Noted authors and scientists have chosen the shortlist for the Royal Society's 2009 Prizes for Science Books. Ruth Francis, Nature's head press officer, is reviewing one book a week on the Great Beyond blog until the winner is announced on 15 September (http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2009/09/ruths_reviews_bad_science.html).

Francis applauds Leonard Mlodinow's tale-weaving in The Drunkard's Walk, saying his stories are “a tool rather than a stumbling block, intertwined with the numbers ... to elucidate his points”. His flickering between tale and theory “serves to draw the reader on to the reveal,” she notes, clearly hooked on this exploration of chance and causality.

She also gives high marks to fossil hunter Neil Shubin's adventurous Your Inner Fish, as well as Jo Marchant's Decoding the Heavens on cracking the the Antikythera mechanism, an early computer thought to hail from ancient Greece. However, Francis sniffs at the choice of Avery Gilbert's What the Nose Knows, saying, “My curiosity was not sated ... and my understanding was unimproved.”