The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. 'Rare and magical book.' Bill Bryson 'A witty, intoxicating paean to Earth's most wondrous creatures.' Observer 'Exquisite and timely.' Maggie O'Farrell ** Shortlisted for the Waterstones and Foyles Book of the Year ** In The Golden Mole, Katherine Rundell takes us on a globe-spanning tour of the world's strangest and most awe-inspiring animals, including pangolins, wombats, lemurs and seahorses. But each of these animals is endangered. And so, this most passionately persuasive and sharply funny book is also an urgent, inspiring clarion call: to treasure and act - to save nature's vanishing wonders, before it is too late. 'Deeply affecting, intimate and wildly funny . . . I loved it.' Edmund de Waal 'A wondrous ode to nature's astonishing beauty - and an elegy for all the life we are in the midst of destroying.' Amia Srinivasan 'An exuberant celebration of everything from bats, crows and hedgehogs to narwhals and wombats . . . Rundell is incapable of writing a dull sentence.' Observer 'There is a constant joy in the book . . . A sense throughout of delight and wonder, and a reminder that these emotions also matter - may even save us. This is the point.' New Statesman

'Exquisite and timely.' Maggie O'Farrell 'A rare and magical book. I didn't want it to end.' Bill Bryson 'A witty, intoxicating paean to Earth's wondrous creatures.' Observer 'A total miracle.' Max Porter ** SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES AND FOYLES BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS ** The world is more astonishing, more miraculous and more wonderful than our wildest imaginings. In this passionately persuasive and sharply funny book, Katherine Rundell tells us how and why. A lavishly illustrated collection of the lives of some of the Earth's most astounding animals, The Golden Mole is a chance to be awestruck and lovestruck - to reckon with the beauty of the world, its fragility, and its strangeness. A swift flies two million kilometres in its lifetime. That's far enough to get to the moon and back twice over - and then once more to the moon. A pangolin keeps its tongue furled in a pouch by its hip. A Greenland shark can live five hundred years. A wombat once inspired a love poem. 'Rundell's pen is gold-tipped.' Sunday Times 'I love everything about this book: it is a rare little treasure.' Joanna Lumley 'Beautifully written.' Monty Don