SLIPPERY BEAST A True Crime Natural History, with Eels

This natural history of the eel gets a jovial performance from narrator Coleen Marlo. As author Shell details, eels have fascinated, mystified, and confounded people for centuries, and today, they are a valuable global commodity: Baby eels (elvers) are caught in Maine, shipped to Chinese aquafarms to be raised to maturity, then imported back into the U.S., where they show up as unagi at your favorite sushi restaurant. Listeners, too, will find themselves fascinated as Marlo ably moves the narrative from historical scientists' many failed attempts to determine how eels reproduce to the modern highly lucrative illegal eel trade. Marlo is obliged to deliver many foreign and scientific words and names, and while some pronunciations seem a bit iffy, she gets most of the tricky Maine place names right. J.M.D. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: JANUARY 2025]