Adventure Biography

We are warriors! Jack and Annie have met knights, pirates, ninjas, and Vikings, but they have never met the most fearsome warriors of all: Roman soldiers. When the magic tree house whisks them back to the early AD 100s, Jack and Annie find themselves in a Roman camp. Their mission: Be like a warrior. That is easier said than done! The Roman soldiers are much scarier in person - and suspicious of strangers. Then, a mysterious man riding a black horse gives Jack and Annie some advice to help them on their mission.

Once upon a time a girl from Italy ended up becoming a rocktastic princess on Australia’s legendary Go-Set Magazine, hung out with the Rolling Stones, Yes and Led Zeppelin to name just three, then married a musician, decamped to Tamworth where she spent 25 years becoming a key figure in Australia’s country music capital, before heading off to laidback Mullumbimby in northern New South Wales. Wait, there’s more! She recorded and released her first solo album at 50 years old and rapidly became a superstar in Europe as well.

No matter what was happening in Jennifer Weiner's life - whether good, bad, or very, very ugly - her mother, Fran, would say the same thing: It's all material. Now the number-one New York Times best-selling author and "one of the biggest names in popular fiction" ( USA Today), beloved on Twitter and hailed as "an unlikely feminist enforcer" ( The New Yorker), takes the raw stuff of her personal life and spins it into a collection of personal essays as uproariously funny and heartfelt as the best of Tina Fey and Nora Ephron.

In the late morning of 29th May 1953, the sun was shining brightly on the roof of the world, a gentle breeze was blowing and two men were there to witness it for the first time ever...their names were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay and the roof of the world was Everest. This is the breathtaking story of how two very different yet equally determined men battled frost-biting temperatures, tumbling ice rocks, powerful winds and death-defying ridges to climb the world’s highest mountain.

We all know that the best way to study a foreign language is to go to a country where it's spoken, but can the same immersion method be applied to history? How do interactions with antique objects influence perceptions of the modern world?

When Forrest Fenn was given a fatal cancer diagnosis, he came up with a bold plan: He would hide a chest full of jewels and gold in the wilderness, and publish a poem that would serve as a map leading to the treasure's secret location. But he didn't die, and after hiding the treasure in 2010, Fenn instead presided over a decade-long gold rush that saw many thousands of treasure hunters scrambling across the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of his fortune.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

In this age of lunchtime lifts, wrinkle-erasing injections, furrow fillers, and lip plumpers, there’s no question that anyone who aims to look younger easily can. But Lauren Kessler wants something more than to follow the cosmetic path to youthfulness. She wants to live with energy, stamina, vitality, resilience, and health for a very, very long time. Her goal: to reverse her biological age from the inside out.

A daredevil pilot in the famed 352nd Fighter Squadron, the author of this remarkable memoir bailed out of his burning Mustang two days after D-Day and was launched on a thrilling adventure on the ground in Occupied France.

In the best-selling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the human condition. (Hint: It may have to do with brushing and flossing daily.)

When best-selling mystery writer David Rosenfelt and his family moved from Southern California to Maine, he thought he had prepared for everything. They had mapped the route, brought three GPSs for backup, as well as refrigerators full of food, and stoves and microwaves on which to cook them. But traveling with 25 dogs turned out to be a bigger ordeal than he anticipated, despite RVs, the extra kibble, volunteers (including a few readers), and camping equipment.

Larry Brilliant's life journey has led him on a purposeful path across continents and countercultural movements, marching arm in arm with the men and women who defined a generation. A man who has always been in the right place at the right time, Brilliant has engaged with some of the most prominent thought leaders, spiritual masters, heroes, and icons in the world, including Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, the Dalai Lama, and Barack Obama.

During the 1920s, T. E. Lawrence gained global attention, both for his involvement in the Middle Eastern anti-imperialist movement, and for his vivid and sensational writings about his experiences. Despite the passage of many years and the emergence of a whole new set of problems in the Middle East, and fuelled by the success of the hit movie Lawrence of Arabia, the T. E. Lawrence mystique continues to fascinate. Controversial and provocative, this revised and updated edition of Lawrence James's acclaimed biography penetrates and overturns the mythology that surrounds T. E. Lawrence. James traces the sometimes spurious Lawrence legend back to its truthful roots, yet remains dispassionate and generous in spirit throughout. The Golden Warrior presents readers with a fascinating study of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable figures.

Alastair Humphreys walked across India, from the Coromandel Coast to the Malabar Coast, following the course of a holy river. Walking alone and spending the nights sleeping under the stars, in the homes of welcoming strangers, or in small towns and villages, he experienced the dusty enchantment of ordinary, real India on the smallest of budgets. There Are Other Rivers tells the story of the walk through an account of a single day as well as reflecting on the allure of difficult journeys and the eternal appeal of the open road.

True Raiders tells the untold true story of Monty Parker, a British rogue nobleman who, after being dared to do so by Ava Astor, the so-called “most beautiful woman in the world,” headed a secret 1909 expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant. Like a real-life version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this incredible story of adventure and mystery has almost been completely forgotten today. Using recently uncovered records from the original expedition and several newly translated sources, True Raiders is the first retelling of this group’s adventures.

No American president has been more enthusiastic in appreciating the wilderness and in conserving our nation’s natural treasures than Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919). And no other president wrote more about nature and his explorations of it than T. R., in scattered books, such as African Wilderness, and in his countless letters, including those collected in The Selected Letters of Theodore Roosevelt).

Taking the Risk is Hilary Bradt’s engaging, insightful, amusing and sometimes alarming memoir about serendipitous adventures in travel and publishing. A travel industry trailblazer who co-founded Bradt Guides, Hilary looks back on 50 years of escapades, surprises, mishaps, disasters… and success. From her first solo trip aged three (on a British beach), she revisits six decades of hitchhiking, feeding the travel habit by working abroad, and starting a successful travel publishing company where knowing nothing proved a surprising asset.

The North Pole, originally published in 1910, makes available Robert E. Peary's own account of his expedition in the Arctic. It provides hotly contested evidence that remains an indispensable key in deciding who deserved the coveted title "Discoverer of the North Pole". It is also a gripping adventure story that is impossible to put down.

Timbuktu: the African city known to legend as a land of scholars, splendor and mystery, a golden age in the Sahara Desert. But to many it is a vaguely recognizable name - a flippant tag for "the most remote place on earth." With this fabled city as his goal, author Rick Antonson began a month-long trek. His initial plan? To get a haircut. Aided by an adventuresome spirit, Rick endures a 45-hour train ride, a swindling travel agent, "Third World, three-lane" roads, rivers, and a flat deck ferry boat before finally reaching Timbuktu.

Edgar Laplante was a small-time grifter, an erstwhile vaudeville performer, and an unabashed charmer. But after years of playing thankless gigs and traveling with medicine shows, he decided to undertake the most demanding and bravura performance of his life. In the fall of 1917, Laplante reinvented himself as Chief White Elk: war hero, sports star, civil rights campaigner, Cherokee nation leader - and total fraud.