"Cindy Traisi has done it again. She has brought me joy with her storytelling abilities and brought this self-perceived, tattooed tough guy to tears with her accounts of the injured wild animals passing through the Fund for Animals Wildlife Center in Southern California.

"Cindy's first book, Because They Matter, was a constant nightstand companion when my children were younger. My daughters demanded "just one more" of the heart-touching stories of the remarkable job of treating wild animals while they are trying to get by as best they can in a world dominated by human hazards. Some animals in her stories make it, too many don't, but every one of Cindy's accounts of the work done by her husband, Chuck, and their dedicated staff allows readers to appreciate the personalities and endearing qualities of nature's wonders.

"Because They Matter, Too is filled with new heart-lifting and heartbreaking stories of the wild animals that live all around us in Southern California. If you love nature, or just love expert story-telling, Because They Matter, Too is a must read. As my daughters put it: just one more Cindy Better yet... keep them coming, Cindy."

-Loren Nancarrow, Weathercaster and Environmental Reporter- KGTV San Diego

Cesar Millan Doesn't Live Here is a collection of stories that are snapshots into the daily life of Michelle and Jason. Stories include Aurora knocking a king size bed off its frame with her head, Porter's harrowing experience with Frosty the Snowman, the basic decorating rule of never picking out paint while angry, and other events that remind us that sometimes our horoscopes to stay in bed are good advice.

Lee Stuart learned from an early age to respect all creatures through his heritage as a Native American; he also learned what it was like to be an unwanted citizen in this country. Throughout his life, he demonstrated an uncanny knack for understanding and communicating with animals, particularly those that were unwanted. From Teddy the Bantam rooster to Sparky the pigeon, as well as a wide variety of other pets, Stuart loved them all deeply and fought to protect them from ill treatment.  The deep bond that developed between himself and the unwanted black Labrador retriever his daughter named Boomer confirms that there is much to the master/dog relationship, which is poignantly demonstrated when Boomer saves Stuart's life in 1996  

Beyond The Secret Elephants is the continuing story of Gareth Patterson’s almost two decades of research into the secretive Knysna elephants. Significantly, however, it also reveals his startling discovery of a much more mysterious being than the elephants – a relict hominoid known to the indigenous forest people as the Otang.

Gareth had long heard about the existence of the otang from the local people but he mentioned it only briefly in The Secret Elephants, focusing instead on his rediscovery of the Knysna elephants and their survival against the odds. He was reluctant to blur the story of the elephants with his findings about the otang. That is, until now. The possible existence of relict hominoids is today gaining momentum worldwide with ongoing research into Bigfoot in North America, the Yeti in the Himalayas and the Orang Pendek in Sumatra. Eminent conservationists and scientists – among them Dr Jane Goodall, Dr George Schaller and Professor Jeff Meldrum – have publicly stated that they are open-minded about the possible existence of these cryptid beings.

In the course of his unannounced research into the otang Gareth heard many accounts – mostly spontaneous and unprompted – of otang sightings by others in the area over a number of years. These accounts, documented in the book, are astonishingly consistent both in the descriptions of the otang and in the shocked reactions of the individuals who saw them.

Gareth Patterson’s work supports the increasing realisation that humankind still has much to learn about the natural world and the mysteries it holds. The possibility that we may be sharing our world with other as yet unidentified hominoids is today being viewed as something that should not be discounted. And as humankind, we need to reassess our role and our responsibility towards all forms of life that coexist with us on planet Earth.

Never before have so many exciting, hair-raising tales of bear encounters been collected into one book. Read about a man who swam into a lake to try to escape a furious bear only to find to his horror that bears can swim too! Or of the old gold prospector who got mauled and sewed up his own stomach-and lived to tell about it! When a bear attacks, it does so with devastating ferocity. Although the average attack lasts but thirty seconds, grievous injury can result from powerful paws and jaws. Strangely enough, most attacks are nonfatal. This book is filled with true-life episodes of close-calls, maulings, and deaths by all three North American bears: black, grizzly, and polar. These stories are not fiction. All are, eerily enough, based on complete fact. Even the FOX TV show When Animals Attack uses Kaniut's material for their shows. The author of two previous best-selling books on dangerous bears brings you a cliffhanger-you won't want to miss his latest and best yet!

Secrets of an Ageless Journey (1997) the journey begins once again when a sixteen year old girl, Sarah, ventures into the mysteries surrounding her grandfather and the family ancestral ranch. While visiting her cousins on the ranch she discovers an old journal written over eighty years before. The journal becomes the focus of her quest for discovering a mysterious influence that is about the family; and in some way guiding her. (1915) the journal takes Sarah back to one summer in the life of her great grandfather, Joseph, and his twin sister, Ida Belle as they experience a similar ancestral stirring in their lives. A great grandmother comes to visit the twins, involving them in a mystery that has haunted her and the clan. It is through the grandmother that the premise of an invisible force and invisible world exist and was essential to the culture and heritage of an American Indian nation.

When American explorers crossed the Texas Panhandle, they dubbed it part of the ""Great American Desert."" A ""sea of grass,"" the llano appeared empty, flat, and barely habitable. Contemporary developments - cell phone towers, oil rigs, and wind turbines - have only added to this stereotype. Yet in this lyrical ecomemoir, Shelley Armitage charts a unique rediscovery of the largely unknown land, a journey at once deeply personal and far-reaching in its exploration of the connections between memory, spirit, and place. Armitage begins her narrative with the intention to walk the llano from her family farm thirty meandering miles along the Middle Alamosa Creek to the Canadian River. Along the way, she seeks the connection between her father and one of the area's first settlers, Ysabel Gurule, who built his dugout on the banks of the Canadian. Armitage, who grew up nearby in the small town of Vega, finds this act of walking inseparable from the act of listening and writing. ""What does the land say to us?"" she asks as she witnesses human alterations to the landscape - perhaps most catastrophic the continued drainage of the land's most precious resource, the Ogallala Aquifer. Yet the llano's wonders persist: dynamic mesas and canyons, vast flora and fauna, diverse wildlife, rich histories. Armitage recovers the voices of ancient, Native, and Hispano peoples, their stories interwoven with her own: her father's legacy, her mother's decline, a brother's love. The llano holds not only the beauty of ecological surprises but a renewed realization of kinship in a world ever changing. Reminiscent of the work of Terry Tempest Williams and John McPhee, Walking the Llano is both a celebration of an oft-overlooked region and a soaring testimony to the power of the landscape to draw us into greater understanding of ourselves and others by experiencing a deeper connection with the places we inhabit.

It was the pathetic mews of a hungry mother cat, scrounging in a dumpster to feed her kittens that first caught Bob and Kathy Rude's attention. They found the hungry cat and several more hungry felines while helping out at the family restaurant one summer. The chance meeting between the hungry strays and two government computer programmers led to the creation of Rude Ranch Animal Rescue, one of the United States' hardest working No-Kill Animal Sanctuaries. Read on to meet these original Rude Cats and find what can go right and wrong when you try to help a few stray animals and inadvertently start an animal sanctuary.