Books published by Penguin Random House South Africa

Spiders of southern Africa provides sharp insight into the complex, often mysterious and always fascinating world of spiders. This edition has been revised and updated to reflect the latest available taxonomic information. It covers a wide range of topics: informative features on the origins of arachnids, their bewildering variety, their classification into families and genera and their invertebrate relatives; a study of the physical and behavioural characteristics of spiders, the main groups and dangerous species, and a chapter on finding and studying spiders. Species accounts detail the most commonly seen and most interesting spiders of the region. Lavishly illustrated with colour photographs, the body text is supplemented by a variety of special-interest panels, making it both informative and user-friendly.

This book tells the true story of a scientist named Mary Anning. The fossils she found helped invent the science of palaeontology. If you've heard of Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs or Pterosaurs you already know her work but there's so much that's been hidden or forgotten.

For generations, the deserts of southern Africa have intrigued scientists and travellers alike. Seemingly barren wastes, they in fact teem with life âEUR"from ants to elephants, stone plants to the curious welwitschia, dainty dik-diks to towering gemsbok, and cart-wheeling spiders to fog-basking beetles.