Fierce lions, angry mice and fat-tailed sheep: Animal encounters in the ancient Near East", edited by Laerke Recht and Christina Tsouparopoulou, published in the University of Cambridge's McDonald Institute Conversations series, is a tribute to the animals of the ancient Near East and their complex relationship with the environment and other human and nonhuman animals.

Offering faunal, textual and iconographic studies, the contributions present a fascinating array of the many ways in which animals influence human life and death, and explore new perspectives in the exciting field of human-animal studies as applied to this part of the world.

It is freely available open access. The complete volume can be downloaded as a pdf at: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/328721