This mystery with a treasure hunt full of puzzles is sure to get brains buzzing!Winston Breen says the only thing better than discovering a puzzle is stumping someone else with one. But when his sister uncovers mysterious strips of wood with words and letters on them, even Winston himself is stumped.Soon the whole family (and some friends) are caught up in the mystery and off on a scavenger hunt that just may lead to a ring worth thousands of dollars. Every...

For fans of The Westing Game and The 39 Clues, a third exciting Winston Breen adventure!Winston Breen and his friends Mal and Jake accompany Mr. Penrose for a weekend of puzzles and games at the mansion of a famous musician. Over the course of the weekend, some guests’ prizes and belongings inexplicably disappear. As the group continues with the elaborate puzzles—which the reader is invited to solve too—some of the guests try to figure out who is ...

Read Eric Berlin's posts on the Penguin Blog.When puzzle addict Winston Breen and his best friends head to an all-day puzzle hunt with a $50,000 grand prize, they’re pumped. But the day is not all fun and games: not only do they have a highstrung and highly competitive teacher along for the ride, but the puzzles are hard even for Winston, the other schools’ teams are no joke, and someone in the contest is playing dirty in order to win. Trying to stop this mystery c...

The first edition of Carrion Ecology, Evolution, and Their Applications brought together multiple scientific disciplines to shed light on the importance of carrion within the context of ecology and evolutionary biology, and through applications ranging from human mass disasters to habitat/ecosystem conservation. This second edition builds upon this foundation to include a huge amount of new research, consisting of 33 chapters—9 brand new and the remaining 24 substantially updated ...

Forensic Microbiology focuses on newly emerging areas of microbiology relevant to medicolegal and criminal investigations: postmortem changes, establishing cause of death, estimating postmortem interval, and trace evidence analysis. Recent developments in sequencing technology allow researchers, and potentially practitioners, to examine microbial communities at unprecedented resolution and in multidisciplinary contexts. This detailed study of microbes facilitates the development o...

The use of forensic entomology has become established as a global science. Recent efforts in the field bridge multiple disciplines including, but not limited to, microbiology, chemistry, genetics, and systematics as well as ecology and evolution. The first book of its kind, Forensic Entomology: International Dimensions and Frontiers provides an inc

Percy Jackson meets Indiana Jones in the final installment of the New York Times bestselling epic adventure Seven Wonders!Jack, Marco, Cass, and Aly’s quest to find the seven magic orbs buried beneath each of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World has hit a perilous snag. King Uhla’ar has kidnapped Aly and taken her and an orb back through a rift in time. A giant, merciless behemoth guards the opening, and so Jack and his friends realize that their only hope to rescue Aly is to rus...

At a glance, most species seem adapted to the environment in which they live. Yet species relentlessly evolve, and populations within species evolve in different ways. Evolution, as it turns out, is much more dynamic than biologists realized just a few decades ago.In Relentless Evolution, John N. Thompson explores why adaptive evolution never ceases and why natural selection acts on species in so many different ways. Thompson presents a view of life in which ongoing evolut...

The news that a flowering weed—mousear cress ( Arabidopsis thaliana)—can sense the particular chewing noise of its most common caterpillar predator and adjust its chemical defenses in response led to headlines announcing the discovery of the first "hearing" plant. As plants lack central nervous systems (and, indeed, ears), the mechanisms behind this "hearing" are unquestionably very different from those of our own acoustic sense, but the misleading headlines point to an overlooked...

Parasites that manipulate the behaviour of their hosts represent striking examples of adaptation by natural selection. This field of study is now moving beyond its descriptive phase and into more exciting areas where the processes and patterns of such dramatic adaptations can be better understood. This innovative text provides an up-to-date, authoritative, and challenging review of host manipulation by parasites that assesses the current state of developments in the field and lays out a fr...

Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an effective and environmentally sensitive approach to pest management. It uses natural predators, pest-resistant plants, and other methods to preserve a healthy environment in an effort to decrease reliance on harmful pesticides. Featuring forty chapters written by leading experts, this textbook covers a broad and comprehensive range of topics in integrated pest management, focused primarily on theory and concepts. It is complemented by two award winnin...

Forensic Entomology provides undergraduates with a concise introduction to the subject. The book is written with the clarity necessary for students starting out in entomology yet authoritative enough to prove useful for more experienced researchers.Worked examples of the necessary mathematics, including how to use excel to process data, coupled with lab protocols and self-assessment questions make the book an essential starting point in the subject.Assuming little ...