ooh, I like all of those, depending on what type of horror it is though, it may give me nightmares. Is it really disturbing or anything, or is it just gory? The title is neat-- and I like that it is written by a scientist.
Short stories coming in various lengths and styles, so… whatever rocks your boat. At times reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, or The Twilight Zone, or Stephen King, or Michael Crichton, or Lovecraft. In any case the historical/scientific bits seem well-researched, nothing to make the average naturalist cringe. :)
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She’s great–her work is seriously creepy and often funny. A friend gave me a collection of her short stories, and then I went on to read several of her novels. They always have some element of nature in them. I haven’t read Digger though. I’ll have to check it out.
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One of my absolute favorites was the Edge Chronicles by Chris Riddell and Paul Stewart. It’s fantasy, so the wildlife the books describe are fictional, but I can pretty much guarantee it’ll resonate with nature lovers. It’s got wonderful descriptions of bizarre plants and animals (like the man-eating bloodoaks and the symbiotic tarry vines that help them catch their prey, venomous hover worms that skate about on jets of air released from ducts along their underside, and the enormously strong but gentle banderbears that live solitary lives and yodel to their faraway companions). It accompanies those descriptions with some of the best illustrations I’ve ever seen. I recently found out that they released three new books after I’d thought the series had ended for good, so I am excited to go find them the next time I visit a bookstore.
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Big reader here so I have quite a few recommendations
The Leviathan Trilogy is a young adult series from multiple viewpoints about WWI in a world where Darwin mastered genetic engineering and the Allies used it to create war beasts. The eponymous Leviathan is a blimp created from whale DNA which the crew lives in and maintains it and the menagerie of weapons it carries. The Central powers all use steampunk walkers. It also has some lovely illustrations.
The Galaxy and the Ground Within is fun because there are no humans in it. Its about a bunch of aliens stranded in a space rest stop where they discuss their cultures and beliefs. Less natural and a little slow but very relaxing and interesting to think about non human sapients and their cultures
The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate is a young adult novel about a year of a young girls life where she is taught by her grandfather to be a naturalist in 1899 Texas
Dinotopia is incredible but is a pretty quick read. It follows the story of a Naturalist and his son who shipwreck on “Dinotopia” a mysterious island filled with people and sapient dinosaurs accompanied by the loveliest watercolors you’ve ever seen (like my profile picture)
The Windup Girl is pretty good. Very interesting take on where climate change could be headed. One of the main characters is an officer in the department that tries to prevent the spread of invasive species.
I don’t think I can sum up Parable of the Sower in a way that does it justice, just read it.
Bruce Sterling’s Swarm is a short fiction about a scientist going to study a hive-mind race of arthropods living in an asteroid. Really interesting take on what defines intelligence. If you like it his broader works are collected in Schismatrix which is very fun but not as focused around naturalism
A Natural History of Dragons is about a Victorian woman who wants nothing more than to be a naturalist who studies dragons despite the challenges of her time
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OMG I need to read this, the illustrations are so pretty!
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My high school library had a copy of Dinotopia - it was great.
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I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned it yet, but reading the Dune series by Frank Herbert, I could get a sense of the level of thought put into the ecology of the sandworms, where they actually come across as ‘real’ animals in a beautifully written way that made it very vivid in my mind’s eye.
The books also portray the absolutely vital impact and role of water in the desert planet’s ecology and on the cultures of the people who live on the planet. It’s a nice way of showing that human society is not independent of the ecosystem, which is true of real life.
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Dune actually came out of Frank Herbert seeing the USDA stabilize a bunch of sand dunes in Oregon. There was a nice thread about this on Twitter a couple of years ago: https://twitter.com/ferrisjabr/status/1447988135657295874?lang=en
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Oh good, I’m so glad! I can’t even describe how much I love this book. I absolutely love his poetic prose. I hope you enjoy it even half as much as I do!
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Started reading A Beautiful Friendship the other day, I’m enjoying it so far. I’ve imagined what it would be like to be an early naturalist on an alien planet for many years
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Just wait until the anthropologists show up in Fire Season. 
I’ve been reading the Honor Harrington books for years, and really enjoy them, but there’s a reason that I have a Sphinx Forestry Service patch for my field jacket, rather than a Royal Manticoran Navy insignia.
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I have only finished the sample, but I am very intrigued to finish reading “Remarkably Bright Creatures” by Shelby Van Pelt. Alas, there is a 6-week wait for a digital edition from the library.
So, I’m glad you’ve all suggested other reads to sustain me in the mean time.
And, rereads!
@covemom I devoured the Gene Stratton Porter books many years back (“Girl of the Limber Lost” 
). Growing up, we had really old copies saved by various family members.
@tisli Dune! Maybe it is time to reread this - I remember is was truly engrossing.
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Grass by Sheri S Tepper
I read this when we were staying at Wilderness - looking out over tall reeds from our balcony - with brave people kayaking past the ‘monsters’
Bulrushes https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/107714617
And reeds https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/116123279
Frightening! https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/20162798
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Dup, deleted (sorry)
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Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
Not a traditional nature-themed book; it is violent, bloody, and philosophical….but the Judge is one memorable Naturalist!
Quote:
The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man’s mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.
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