Fungi are not like us – they are entirely, magically something else… Erupting, spreading, decaying, changing.

Aliya Whiteley has always been in love with fungi – from a childhood taking blurry photographs of strange fungal eruptions on Exmoor to a career as a writer inspired by their surreal and alien beauty. This love for fungi is a love for life, from single-cell spores to the largest living organism on the planet; a story stretching from Aliya's lawn into Space and back again via every continent. Despite their familiar presence, there's still much for us to learn about the eruption, growth and decay of fungi’s connected world – one that Aliya lays out before us, linking fungal geography and history with myth; fiction and culture with science.

From fields, feasts and fairy rings to death caps, puffballs and ambrosia beetles, this is an intoxicating personal journey into the life of extraordinary organism, one that we have barely begun to understand.