The Secret Life of Rivers

You loved the books that turned an ordinary wood into a hidden world of talking trees and trading fungi. Then you finished them, and the river behind your town went back to being just water.

This audiobook follows one river from a cold hillside spring to the tidal mouth, and every short chapter opens inside a living scene on the water. You meet the caddisfly larva gluing itself a stone house, the beaver whose dam turns a trickle into a wetland, the salmon that smells its way home, the eel that begins and ends its life far out at sea, the kingfisher and the otter. Each chapter closes with a plain line on what the research really shows, so you know exactly which parts are proven and which are still open questions.

After one chapter, the stream, canal or drainage ditch near your home stops looking empty. Press play, and take the river with you on your next walk.