Women Travel Adventures

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

Jackie was an ordinary American woman whose life changed after a blind date with rugged Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne. After marrying, they began planning the 1946-1948 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Her participation was not welcomed by the expedition team of red-blooded males eager to prove themselves in the frozen, hostile environment of Antarctica.

Cathy has captured the drama of her Everest climbs, her passion for the challenge of climbing mountains, and her love for wild places in this story of her four attempts on the mountain. Cathy tries to answer the question of why, if climbing Everest can be so dangerous, people still want to do it.

All her life, Katherine Keith has hungered for remote, wild places that fill her soul with freedom and peace. Her travels take her across America, but it is in the vast and rugged landscape of Alaska that she finds her true home. Alaska is known as a place where people disappear - at least a couple thousand go missing each year. But the same vast and rugged landscape that contributed to so many people being lost is precisely what has gotten her found.

In 1975, seven-year-old Doina Cornell left England with her father Jimmy Cornell, mother and brother to spend the next six years sailing around the world on a small yacht. The author has drawn on her memories, diaries and stories, to re-create the perfect life led by a sailing child: swimming, diving and playing the days away in deserted anchorages; visiting some of the most beautiful islands in the world; falling in love with the sea in all its ever-changing moods, from balmy trade wind ocean passages to the treacherous breakers that crash onto tropical reefs.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galapagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these 14 delightful, award-winning true tales will inspire listeners to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked.

Named one of Time Magazine International's 30 most important people of 2005, Maud Fontenoy presents us with a terrific, entertaining adventure story on the high seas as she challenges the Pacific Ocean - a feat no woman before her ever accomplished. Already the first woman to row alone across the North Atlantic, Maud raised the bar to defy the elements, the daunting solitude, and the circling sharks of the South Pacific on her second solo voyage.

Periodista, escritora, viajera… exprime la vida en cada una de sus facetas, con resultados sorprendentes como el bestseller Anécdotas de Enfermeras, que la catapultó a la fama hace unos años. Colabora con cantidad de medios, como Eldiario.es, El Correo, Grupo Zeta o Yo Dona. Autora de 17 libros publicados con las principales editoriales españolas y que han sido superventas (La medicina todo lo cura, El amor me persigue pero yo soy más rápida, Tenemos que hablar, Podrías ser tú, sí, tú), Elisabeth G. Iborra se declara hedonista, irreverente, con un sentido del humor que lo llena todo.

50 Things to Know About Solo Female Travel, by Abigail Belknap, offers an approach to traveling alone from a uniquely female perspective. You'll discover ways to ensure your personal safety, pack your suitcase efficiently, and avoid the potential hassles and dangers of being a solo female tourist.

For Lucy Jane Bledsoe, wilderness had always been a source of peace. But during one disastrous solo trip in the wintry High Sierra she came face to face with a crisis: the wilderness no longer felt like home. The Ice Cave recounts Bledsoe's wilderness journeys as she recovers her connection with the wild and discovers the meanings of fear and grace.

Louise Minchin went from presenting BBC Breakfast to competing for the GB Triathlon Team. Driven to bring more attention to female stories, she embarks on adventures with trailblazing women who are breaking down barriers, smashing records and challenging stereotypes in the world of sports and endurance. Join Louise on a roller coaster of highs and lows in this celebration of courageous women and a moving reminder of the power of the female spirit.

At the age of 18, Yvonne set out to build a home from trees on 80 acres she bought on an Oregon mountainside. In 1975, log by log, she creates a cabin and heals from an orphaned past, finding a new family in the forest and with people in a valley named John Day. Babe in the Woods: Self Portrait is the second in a three-book series. It chronicles a span in Yvonne's four decades' long relationship with her log cabin and the people she meets in the valley. The audiobook continues Yvonne's story of learning to live in the wilderness within and outside of herself.

Unlucky in love, Julia takes a radical step and travels solo to a spiritual retreat in Kefalonia. With an agenda to avoid men, work on healing her inner rage, balance her chakras and eat lots of Greek food, the Mediterranean heat is exactly what she needs. But before she leaves the airport, Julia meets Vincent, a handsome Spanish architect, who challenges her spiky aura in more ways than one.

Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Keena's funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.

In the final book in her Great Lakes Adventure trilogy, Loreen Niewenhuis launches off the shoreline to explore the islands of the Great Lakes Basin. From hiking the rugged wilderness of Isle Royale in Lake Superior to strolling the metropolis on Montreal Island in the St. Lawrence River, Niewenhuis explores key islands in each of the five Great Lakes and their connecting waterways.

This inspiring collection contains powerful narratives from women who swim, surf, kayak, study glaciers, advocate for water conservation, carry forward their ancestral fishing traditions, and more. Collected by the team at She Explores, a media company and community that celebrates women in the outdoors, these first-person stories explore themes of independence, strength, healing, and self-discovery in nature.

A dazzling, compassionate and deeply moving audiobook from one of world literature's rising stars. A mesmerising literary novel, Questions of Travel charts two very different lives. Laura travels the world before returning to Sydney, where she works for a publisher of travel guides. Ravi dreams of being a tourist until he is driven from Sri Lanka by devastating events. Around these two superbly drawn characters, a double narrative assembles an enthralling array of people, places and stories.

New Yorker Jayne Boland has a problem. A BIG problem. Dumped hours after landing in Italy by her two-timing Italian boyfriend, Jayne faces the reality of launching Plan B instead shopping for an engagement ring. Knowing family and friends await her Manhattan return with I-told-you-so’s, the heartbroken fashionista flees to chic Milan to reassess her shattered life and resuscitate her anemic bank account. But the runway streets of the elegant fashion capital don’t roll out the red carpet for the newcomer.

On Sunday, April 13, 1997 Jocelyn's life abruptly changed within a matter of seconds. As a free-spirited, unsettled woman, she travelled across the globe seeking adventure and purpose, returning home just long enough to earn enough money for the next trek. While in Namibia, Africa as a part of a three month, sub-Saharan camping trip, Jocelyn broke her back in a sledding accident and was instantly paralyzed—permanently.