Spirals in Time

A rewarding glimpse of another world, filled with strange and reclusive creatures ... There is rich detail in all directions. One does not know what will come next. Often the descriptions made me see shafts of sunlight underwater, irradiating extraordinary places and creatures. That is just what the book does itself.

A rewarding glimpse of another world, filled with strange and reclusive creatures ... There is rich detail in all directions. One does not know what will come next. Often the descriptions made me see shafts of sunlight underwater, irradiating extraordinary places and creatures. That is just what the book does itself.

... punctures assumptions with the power of a cone snail dart.

Splendid ... Scales clearly loves snails - she has done an elegant, excellent job of explaining her passion ... she is a most able modern champion of molluscs.

Scales is a charming raconteur with boundless enthusiasm and an eye for detail that make her subject glow with life. Combining biology, history and ecology, this is nature writing at its most engaging.

The stories in Spirals in Time – which range from slaves being bought for bags of shells in west Africa in the 1770s to ground-breaking medical uses of cone-snail venom – are gripping and unimaginable.

Helen Scales ... takes us on a fascinating journey into the strange and captivating world of mollusks. Carefully researched and entertaining throughout ... Scales's book is relentlessly interesting.

...an informed introduction to this fascinating group. The author's enthusiasm shines through the prose...This is an ideal book for a summer holiday, and beach finds will take on a new dimension because of it.

With the soul of a poet and a talent for finding the most intriguing trivia about familiar seaside sights, marine biologist Scales turns the mundane into the magical.

Helen Scales is a marine biologist based in Cambridge. Her doctorate involved exploring the reproductive biology of the humphead wrasse, and since then she has tagged sharks in California, catalogued marine life surrounding a hundred islands in the Andaman Sea, and most recently studied the diverse fish that live on coral reefs in the South Pacific. Helen is now a freelance researcher and broadcaster. A major outlet for Helen’s explorations is BBC Radio where she is a reporter and presenter on science and natural history programmes, especially on Radio 4 and the World Service. Her credits include regular appearances on Inside Science and Home Planet , numerous one-off documentaries, and a coveted spot on The Museum of Curiosity . Helen is also a long-standing member of the award-winning science communication collective, The Naked Scientists, based at the University of Cambridge. Helen’s first book was Poseidon’s Steed; The Story of Seahorses from Myth to Reality (2010, Penguin).

helenscales.com / @helenscales