Walking along the water’s edge, who among us has not stopped to admire the evocatively patterned, shaped, and multihued stones that beckon? Fun to collect and free for the taking, beach stones are objects of contemplation, beauty, and sentiment. This exquisite volume—at once a gorgeous art book and a nature guide—presents more than 200 exceptional stones from around the world and describes the fascinating natural processes that produced them.

Photographer and installation artist Josie Iselin, who uses a flatbed scanner to generate her imagery, has arranged these stones with great artistry, and nature writer Margaret Carruthers yields their secrets, revealing, for instance, that a pebble from Maine was created 400 million years ago during the birth of a great mountain range. Art lovers and beachcombing spirits everywhere will cherish this gift book.

Josie Iselin is a photographer and installation artist. Her work has been exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, SF Camerawork, and art galleries in and around San Francisco, where she lives.

Margaret W. Carruthers is the author of several earth science books, including Pioneers of Geology: Discovering Earth’s Secrets. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.