True Adventure

Through a series of fascinating events, Homer's older brother has been illegally sold to the Union Army. It is up to Homer to find him and save him. Along the way, he encounters strange but real people of that era: two tricksters who steal his money, a snake-oil salesman, a hot-air balloonist, and finally, the Maine regiment who saved Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg and won the war for the Union.

Experience the awesomeness of my unexpected voyage to an undiscovered land where I survive shipwrecks, arena death match spectacles, rampaging rhinoceraptors, naked and rather surly giants, and even dragons! Well, a dragon.... All in my pursuit of fame and glory. Every word of it is true. Totally true. How do I know? Because it's all about me. Gustav Gustavson, Legendary Viking Warrior.

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains. In The Lady and the Panda, Vicki Constantine Croke gives us the remarkable account of Ruth Harkness and her extraordinary journey, and restores Harkness to her rightful place along with Sacajawea, Nellie Bly, and Amelia Earhart as one of the great woman adventurers of all time.

This enthralling audiobook takes us on a tour of the most dangerous, exciting, and often eccentric escapades of literature's sailing stars and how these true stories inspired and informed their best-loved works. Arthur Ransome, Erskine Childers, Jack London, and many others are featured as we find out how extraordinary fact fed into unforgettable fiction.

From Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson to Alive! and Adrift, tales of survival have captivated readers. Here are the most remarkable stories imaginable of maroons, castaways, and other survivors from the 1500s to the present: their moral dilemmas, their personalities, and their influence on society, literature, and art.

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 1690, a dramatic account of piracy was published in Mexico City. The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez described the incredible adventures of a poor Spanish-American carpenter who was taken captive by British pirates near the Philippines and forced to work for them for two years. After circumnavigating the world, he was freed and managed to return to Mexico, where the Spanish viceroy commissioned the well-known Mexican scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora to write down Ramírez's account as part of an imperial propaganda campaign against pirates.

In April 1861, Wayland Fuller Dunaway left his college classroom and entered the ranks of the men who fought the bloodiest war ever waged on the North American continent. A Captain in the Army of Northern Virginia, he marched hundreds of miles in Stonewall Jackson's command; saw Generals Lee and Longstreet; was among the first soldiers to fight at Gettysburg, where he also participated in Pickett's Charge; and fought against the lines of strangers in blue who, no matter how many times they were defeated, always returned to invade his beloved Virginia.

Poppy Fields, Hollywood IT girl extraordinaire, accompanies her A-list mother to Paris, and why not? It's Paris! What her mother doesn't know is Poppy's on assignment. Her mission? To help bankrupt a drug cartel. To do that, she must access encrypted account numbers, evade a drug lord with a grudge, dodge a Russian oligarch, and align herself with a man who looks like a Norse god. Oh, and there's that plot - the one to launch a massive attack on the City of Lights.

Landing in Darom, Startum Ironwolf is confronted by the devastation being wrought by the Chaos Storm alliance and is forced into a guild war of epic proportions. With the beginnings of a massive invasion from the northern tribes looming on the horizon, Star fights his way across the Kingdom of Kader to reach his friend. Along the way, the face of the true enemy is revealed with the deception of a close friend. Somehow, Star and his allies must survive the betrayal and the overwhelming odds stacked against them.

Just as Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations did for the world of food, Dopeworld is an intoxicating journey into the world of drugs. From the cocaine farms in South America to the streets of Manila, Dopeworld traces the emergence of psychoactive substances and our intimate relationship with them. As a former drug dealer turned subversive scholar, with unparalleled access to drug lords, cartel leaders, street dealers, and government officials, journalist Niko Vorobyov attempts to shine a light on the dark underbelly of the drug world.

Most young girls dream of becoming a princess. But unlike most girls, Jerramy Fine never grew out of it. Trapped in a rural Colorado with embarrassing hippie parents, Jerramy spends her childhood writing love letters to Buckingham Palace and studying modern-day princesses throughout the world. Years later, when her sense of destiny finally brings her to London, she dives headfirst into a whirlwind of society parties in search of her royal soulmate. She drinks way too many martinis and kisses far too many Hugh Grant lookalikes, yet life in England is not the fairy tale she hoped for.

Elora has been suspended from the council...but it’s only the beginning of her journey. Elf Elora is something of a celebrity in her home city. After being tested as a child, it’s discovered that her magical ability is off the charts - it can’t even be measured. Since working as a paranormal investigator at the royal palace and working on a cure for “half curses”, Elora has been putting her abilities to good use. Until now....

Back again with even more "mostly true" tales from the trail, Lawton Grinter's new book I Hike Again is sure to find a place in every adventurer's library! I Hike Again imparts hard-earned wisdom from trails both in the United States (Arizona Trail, Appalachian Trail, Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Grand Enchantment Trail, Wind River High Route) and abroad (Spain's GR11 and New Zealand's Te Araroa).

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed west face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into base camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead.

The war is over, and Arianwyn has discovered the secret of the quiet glyphs, but her troubles are far from over. Her day-to-day work as Lull's witch is tricky enough: winter has set in, bringing bad weather, ice imps and befuddling Yule traditions. But when Arianwyn's grandmother is abducted by the traitor on the Council, our witch faces her greatest challenge yet.

Before 1918, the Boston Red Sox were unstoppable. They won World Series after World Series, thanks in part to their charismatic pitcher-slugger Babe Ruth. But some people on the Red Sox felt the Babe was more trouble than he was worth, and he was traded away to one of the worst teams in baseball, the New York Yankees. From then on, the Yankees became a golden team. And the Red Sox? For more than 80 years, they just couldn’t win another World Series. Then, in 2004, along came a scruffy, scrappy Red Sox team. Could they break Babe Ruth’s curse and win it all?

A collection of 11 award-winning short stories concerning the true adventures of California fish and game wardens and the wildlife-destroying outlaws they pursue. These stories illustrate the wide variety of wildlife-related problems wardens face in California, which has a greater diversity of wildlife and wildlife habitat than any other state and is second only to Alaska in its vast expanses of wilderness.

A book remembering a moment in time. A moment I knew, holy crap, this is serious and everyone is looking at me. It was then I realized I am the captain! Having survived my first long solo sail a year ago, I figured it was time to take it up a notch! Sailing has been a passion project of mine. From a young age, I have been set to many different activities by my overactive enthusiasm, from blazing trails on bikes through thicket and bog alike, that run along the local river. To pulling fish too small to fry from that very same river.

I should not have left the garden hoe lying on the ground, but I did. I should have been paying attention. But, I didn’t! I stepped on the blade and the handle hit me in the face, bammm, knocking me out cold! I woke up lying on the ground. It was then that I saw them...gnomes! I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were talking in a strange language, but I could understand them! The old gnome with a beard says, “I think the human sees us and hears us.”