Bücher von Michael Tougias

Since we humans have evolved into the dominant species on this planet, we sometimes fail to recognize--and respect--the ever-present threat posed by the animals we love or fear, hunt or fight to protect. Many of nature's most lethal residents have combative skills that have been honed by millions of years of adaptive survival, and it takes only a second for an otherwise evolved individual to become a helpless victim. WHEN MAN IS THE PREY is a one-of-a-kind collection of real-life encounters between man and beast that explores the uneasy relationship that humanity has with its native habitat. From bears, boars, and black dogs to swimming with sharks and dancing with wolves, the stories in WHEN MAN IS THE PREY offer a fascinating, frightening, and enlightening look at the natural world and its many creatures.

In the midst of the Blizzard of 1978, the tanker Global Hope floundered on the shoals in Salem Sound off the Massachusetts coast. The Coast Guard heard the Mayday calls and immediately dispatched a patrol boat. Within an hour, the Coast Guard boat was in as much trouble as the tanker, having lost its radar, depth finder, and engine power in horrendous seas. Pilot boat Captain Frank Quirk was monitoring the Coast Guard's efforts by radio, and when he heard that the patrol boat was in jeopardy, he decided to act. Gathering his crew of four, he readied his forty-nine-foot steel boat, the Can Do, and entered the maelstrom of the blizzard.Using dozens of interview and audiotapes that recorded every word exchanged between Quirk and the Coast Guard, Tougias has written a devastating, true account of bravery and death at sea, in Ten Hours Until Dawn.

Life on Shipwreck Island is a bore for twelve-year-old Easterly Wind and her friends, Brian (age nine) and Kristin (age ten), until something strange happens just before the island's annual Summer Celebration Dinner. A lobsterman goes missing while fishing off the island, and there are signs of foul play. Then, just a day later, a local sailor's boat is found adrift, minus the missing sailor. The three children become obsessed with the mystery, and begin an investigation that leads them down a path of adventure. While none of the islanders know what happened to the missing fisherman, the reader does. He was snatched out of his boat by the claws of a giant seven-foot-long lobster. Assisted by a biologist and a crusty old lobsterman, Easterly slowly unravels what happened, but is also thwarted at every turn by Mayor Ruth Snackle, who wants to keep a lid on the story so that it doesn't affect the all-important tourism business. Meanwhile, Easterly is getting more than her fair share of criticism from folks all over the island for starting the hysteria about a "phony monster lobster." People think it's bad enough that two islanders are missing without a few kids interfering with both the tragedy and the investigation. This only makes Easterly, Kristin and Brian persevere and take more risks to prove their theory, and those risks eventually bring them face to face with Claws.