The life and times of Sean Rousseau, all told a nice,but average guy,possessing a few quirky personality traits. Principally among them, a deep objective affinity for practicable analytical thinking and problem solving on all matters from the world of business to his spiritual beliefs, all formulated growing up in the bland 1950s and turbulent 1960s. Through an ill-fated marriage and the passing, one-by-one, of all of his family members, especially the tragic and untimely loss of his beloved little sister, Sean whose sole enjoyment is collecting baseball cards, leads an everyday stoic and solitary life that is pretty much okay, but life is slowly passing him by. Unbeknownst to him, he is being shadowed ominously by an evil greater than he can fully comprehend or even imagine; an evil that lies in wait for his lapses into an unbearable sense of nothingness, for the opportunity to rear up and consume him, mind, body, and soul. But the Blessed Virgin Mary watches over him, through the intercession of a mother's love for her son, and later through a blind date with a woman who becomes the love of his life until her sudden death, followed by a chance meeting with a second woman months later in the remote and mysterious lakeshore Hamlet of Misty Waters, each occurring when he is at the greatest peril of descending despairingly, finally and forever, into the void of nothingness.

"King Glut was a large, fat, greedy king. He loved food, and his favourite food of all was eggs. Boiled, poached, fried, scrambled, and curried - he'd tried every recipe imaginable. Now he was ready for something different! Then one day he heard of the dodo's egg: the biggest, the runniest, the tastiest, and the very last dodo's egg in the whole wide world. King Glut just had to have it for himself!--Back cover.

Corlie Roux’s farm life in South Africa is not easy: the Transvaal is beautiful, but it is also a harsh place where the heat can be so intense that the very raindrops sizzle. When her beloved father dies, she is left with a mother who is as devoted to her sons as she is cruel to her daughter. Despite this, Corlie finds solace in her friend, Sipho, and in Africa itself and in the stories she conjures for her brothers. But Corlie’s world is about to vanish: the British are invading and driving Boer families like hers from their farms. Some escape into the bush to fight the enemy. The unlucky ones are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Will Corlie’s resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kroonstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had….

Corlie Roux’s farm life in South Africa is not easy: the Transvaal is beautiful, but it is also a harsh place where the heat can be so intense that the very raindrops sizzle. When her beloved father dies, she is left with a mother who is as devoted to her sons as she is cruel to her daughter. Despite this, Corlie finds solace in her friend, Sipho, and in Africa itself and in the stories she conjures for her brothers. But Corlie’s world is about to vanish: the British are invading and driving Boer families like hers from their farms. Some escape into the bush to fight the enemy. The unlucky ones are rounded up and sent to internment camps. Will Corlie’s resilience and devotion to her country sustain her through the suffering and squalor she finds in the camp at Kroonstad? That may depend on a soldier from faraway Canada and on inner resources Corlie never dreamed she had….

When he reads that a dodo's egg has been spotted on a distant island, greedy King Glut decides that he must have it for breakfast.

Why have island ecosystems always suffered such high rates of extinction? In our age, with all the world's landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, now being carved into island-like fragments by human activity, the implications of this question are more urgent than ever. Over the past eight years, David Quammen has followed the threads of island biogeography on a globe-encircling journey of discovery.

After a trip to the zoo, the Doctor and Martha go in search of a real live dodo, and are transported by the Tardis to the mysterious Museum of the Last Ones. There, in the Earth section, they discover every extinct creature up to the present day.