"As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White's struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel ... on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to...

A baby great horned owl, Second, so called because his sister, First, is already out of the nest, is reluctant to hunt for himself, but when his mother is injured he is forced out into the forest; Maureen is a human girl pulled out of her grandmother's violent home and placed with an aunt--but her Aunt Beatrice is involved in falconry and runs a mews where injured raptors can heal, and it is here Maureen and Second (now called Rufus) meet and learn...

In 1833, Charles Darwin was astonished by an animal he met in the Falkland Islands: handsome, social, and oddly crow-like falcons that were "tame and inquisitive . . . quarrelsome and passionate," and so insatiably curious that they stole hats, compasses, and other valuables from the crew of the Beagle. Darwin wondered why these birds were confined to remote islands at the tip of South America, sensing a larger story, but he set this mystery aside...

Billy Casper, a 15-year-old working class Yorkshire boy, is a scrappy loner who delivers papers before and after school, shares a bed with his bullying brother, Jud, and mostly ignores his self-absorbed mother. His routine is derailed when he spots a small falcon, a kestrel, in the countryside. He's raised birds in the past and is inspired to capture a young kestrel and try his hand at falconry. When not enduring the scorn of his peers and "betters,"...

"The enthralling new novel from the acclaimed author of Fallen Land, The River of Kings, and Gods of Howl Mountain Vietnam veteran, retired racehorse jockey, and keeper of secrets, Anse Caulfield rescues exotic big cats, elephants, and other creatures for Little Eden, a wildlife sanctuary near the abandoned ruins of a failed development on the Georgia coast. But when Anse's prized lion escapes and is killed, he becomes obsessed with replacing her-even...