Fauna and family : More Durrell Family Adventures on Corfu

**The inspiration for the PBS __Masterpiece__ series, __The Durrells in Corfu__: A naturalist's childhood adventures with animals—and humans—on a Greek island.** For a passionate animal lover like young Gerald Durrell, the island in the Ionian Sea was a natural paradise, teeming with strange birds and beasts. As he writes . . . "To me, this blue kingdom was a treasure house of strange beasts which I longed to collect and observe, and at first it was frustrating for I could only peck along the shoreline like some forlorn seabird, capturing the small fry in the shallows and occasionally being tantalized by something mysterious and wonderful cast up on the shore. But then I got my boat, the good ship Bootle Bumtrinket, and so the whole of this kingdom was opened up for me, from the golden red castles of rock and their deep pools and underwater caves in the north to the long, glittering white sand dunes lying like snowdrifts in the south." The final entry in Durrell's Corfu Trilogy, __Fauna and Family__ shows what life was like for a child in a different time and a different culture just before World War II. It also sheds light on the man who would one day become an iconic wildlife preservationist. **Previously published as __The Garden of the Gods__** **"[Durrell's] writing is nimble, witty and irreverent, warm but not remotely sentimental." —__Los Angeles Times__** Part of the trilogy that inspired the hit show on PBS Masterpiece Theater, The Durrells in Corfu, Fauna and Family, also known as The Garden of the Gods, is the third in Durrell's Corfu trilogy that begins with his beloved classic, My Family and Other Animals and continues with Birds, Beasts and Relatives. In his foreword to Fauna and Family, Durrell confessed that in the first two books, "I had left out a number of incidents and characters that I would have liked to have described, and I have attempted to repair this omission in this book . . . I hope that it might give the same pleasure to its readers as apparently its predecessors have done, as for me it portrays a very important part of my life . . . which is a truly happy and sunlit childhood."

For fans of the PBS Masterpiece Theater series, The Durrells in Corfu

Fauna and Family is the third in Durrell's Corfu trilogy that begins with My Family and Other Animals and continues with Birds, Beasts and Relatives. Of this book, Durrell writes in his foreword, "I hope that it might give the same pleasure to its readers as apparently its predecessors have done, as for me it portrays a very important part of my life... which is a truly happy and sunlit childhood." The rest of the story of Durrell's zoological life continues in Fillets of Plaice and Beasts in My Belfry where he at last fulfilled his life-long dream.

The garden of the gods The elements of spring Fakirs and fiestas The royal occasion The paths of love Dogs, dormice and disorder Ghosts and spiders The merriment of friendship.