G.P. Putnam's Sons

An otter's life in the rivers of Devon, told with a naturalist's precision and a novelist's sympathy. Published in 1927, it remains one of the finest animal narratives in English — unsentimental, ecologically exact, and devastating.

Delia Owens's novel about a girl growing up alone in the marshes of coastal North Carolina is a murder mystery wrapped in a naturalist's journal. The landscape — tidal flats, fireflies, oyster shells — is rendered with the precision of someone who has spent decades in the field.