Helen Plum Library

Buck is a domesticated dog living with his loving family on a ranch in California when he is stolen away and sold off into the brutish life of an Alaskan sled dog. In order to survive, Buck must withstand cruel treatment from his human masters, and fight to gain respect and dominance within his new pack. No longer able to rely on his family, Buck must adjust to this new life and answer the call of the wild. The Call of the Wild is a story of Northern...

While transporting ivory along the Congo River, Charles Marlow hears whispers about the enigmatic Mr. Kurtz, who has apparently become ill while stationed upriver. Arriving at the Inner Station, Marlow confronts the nature of Kurtz?s mysterious illness, his ties to the local native tribes, and his slow decline into madness. -- Publisher's website

Area X has claimed the lives of members of eleven expeditions. The twelfth expedition consisting of four women hopes to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself

On the windswept fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast Mary Anning learns that she has "the eye" - she finds what no one else can see. When Mary uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton she sets the religious fathers on edge the townspeople to vicious gossip and the scientific world alight. But as a woman Mary is barred from the academic community. Luckily she finds a champion in prickly Elizabeth Philpot a recent exile from London

Biologist and former soldier Lena is shocked when her missing husband comes home near death from a top-secret mission into The Shimmer, a mysterious quarantine zone from which no one has ever returned. Now, Lena and her elite team must enter a beautiful, deadly world of mutated landscapes and creatures, to discover how to stop the growing phenomenon that threatens all life on Earth

A biography of a self-taught scientist who photographed thousands of individual snowflakes in order to study their unique formations

A renowned marine biologist presents this extraordinary firsthand account of the discovery of Ernest Shackleton's Endurance--a century to the day after Shackleton's death--that captures the intrepid spirit that joins two mariners across the centuries, both of whom accomplished the impossible November 21, 1915: After sailing more than ten thousand miles from Norway to the Weddell Sea, the Endurance finally succumbed to the surrounding ice. Shackleton...

An unknown stranger rides into a California Gold Rush town and gets caught in the middle of a feud between the mining syndicate and independent miners

YOU are a New Englander with a bad case of gold fever. Gold has been discovered in California, and you want to go claim some for yourself. Will you strike it rich? On January 24, 1848, a man working near Sutter's Mill in California spotted a few small gold nuggets in the American River. This discovery led thousands of people to move to the west. However, looking for gold proved to be dangerous work. Author Elaine Landau poses many other exciting questions...