in the ‘zone’, saving shot after shot as one of the starting keepers for his high school varsity team with what feels like supernatural awareness of where the ball is going to go next. And the connection he feels with Renee, the hot new exchange student from France, seems almost like he’s known her forever. But all these wild visions and synchronicities are nothing compared to the strange experiments Renee’s dad is cooking up in the physics lab at the University. He’s asked Eric to take part in these tests, and that makes Eric question whether what he’s seeing and hearing is reality, or something far beyond it.

Then when his best friend Will starts drinking way too much and Renee has eyes for other guys, Eric loses the edge he’s always had in the goal, and confidence in himself. If he’s going to pull it together, Eric must tap into a part of himself that he never knew existed, and that might just be the part that connects us all.

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