Across a huge range of endeavour, 1859 was the year of mega change. At the beginning of that year Charles Darwin was writing The Origin of Species. By year's end, other people, discoveries and inventions had changed the world forever, and society was converging in a global culture. It was a different world back then, a changing world, a shrinking world. Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World is an entertaining book by leading science writer Peter Macinnis and it tells the story of how it all came about.

In 1859 Charles Darwin's revolutionary The Origin of Species was first published—but the book was as much a symptom of change as a cause. In that year scientists peered through microscopes and discovered the workings of tiny organisms; technology made huge leaps and bounds as machines took on tasks with a speed and consistency never before seen; the concepts of time and distance were themselves challenged as telegraph cables, train lines and steamships criss-crossed the globe; and everything was illuminated as powerful telescopes looked to the heavens and gas lamps lit the streets. Mr Darwin's incredible shrinking world takes readers back to this amazing and innovative year.

New York Times bestselling coauthors Shäron Moalem and Daniel Kraus's terrifying sci-fi horror thriller takes place in a future that is much nearer than you think. It is a world where scientific experimentation is exploited for commercial profit and under-supervised cutting-edge technology creates a menace that threatens the very fabric of our existence. Wrath is the story of Sammy, a lab rat instilled with human genes whose supersized intelligence helps him to engineer his escape into the world outside the lab: a world vastly ill-equipped to deal with the menace he represents. Modified through advances that have boosted his awareness of humankind’s cruelty in the name of science, Sammy has the potential to sire a rodent army capable of viciously overwhelming the human race. The key to Sammy’s capture and humanity’s salvation may be ten-year-old Dallas Underhill, whom Sammy adopts. But while Dallas and Sammy bond, time is running out for humankind: once Sammy sires his progeny, the exponential proliferation of his kind could spell the end of the world. For fans of dystopian works such as Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy and Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, and readers of Neal Stephenson, Michael Crichton, and Blake Crouch. This heart-pounding, science-based thriller takes place in a possibly all-too-soonreality where the hazards and consequences. Hardcover with dust jacket; 320 pages; 9 in H by 6 in W.

Shortlisted for the NZ Post Award this fascinating, innovative biography is of a true original and significant figure in NZ's early colonisation. "I love doubters: of a truly honest doubter I have great hope." Printer, botanist and missionary, William Colenso was a nineteenth-century maverick, a true original. He protested at the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, arguing that Maori did not fully understand its implications. He became a troubled conscience during the white-hot period of colonisation, maintaining his dissident voice throughout his career. Peter Wells refreshes our vision of this awkward, highly talented man, who lost his family after the church expelled him for fathering a child by a Maori woman. Rejected by church, family and friends, Colenso made botany his home and lovingly described the plants of New Zealand. At the same time he wrote a series of remarkable pamphlets that open up our past. 'I write for future generations,' he noted in 1881. The time has come to welcome Colenso back.

This year's Best Australian Essays ranges far and wide. There are portraits of Michael Jackson, Samuel Beckett, the kookaburra, Julia Gillard and Charles Darwin. There are dazzling pieces on commerce and cricket, extinction and translation, perfume and politics. There are journeys through landscapes scorched and recovering, and reflections on turning points both public and deeply personal. For Robyn Davidson, the best essays 'put oneself and the world to the test.' Here is a collection of pieces that do just that - and also entertain, inspire and provoke. Contributors include: David Sedaris, Tim Flannery, Tim Winton, Annabel Crabb, Chloe Hooper, David Marr, Drusilla Modjeska, JM Coetzee, Noel Pearson, Robert Dessaix and more.

This book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with the current understanding of evolution. The second part brings together the scientific picture with various responses to the 'God question'. Science is a powerful discourse; it has unravelled for us the workings of nature, and technology has enabled us to apply the findings in many ways to further knowledge, to perform complex tasks, to further communication, and to make life easier and more exciting. But there are boundaries and limits to science. First, the final models of how nature is working are never the final word: they are always awaiting 'falsification', never blessed with certain 'verification'. Second, the deeper one goes towards hoped-for truth, the more one is confronted with counter-intuitive models such as quantum theory, 'spooky-action' at a distance, the dark energy of the vacuum, the Big Bang etc. Third, science cannot advance beyond the questions accessible by scientific experiment: questions about purpose and God, right and wrong, good and evil, are not accessible to science. Scientific conclusions, however, can then be subjected to reasonable analysis, philosophical reflection, aided perhaps by religious beliefs. Today a dilemma is often offered for consideration: 'either evolution by natural selection, or God and purpose.' Is this delemma a false one? Can purposeful creation and natural selection both be true? Such are the features of evolution, one can argue strongly the case for a purpose. One can at least say belief in God sits well with evolutionary theory. To come to this conclusion we need to extend and improve our image of the God of Abraham, Moses and Jesus. God is intelligent, subtle, powerful- respectful of the freedom with which the divine will has endowed creation itself and homosapiens.