Adventure Writing

From the authors of the number-one best-selling The Sea Hunters comes more unforgettable true adventures with famous shipwrecks.

As we age, it would be so easy to let the "what ifs" intrude. What if it rains? What if my bike breaks down and there’s no cell phone service? What if my joints hurt, my backside aches, and I get cold and miserable? I’m too old for discomfort and uncertainty. There is a multitude of ways we can talk ourselves out of doing the things we’ve always loved.

Taking 36 songs from his back catalogue, folk-punk icon Frank Turner explores his songwriting process. Find out the stories behind the songs forged in the hedonistic years of the mid-2000s North London scene, the ones perfected in Nashville studios and everything in between. Some of these songs arrive fully formed, as if they've always been there; some take graft and endless reworking to find 'the one'. In exploring them all, Turner reflects with eloquence, insight and self-deprecating wit on exactly what it is to be a songwriter.

Joshua Slocum was believed to be the first man to sail single-handed around the world. After a distinguished career, where he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Joshua Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdad, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success.

Daniel Klein journeys to the Greek island Hydra to discover the secrets of aging happily. Drawing on the lives of his Greek friends, as well as philosophers ranging from Epicurus to Sartre, Klein learns to appreciate old age as a distinct and extraordinarily valuable stage of life. He uncovers simple pleasures that are uniquely available late in life, as well as headier pleasures that only a mature mind can fully appreciate.

Entertainment Weekly calls acclaimed author and essayist J. Maarten Troost a "funny, candid, and down-to-earth travel companion". Both witty and poignant, Headhunters on My Doorstep follows Troost as he retraces Robert Louis Stevenson’s path through the South Pacific. Somewhere between AA meetings in Tahiti and discovering how the Island of Merrymaking got its name, Troost reconnects with himself, his family, and the beauty of life.

In this inspiring travelogue, celebrated traveler and photographer Jessica Nabongo—the first Black woman on record to visit all 195 countries in the world—shares her journey around the globe with fascinating stories of adventure, culture, travel musts, and human connections.

John Hooper's marvelously entertaining and perceptive new book is ideal for anyone seeking to understand contemporary Italy and the unique character of the Italians. Looking at the facts that lie behind and often belie the stereotypes, his revealing book sheds new light on many aspects of Italian life: football and Freemasonry, sex, symbolism, and the reason Italian has twelve words for a coat hanger yet none for a hangover.

It started as a joke, a night out with three friends in costume. A debauched international pub crawl followed, but the partying and exotic women weren't enough, and what started off as a bit of fun slowly descended into madness. With sombreros atop their thick skulls and swords hoisted high, they would storm the most dangerous places on earth...and face the consequences.

When I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago alone at age 71, it was on a whim. A year and a half earlier, I had had a hip replacement, but felt that I had become complacent in a comfortable retirement and needed to shake up my life. And that’s what I did. I knew walking a Camino wouldn’t be easy or pain-free. Despite months of training and preparation, there was no way I could plan for the unexpected.

Come aboard with Heyward and Charlotte as they transform a worn-out hull into a first-class blue water cruiser. Then take off and cross oceans with them, feeling their desperation when equipment failures force ingenious workarounds in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Share the highs of navigating the crystal waters of French Polynesia and the lows of crossing pirate-infested waters in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. Travel ashore with them to places not covered in travel brochures, meet natives untouched by the modern world, and navigate the political waters of Guantanamo Bay.

Polly Letofsky left her Colorado home and headed west across four continents and over 14,000 miles - by foot - to become the first woman to walk around the world. In a spirit of adventure, along with the goal of raising global awareness for breast cancer, strangers welcomed her into their homes. The world had embraced her. But in the middle of Polly's journey, 9/11 flung us all into a crossroads in world history, and she found herself navigating a vastly changing world.

If you enjoy a fast-paced, true story, Five Weeks in the Amazon is the book for you. It's an honest story filled with peaks of humor and valleys of despair. Author Sean Michael Hayes has written a book that many would put on their shelf next to Cheryl Strayed's blockbuster success, Wild. His adventure took him into the middle of the jungle alone, but Hayes' unique writing style makes the listener feel as though they are right there with him.

Richard Henry Dana called this book a "a voice from the sea". It had an influence on both Joseph Conrad and Herman Melville, both of whom sang its praises. Dana was a law student at Harvard College who decided, in 1834, to take a break from his studies in order to experience the "real world" by signing on as a common sailor for a two year voyage from Boston around Cape Horn to California. He kept a journal which he turned into a book after the voyage.

When you download Portugal: Essential Travel Tips - All You Need to Know, you will be well-prepared to visit the country of your dreams! Buy this audiobook today!

The Animal Dialogues tells of Craig Childs' own chilling experiences among the grizzlies of the Arctic, sharks off the coast of British Columbia and in the turquoise waters of Central America, jaguars in the bush of northern Mexico, mountain lions, elk, Bighorn Sheep, and others. More than chilling, however, these stories are lyrical, enchanting, and reach beyond what one commonly assumes an "animal story" is or should be. The Animal Dialogues is a book about another world that exists alongside our own.

When fly-fishing guide Rusty Wilson decides he's tired of listening to others talk about their Bigfoot stories and instead wants his own encounter, a strange series of events leads him into the wilds of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, with an eventual rendezvous in the rugged mountains of Montana.

Go with Mike on foot accros Basutoland; by motorbike from Cape Town to Cairo; to sea in a 36-foot ketch; into the Kalahari desert - and more. In the final chapter he describes how he and his wife move to an Edenic island in the Okovanga delta, and the terrible and wonderful events that took place there.

The Tsangpo Gorge in southeastern Tibet has lured explorers and adventurers since its discovery. Sacred to the Buddhists, the inspiration for Shangri La, the Gorge is as steeped in legend and mystery as any spot on earth. As a river-running challenge, the remote Tsangpo is relentlessly unforgiving, more difficult than any stretch of river ever attempted. Its mysteries have withstood a century's worth of determined efforts to explore its length. The finest expedition paddlers on earth have tried.

Ever since I cycled down the west coast of Canada and the United States as a means of saving the bus fare on a round-the-world trip, I dreamed of cycling the whole length of that landmass, from the southern tip of South America all the way up to the Arctic Ocean. Returning home to a job I didn’t enjoy, that dream burned at my mind until, as a mature student in 1999, I was given the opportunity to take a year out and decided now was my time.