Did you know that bats compose their own songs? That mice giggle when tickled? Or that lizards do push-ups to seduce a mate, that elephants 'hear' through their feet, or that rats laugh? Drawing upon the latest scientific research, we see how animals build, create, and entertain themselves and others; how animal 'friends' keep in touch; and how some animals problem-solve more effectively than humans.

Archaeologist Lina Taylor has devoted her life to studying ancient Maya artifacts, splitting her time between digs in South America and the classroom teaching college students. But the professor's structured, academic life is about to spin out of control. Some extremely valuable and important Maya artifacts have gone missing. Are the culprits fanatics determined to create chaos and usher in annihilation?

Nia Hollister doesn't scare easily. She's returned to Ash, Kentucky, with a vengeance-and with a mission: find the killer who brutally ended her cousin's life. What she didn't count on was trembling with desire every time she sees Law Reilly. If any man can help her escape the nightmares for a while, it's him.

Through her research on twins and the genetic components of aggression, scientist Jeannie Ferrami makes a startling discovery. Using a restricted FBI database, she finds two young men who appear to be identical twins: Steve, a law student, and Dennis: a convicted murderer. Yet they were born on different days, to different mothers, in hospitals hundreds of miles apart.

San Francisco: Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel have one day left to live, and one job left to do. They must defend San Francisco. The monsters gathered on Alcatraz Island have been released and are heading toward the city. If they are not stopped, they will destroy everyone and everything in their path.

When the news of Bernard Madoff 's Ponzi scheme broke, Americans were shocked and outraged, perhaps none more so than the unsuspecting members of his own family. After learning that their father's legendarily successful wealth management company was "all just one big lie", Mark and Andrew Madoff turned their father in and cut off all communication with both parents.

RYAN O’NEAL AND FARRAH FAWCETT. One of the most storied love affairs in Hollywood history, their romance has captivated fans and media alike for more than three decades. Fans of each other from afar, Ryan and Farrah met through her husband, Lee Majors, and fell passionately in love.

As a living descendant of Artemis the Huntress, private investigator Nikki Glass knows how to track someone down. But when an Oracle shows up, warning the Descendants about wild dog attacks in Washington, D.C., Nikki is afraid it might be a trap. The Olympians believe the "dogs" are really jackals, controlled by a blood-crazed descendant of the Egyptian death-god Anubis. Whatever.

In Last Breath, the rain brought a new and dire threat to Morganville and its vampires . . . their ancient enemies, the draug. Now, the vampires are fighting a losing war, and it will fall to the residents of the Glass House-Michael, Eve, Shane, and Claire-to take the fight to an enemy who threatens to destroy the town, forever.Lovers of Morganville, rejoice: Black Dawn takes the intrigue, romance, and nail-biting suspense of the series to its highest level yet.

Two mighty armies blunder toward each other, one led by confident, beloved Robert E. Lee and the other by dour George Meade. They’ll meet in a Pennsylvania crossroads town where no one planned to fight.

For Commissario Brunetti, it began with an early morning phone call. In the chill of the Venetian dawn, a sudden act of vandalism shatters the quiet of the deserted city. But soon Brunetti is shocked to find that the culprit waiting to be apprehended at the scene is someone from his own family.

Alice Safford, troubled daughter of a leading figure in Hong Kong’ s colonial government, explores the site of an old army hospital. The “ hungry ghost” of a young Chinese girl, murdered during the Island’ s Japanese occupation 25 years earlier, awaits her in the morgue’ s shadows. The perfect host for the parasite, Alice returns with the ghost to the family’ s luxury home on The Peak. Here, the lethal mix of the two, entangled in the Safford family’ s web of dark secrets and desperate lies, unleashes chaos.

The mysterious, violent death of a prominent New England patriarch exposes a nest of dark family secrets in bestselling author Richard North Patterson's twentieth compelling novel. Adam Blaine arrives on the island of Martha's Vineyard to attend the funeral of his estranged father, Ben Blaine, a famous and charismatic writer who has served as patriarch of his clan for many years.

An intense, red-haired young man named Rusty Shannon rides into Fort Belknap on the Brazos River and joins the Texas Rangers. Years before, Mike Shannon rescued Rusty from a Comanche war party and became his adoptive father.

America’s most celebrated novelist, Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison extends her profound take on our history with this twentieth-century tale of redemption: a taut and tortured story about one man’s desperate search for himself in a world disfigured by war.