Travel Essays

Leaving a highly visible job took some courage, but Tracy Pawelski knew it was time. As she looked out on her horizon, her next step crystallized. She would join her 21-year-old daughter on a once-in-a-lifetime walk across Spain called El Camino de Santiago. While Tracy’s trek along the 500 miles of this ancient Catholic pilgrimage began as a mother-daughter adventure, Tracy soon realized this was her Camino, a journey of profoundly personal insight and spiritual growth.  

Editor Eleanor Brown presents a collection of personal essays from 18 different authors about their experiences in the City of Light.

Greater Than a Tourist - Munich Bavaria Germany, by Velimir Ilicic, offers the inside scoop on Munich. This audiobook will give you travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination. 

The conception and building of the Appalachian Trail is a story of unforgettable characters who explored it, defined it, and captured national attention by hiking it. From Grandma Gatewood—a mother of eleven who thru-hiked in canvas sneakers and a drawstring duffle—to Bill Bryson, author of the best-selling A Walk in the Woods, the AT has seized the American imagination like no other hiking path. The 2,000-mile-long hike from Georgia to Maine is not just a trail through the woods, but a set of ideas about nature etched in the forest floor.

Greater Than a Tourist - Malta by Dusko Arsenic offers the inside scoop on Malta. Most travel books tell you how to sightsee. Although there's nothing wrong with that, as a part of the Greater Than a Tourist series, this audiobook will give you tips from someone who lives at this travel destination. Here, you'll discover local advice that will help you throughout your trip. 

In April 2018, Tennessee writer Mark E. Johnson embarked on an epic, grueling, and often hilarious adventure - the 80-mile trek from Lukla, Nepal, to Mount Everest Base Camp - after launching an improbable trekking company a year earlier in the flatlands of the southeastern United States. This was Johnson's first excursion out of the continental US, and this journey into the exotic country of Nepal was indeed a trial by fire (and ice). 

In 1834, Ralph Waldo Emerson, formerly a Unitarian minister, began a new career as a public lecturer. Nature (1836), his first published work, contained the essence of his transcendental philosophy. This collection contains 11 of his most celebrated and memorable essays....

Costa Rica is a land of true beauty and nobody can really argue against the country’s slogan that has made the rounds of all major tourism agencies selling Costa Rica packages: Costa Rica Pura Vida. This means “Costa Rica Pure Life” and with all the green eco systems, lush rainforest, natural beauty, and pristine beaches you will soon be able to understand where that came from. Let this book guide you to the many places that you must see in Costa Rica to not let your trip go to waste. This book is filled with suggested places to stay, from inexpensive to luxurious.

This book honors all the women who ride motorcycles and inspires others with rebel souls to do the same. Women Who Ride is a delightful compilation by, and for, women motorcycle riders, filled with true stories from both youngsters and those with a lifetime of riding experience.

Super Cheap Newfoundland is a travel guide for people seeking cold-hard facts to enjoy the biggest Newfoundland adventure on the smallest budget. Choose from city adventures or mix it up with our nature suggestions. Either way, our plans and Newfoundland’s fascinating history and jaw-dropping hikes and waterfalls will blow your mind, not your budget. Instantly discover everything you need for a luxurious trip to Newfoundland on a backpackers budget.

The best and most unique Barcelona travel guide: Spain is definitely among the world’s favorite destinations. The rich history, gorgeous kilometer long beaches, magnificent architecture, and warm climate attract millions of tourists every year. Its crown jewel is indubitably Barcelona, one of the most important cities in the world. 

If you're traveling the world - or if you just want to travel the world from your armchair - this book will enlighten and amuse you. It could add a few unusual stops to your itinerary, as well. Perhaps you're just too busy this year for that round-the-world trip. But this book could give you ideas...and deliver a lot of fun facts en route. This book will uncover hidden gems you never knew existed! It takes travelling to a whole new level!

Celebrated as one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, André Aciman has written a luminous series of linked essays about time, place, identity, and art that show him at his very finest. From beautiful and moving pieces about the memory evoked by the scent of lavender; to meditations on cities like Barcelona, Rome, Paris, and New York; to his sheer ability to unearth life secrets from an ordinary street corner, Alibis reminds the listener that Aciman is a master of the personal essay.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

From the hilarious, oft-irresponsible travel enthusiast Auguste Gravel comes the first installment of travel stories that will make you shoot milk out of your nose and then shock you back into your seat with the next paragraph. On the Lam is about leaving your comfort zone and stepping into a world of travel and the unknown. It's a funny audiobook that provides advice for new or experienced travelers of any age.

Super Cheap Galapagos Islands is a travel guide for people seeking cold, hard facts to enjoy the biggest Galapagos Islands adventure on the smallest budget. Our plans and Galapagos Islands' fascinating history, jaw-dropping wildlife, and landscapes will blow your mind, not your budget.

If you're traveling the world - or if you just want to travel the world from your armchair - this audiobook will enlighten and amuse you. It could add a few unusual stops to your itinerary, as well. We suggest some intriguing natural sights, such as the perfectly conical Chocolate Hills, Indian pilgrimage mountains topped by temples, whole forests of identikit crooked trees, and volcanoes inside volcanoes. Perhaps festivals are more to your taste. Would you prefer the anarchic creativity of Burning Man, a Japanese cry-baby competition, or a massive food fight?

Every cheese tells a story. Whether it's a fresh young goat's cheese or a big, beefy 18-month-old Cheddar, each variety holds the history of the people who first made it, from the builders of Stonehenge to medieval monks, from the Stilton-makers of the 18th century to the factory cheesemakers of the Second World War. Cheesemonger Ned Palmer takes us on a delicious journey across Britain and Ireland and through time to uncover the histories of beloved old favourites like Cheddar and Wensleydale and fresh innovations like the Irish Cashel Blue or the rambunctious Renegade Monk.

Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances, from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life and his restless and ever-curious mind.

In the 17 wide-ranging essays collected for the first time in Love and Other Ways of Dying, he brings his full literary powers to bear, pondering happiness and grief, memory and the redemptive power of human connection. In the remote Ukranian countryside, Paterniti picks apples (and faces mortality) with a real-life giant; in Nanjing, China, he confronts a distraught jumper on a suicide bridge.