Name: Remarkable Creatures
ISBN: 9780452296725

Tracy Chevalier

Marked for greatness after being struck by lightning in infancy, Mary Anning discovers a fossilized skeleton near her 19th-century home that triggers attacks on her character and upheavals throughout the religious, scientific and academic communities. By the best-selling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Reprint. A best-selling book.

Remarkable Creatures

Remarkable creatures

Eugenia Andino

Tracy Chevalier hasta ahora había escrito novelas fantaseando sobre la creación de obras de arte. Esta es un cambio porque trata sobre buscadores de fósiles, en particular Mary Anning. Creo que como introducción novelada a los descubrimientos arqueológicos del siglo XIX es muy superficial, y tiene muy poca acción. Sólo para incondicionales, aunque a mí me resultó entretenida.

From the New York Times bestselling novelist, a stunning historical novel that follows the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, two extraordinary 19th century fossil hunters who changed the scientific world forever. On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and uneducated Mary learns that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot ammonites and other fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight. After enduring bitter cold, thunderstorms, and landslips, her challenges only grow when she falls in love with an impossible man. Mary soon finds an unlikely champion in prickly Elizabeth, a middle-class spinster who shares her passion for scouring the beaches. Their relationship strikes a delicate balance between fierce loyalty, mutual appreciation, and barely suppressed envy, but ultimately turns out to be their greatest asset. From the author of At the Edge of the Orchard and Girl With a Pearl Earring comes this incredible story of two remarkable women and their voyage of discovery.

A Novel

Judy Hudgins

I couldn't imagine walking a beach and looking for fossils in a long dress. Interesting story.

Mary Anning, born in a poor family, lived in Lyme Regis and from an early age was fascinated by the fossils, then called snake stones and devil's toenails, that could then be picked up on the beaches. She became far more interested when she realised that these could be sold to the gentry who had grown into avid collectors. She was supported by her family in her enterprise but was often ripped off by the buyers and derided by the scientists. One person came to her rescue: Elizabeth Philpot, daughter of a wealthy family who had settled in Dorset to escape the stultifying respectability of genteel London society. The two women, of different ages and very different class and background, became unlikely friends but the relationship was to take on stranger twists as the excitement of the fossil discoveries - Mary Anning finds the first complete plesiosaur - turns to religious difficulties as the importance of these finds begins to spread.

Francine Corry

Amelia C 

Pierke Bosschieter

Kate Lillie

Rebecca Grandison 

Kathy Rodger 

Lyn Pritchard

In the early nineteenth century, a windswept beach along the English coast brims with fossils for those with the eye ... From the moment she′s struck by lightning as a baby, it is clear Mary Anning is marked for greatness.