Mountain Memoir

A hilarious, heartwarming, and heartbreaking memoir by the chief wildlife ranger in the number one most popular family vacation destination in the USA, the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. For over 30 years, Kim DeLozier acted as a referee in the wild, trying to protect millions of park visitors from one of the densest populations of wild black bears in America - and the bears from tourists who get too close.

In a career that spanned decades, John Denver earned international acclaim as a singer, songwriter, actor, and environmental activist. Songs like "Take Me Home, Country Roads", "Rocky Mountain High", and "Annie's Song" have entered the canon of universal anthems, but at his start John Denver was a young man with little more than a fine voice, a guitar, and a dream. Growing up in a conservative military family, he was not expected to drop out of college and head to Los Angeles, where the music scene was flourishing. Nor was he expected to succeed.

Jim Donini has been an icon of American climbing for the past fifty years, pushing the boundaries of alpine ascents around the world, and inspiring generations with his achievements. In Survival Is Not Assured, award-winning author Geoff Powter dives into Donini's remarkable life story, exploring his groundbreaking climbs and his tumultuous experiences both on and off the rock.

For many years, Orhan Pamuk kept a record of his daily thoughts and observations, entering them in small notebooks and illustrating them with his own paintings. This book combines those notebooks into one volume. He writes about his travels around the world, his family, his writing process, and his complex relationship with his home country of Turkey. He charts the seeds of his novels and the things that inspired his characters and the plots of his stories. Intertwined in his writings are the vibrant paintings of the landscapes that surround and inspire him.

In the winter of 1959, a group of nine young and experienced hikers embarked on a journey into the Ural Mountains of Russia. Although they had previously undertaken cold-weather trips, this particular expedition would tragically be their last. During their trek, the hikers encountered something unexpected in the supposedly desolate region, resulting in the demise of the entire group. The exact events of that fateful night remain unknown, but the incident has since become one of the world's most perplexing mysteries.

Dave Hahn, a local of Taos, New Mexico, is a legendary figure in mountaineering. Elite members of the climbing community have likened him to the Michael Jordan, Cal Ripkin, or Michael Phelps of the climbing world. The 2015 expedition he would lead came just one short year after the notorious Khumbu Icefall avalanche claimed the lives of 16 Sherpas. Dave and his team spent weeks honing the techniques that would help keep them alive through the Icefall and the Death Zone. None of this could have prepared them for the earthquake that shook Everest and all of their lives on April 25, 2015.

On the afternoon of July 13, 1977, having become the first climbers to reach the summit of the Ogre, Doug Scott and Chris Bonington began their long descent. In the minutes that followed, any feeling of success from their achievement would be overwhelmed by the start of a desperate fight for survival. And things would only get worse.

Defiance led Lisa Thompson to the male-dominated world of mountain climbing. But after battling breast cancer, she needed to understand the motivations behind the risks she took while climbing. Finding Elevation is more than her climbing memoir. It is an examination of the human spirit and motivation.

In this deeply moving memoir, A.D. Russell takes us on a transformative journey of self-discovery and healing after facing two of life's most heart-wrenching challenges: the untimely death of her daughter and the dissolution of her marriage.

When a bolt of lightning ignited a hilltop in the sleepy town of Yarnell, Arizona, in June of 2013, setting off a blaze that would grow into one of the deadliest fires in American history, the 20 men who made up the Granite Mountain Hotshots sprang into action. An elite crew trained to combat the most challenging wildfires, the Granite Mountain Hotshots were a ragtag family crisscrossing the American West and wherever else the fires took them. The Hotshots were loyal to one another and dedicated to the tough job they had.

This is an amazing true story of a female civilian employee of the Army Corps of Engineers in Basrah and Nasiriyah, Iraq. She was riding in a truck with men when a roadside bomb destroyed the vehicle. Her body was so severely damaged that there was no possible way she could live. She vividly recounts her near-death experience when she went out of her body, to the spirit world.

More than half a century after the Vietnam War, a riveting, true story emerges. The author embarks on a journey to bridge the silent gap between himself and his estranged father, whose memories of the war are deeply buried. This quest for understanding leads him to a close-knit brotherhood of Marine combat veterans who become the voice for the untold stories, filling the void left by his father's unspoken past.

In 1804, John Colter set out with Meriwether Lewis and William Clark on the first US expedition to traverse the North American continent. During the 28-month ordeal, Colter served as a hunter and scout, and honed his survival skills on the western frontier. But when the journey was over, Colter stayed behind. He spent two more years trekking alone through dangerous and unfamiliar territory, charting some of the West's most treasured landmarks.

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall.

A deeply personal travel memoir that combines alpine adventure, family connections, and spiritual encounters in two very different worlds: a Himalayan village and Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, Michael Schauch and his wife, Chantal, undertook an expedition deep in the Himalaya of northern Nepal, into a remote valley that had been closed off to outsiders for decades. They led a team of artists (a photographer, a musician, and a painter), with the objective of capturing a moment in time through their unique lenses.

From sickly child to pioneering Victorian explorer, Isabella Bird defied convention. After back surgery in 1850 and the recommendation of life in the open air, she finally looked her malaise and her pain in the eye and set off across the world completely alone. In Colorado she covered 800 miles on horseback, climbing mountains, wrangling cattle, sleeping in snow and finding herself drawn to a violent, one-eyed outlaw with a soft spot for poetry, known as ‘Mountain Jim’.

Suzie Fletcher is the warm and friendly face on TV's The Repair Shop that viewers look forward to watching every week as the resident leather expert - a craft she has honed over four decades and was born out of her love of horses. But while she tends to be the one repairing and offering a gentle kindness to others, Suzie has also been in a process of change, reflection, and healing.In her first book Suzie looks back over her life - which moves from England to Colorado and back again - and the places, people and experiences that have shaped the person she is today.

This is the second volume in a best-selling series of true stories from "[a]n extraordinary landscape populated with befuddled bears, hormonally-crazed elk, homicidal wild boars, hopelessly timid wolves, and nine million tourists, some of whom are clueless." In Kim DeLozier's world, when sedated wild black bears wake up unexpectedly in the back seat of a helicopter in mid-flight, or in his car as he's driving down the highway, or in his office while he's talking on the phone, it's just another day in the park.

A powerful, emotional memoir and an extraordinary portrait of three generations of Tibetan women whose lives are forever changed when Chairman Mao’s Red Army crushes Tibetan independence, sending a young mother and her six-year-old daughter on a treacherous journey across the snowy Himalayas toward freedom.

An accurate and personal record from one of America's first breed of mountain men, giving a detailed description of many the lands he passed through and the habits and character of the various tribes encountered.