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CENTRAL PARK IN THE DARK
By: Marie Winn
More Mysteries of Urban Wildlife
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
July 2008
On Sale: June 24, 2008
320 pages
ISBN: 0374120110
EAN: 9780374120115
Hardcover
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Fiction
Love and loss, life and death, among the nighttime creatures of the city that never sleeps Like her bestseller Red-Tails in Love, Marie Winnβs Central Park in the Dark explores a once-hidden world in a series of interlocking narratives about the extraordinary denizens, human and animal, of an iconic American park. Her beguiling account of a cityβs lakes and woodlands at night takes the reader through the cycle of seasons as experienced by nocturnal active beasts (raccoons, bats, black skimmers, and sleeping robins among them), insects (moths, wasps, fireflies, crickets), and slugs (in all their unexpected poetical randiness). Winn does not neglect her famous protagonists Pale Male and Lola, the hawks that captivated readers years ago, but this time she adds an exciting narrative about thirty-eight screech owls in Central Park and their lives, loves, and tragedies there. An eye-popping amount of natural history is packed into this entertaining bookβon bird physiology, spiders, sunsets, dragonflies, meteor showers, and the nature of darkness. But the human drama is never forgotten, for Central Park at night boasts a floating population not only of lovers, dog walkers, and policemen but of regulars young and old who, like Winn, hope to unlock the secrets of urban nature. These βnight peopleβ are drawn into a peculiar kind of intimacy. While exploring the astonishing variety of wildlife in the city park, they end up revealing more of their inner lives than they expected.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - July 7, 2008
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