Tigers in red weather

After a terrible year, the end of a five-year affair and the death of her father, Ruth Padel wants out from normal life and happens across an advert for a trip to India.

She visits a tiger reserve - and so begins a remarkable journey and an obsession.

She travels across the world, Bhutan to Siberia, China to Sumatra, into jungles and into myths, in search of tigers: the most beautiful, and one of the most endangered, animals in the world.

In every jungle, among the snakes, scorpions and animals living their secret lives, she meets "defenders of the wild", scientists, guards and conservationists struggling to protect forest animals from armed poachers, live electrocuting fences, poisoning.

As she becomes more passionately interested in her elusive subject, she contemplates the meaning of obsession: where it takes us, how it shapes us.

Indeed, it is our obsession with tigers that has brought them to the edge of extinction.

Tigers stalk the pages of this book more vividly than in any wildlife programme.

Both a captivating piece of natural history and a beautiful piece of travel literature, Tigers in Red Weather is also an absorbing exploration of obsession, and of the human heart.