"This book discusses courtship, sex, and mating habits across the animal kingdom, covering birds, reptiles, amphibians, fishes, and mammals, as well as select invertebrates."--

Birds do it, bees do it, penguins do it, and orangutans do it. By having sex and giving birth to offspring, animals ensure that their species will survive into the next generation. And in this quest for survival, animals go to great lengths. Some animal mating techniques may strike you as strange or gross, but to the animals themselves, these practices are essential. Animals with the best strategies for choosing mates and making babies ensure that their species live on. Without animal sex, there would be no animal life.

Birds do it, bees do it — every member of the animal kingdom does it, from fruit flies to blue whales. But if you think humans have a tough time dating, try having to do it while being hunted down by predators, against a backdrop of unpredictable and life-threatening conditions. The animal kingdom is a wild place – and it’s got mating habits to match. The sex lives of our animal cousins are fiendishly difficult, infinitely varied, often incredibly violent — and absolutely fascinating.In Wild Sex, Dr. Carin Bondar takes readers on an enthralling tour of the animal kingdom as she explores the diverse world of sex in the wild. She looks at the evolution of sexual organs (and how they’ve shaped social hierarchies), tactics of seduction, and the mechanics of sex. She investigates a wide range of topics, from whether animals experience pleasure from sex to what happens when females hold the reproductive power. Along the way, she encounters razor-sharp penises, murderous carnal cannibals, and spontaneous chemical warfare in an epic battle between the sexes.The resulting book is titillating, exhilarating, amusing, petrifying, alluring — and absolutely guaranteed to make you think about sex in a whole new way.

A fish that walks on land, a frog that makes its own sunscreen, and an insect that can become invisible? Whether to avoid predators, to stalk prey, or to withstand extreme temperatures, Earth's creatures have evolved some outrageous features and tricks to ensure survival. For example, did you know that the geoduck (nope, it's not a duck, it's a clam) can live as long as 160 years? And that the aye-aye, a nocturnal primate, uses echolocation and a long, spindly finger to find and dig up food? Or that in its deep-ocean habitat, the vampire squid uses bioluminescence to startle predators? These are among the many animals that show evolution and adaptation at work.

Meet Ivana ('call me Vanny') Jones, a sexy, beautiful, warm-hearted professional chess-player. She has a problem: she's only attracted to guys who can beat her... so what's she to do when a chess amateur, the Russian billionaire Boris Bogolyubov, proposes marriage?Not only that, but as Vanny tries to achieve her lifelong dream of becoming a chess grandmaster, she develops a crush on Norwegian sex-god Sven while also falling for a stunning and adoring Frenchwoman. Meanwhile, Vanny's hoping a revolutionary new drug treatment will save her best friend Charlotte's life.Set in London, Monaco, Budapest, Helsinki, Odessa, New York... and Leicester, this sparkily written, passionate, emotional and entertaining novel will rock your boat... even if you've never shouted'Checkmate!'