Adventure Biography

Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder - a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places McClure has never been to yet somehow knows by heart. She traces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family - looking for the Big Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House - exploring the story from fact to fiction, and from the TV shows to the annual summer pageants in Laura’s hometowns.

Elephant trunk steaks? Disk-lipped women? A thermometer reading of 163 degrees? A four-day motorcycle trip across central Africa? These true stories, drawn from the real-life adventures of the authors, display their refreshing zest for life and deep faith in God. Each chapter is written as a series of shorter stories–many of them set in the heart of Africa....

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.

Journeys to Impossible Places continues the story Simon started in his phenomenal Sunday Times best seller Step by Step, which traced the first decades of his life from depressed and unemployed teenager through to his early TV programmes. Now Simon takes us on the epic and thrilling adventures that followed, in beautiful, tricky and downright dangerous corners of the world, as he travelled through the Tropics, to remote paradise islands, jungles dripping with heat and life and on nerve-wracking secret missions.

Flying helicopters is more dangerous than flying fixed-wing aircraft - and helicopter rescue is one of the most dangerous occupations on earth. Now, Col. Fleming takes listeners along for a bracing ride as he recounts the most thrilling episodes of his long career. With all the nail-biting excitement of a thriller, Heart of the Storm brings to life dramatic jungle rescues in the Philippines, the longest helicopter rescue mission in history to save crew members of a Ukrainian freighter 840 miles off the coast of Nova Scotia, and many more.

Having a tough day? The stress of the job getting to you? Our author had those thoughts, so he decided to dive into a lagoon and swim with sharks. Living in the equatorial Pacific, working in a new hotel, the logical choice was to join a dive club and take the plunge. The breathtaking beauty of the abundant reef life, spectacular drop offs along the outer reef walls and close encounters with the toothy denizens that patrol the seas. Encounters with white and black tipped sharks, then the very close encounters with large grey reefs. As the authors dive buddy once said, “with all the things...

Actor and musician Ian Roberts is something of a South African icon, renowned for his roles as the rugged Boer fighter Sloet Steenkamp in the TV series Arende and as Boet in the immortal and immensely popular Castrol advertisements.

Spanning 15 years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’ insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance.

In 2005, Vanessa Woods accepted a marriage proposal from a man she barely knew and agreed to join him on a research trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country reeling from a brutal decade-long war that had claimed the lives of millions. Settling in at a bonobo sanctuary in Congo's capital, Vanessa and her fiancee entered the world of a rare ape with whom we share 98.7 percent of our DNA.

Naturalist Joe Hutto’s latest adventures in wildlife observation take him to Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. Hutto is living in a tent at 12,000 feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant—and human needs can become a matter of life and death—to study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

“You’re hiking how far solo?” "How are you going to hike the entire John Muir Trail when you’ve never even been backpacking before?” These were the two most common questions that accompanied baffled looks from Christy’s corporate coworkers when she mentioned her plans. Legitimate questions Christy had pondered herself. Yet, she couldn’t fully express the pull to hike more than 220 miles in the California High Sierra Mountains. She knew only that her whole being told her that she needed to.

After purchasing one-way flights from New York City to Paris, Kyle James and his girlfriend Ashley quit their day jobs, planned futures, and daily paradigms to see as much of the world as they could. In 114 days, they trekked across 15 countries and 38 cities with nothing but their backpacks, their smartphones, and each other. Not Afraid of the Fall is the unvarnished story of their off-the-cuff journey: from cliff-jumping off Croatia's untouched coasts to bathing with rescued elephants in Thailand and far beyond.

As a teenager, in a fit of rage toward her father, Jan pits herself against a steep rock face near their cottage. At the top, fired up by the victory, she sets her sights on the improbable dream of climbing mountains. By age 20, she's a nomadic climber with a magnetic attraction to misadventures and the wrong men. Jan finally finds the love of her life, an affable Banff climber. When he is killed in an avalanche in Alaska, a grieving Jan finds comfort in the arms of another extreme alpinist. Before long they are married, with a baby on the way.

In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas. Nearly a century later, the book Laurie Lee wrote - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain - the landscapes and the spirit - and with Laurie's style of travel. Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway.

Behind a cacophony of traffic noise, iPhone alerts and our ever-spinning thoughts, an elusive notion - silence - lies in wait. But what really is silence? Where can it be found? And why is it more important now than ever? Erling Kagge, the Norwegian adventurer and polymath, once spent 50 days walking solo in Antarctica with a broken radio. In this meditative, charming and surprisingly powerful book, he explores the power of silence and the importance of shutting out the world.

Perhaps all of Jonathan Ames' problems, and the genesis of this hilarious audiobook, can be traced back to the late onset of his puberty. After all, it can't be easy to be 16 with a hairless penis "undistinguishable from that of a five-year-old's".

Marcellus Wiley has never had a problem expressing his opinion, whether it was growing up in Compton with a football tucked under his arm, or going to college at Columbia University, where he learned to survive Advanced Calculus and self-important pseudo-intellectuals. Or making it to the NFL against all odds, where he put together a 10-year career of massive paydays, massive painkillers, and massive sacks of everyone from Steve Young to Peyton Manning. Now, in Never Shut Up, Wiley doesn't hold back as he goes off on everything that's controversial with the game today.

In the third book in the Seaside Practice Trilogy, which started with A Seaside Practice and continued with Going Loco, we follow the further adventures of Dr Tom as he returns to his native Ayrshire to set up a business and take on Locums. As ever, life is never simple, with murders, mayhem and colourful characters peppering his tales.

Fashion is a business of smoke and mirrors, notorious for crushing the souls of most who dare to be part of the industry. Go on a global expedition with New York City-based fashion buyer, strategist, and consultant, Mercedes Gonzalez, as she learns that there is no glamour in fashion and that only cutthroat corporate espionage prevails. From politicking with blood diamond dealers and Russian kingpins to living in indigenous villages, she has relied on her street smarts and fear of her uncle in order to outwit the industry tyrants at their own game.

In this updated edition of Quinn’s smart and hilarious debut, NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE, she tackles the domestic, the cultural and the delightfully ridiculous. From fending off a catnip-addled cat to having mortal combat with a sewing machine; from scheduling Steve the Rat Guy to acquiring a human heart; from wrestling tree raccoons and wrestling orthodontic appliances, Quinn provides insight into her often chaotic, seldom perfect universe–a universe made even less perfect when the mischievous smile of past celebrity shows its occasional fang.