Adventure Biography

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.

IF STRONG LANGUAGE, NUDITY, AND REFERENCES TO NATURAL BODILY FUNCTIONS ARE UPSETTING TO YOU, I RECOMMEND AVOIDING THIS BOOK. IT IS BEST TO STEER CLEAR OF ALL MY WORKS, ESPECIALLY THE GET SPAINED SERIES. LIVING IN SPAIN CAN OFTEN BE MORE MANURE THAN ROSES. Caution: This book includes some scenes that may be unsettling to some readers. The author does not support all of Spain's customs, but believes it is important to acknowledge them in order to provide an authentic portrayal of life in Spain, which is not solely about leisure and relaxation by the beach. Abbie had been living in Spain for ...

The acclaimed author of seven ALA Best Books for Young Adults, Will Hobbs pens a spellbinding true-to-life adventure. With nothing but dogged determination, 15year-old Victor leaves his Mexican village to illegally enter the U.S. and help his starving family. Soon he must outwit gangs, drug-runners, and border agents as he endures shivering nights, blistering days, and gnawing hunger. But can his longing for the beckoning opportunity of El Norte carry him through such impossible obstacles?

A collection of 13 award winning short stories 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.

Death on the River of Doubt takes listeners inside the thrilling journey that unfolded as Theodore Roosevelt and his companions navigated the Amazonian River of Doubt through an unforgiving and unpredictable jungle. With new threats at every turn, from bloodthirsty piranhas and raging rapids to starvation, disease, and a traitor in their own ranks, it seemed that not everyone would make it out alive.

Turning Pages: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher is the well-told story of forty years in the publishing business. For twenty-four of those years, John Sargent ran one of America’s largest publishing companies. Rather than a straight chronological narrative, Sargent uses the best stories of those years to give us an intimate look inside book publishing. In weaving these stories together, he brings the listener with him through triumph and despair, and a very interesting daily life.

Upstream is an in-depth and timely look at salmon - one of the last wild foods on our table - for fans of Susan Orlean, Mark Kurlansky, and John McPhee. As the author travels to meet a variety of colorful people associated with this unique species, from Alaskan anglers to fish farm owners to four-star chefs, he reports on its remarkable place at the intersection of nature, commerce, cuisine, and human history.

Larry Brilliant's life journey has led him on a purposeful path across continents and countercultural movements, marching arm in arm with the men and women who defined a generation. A man who has always been in the right place at the right time, Brilliant has engaged with some of the most prominent thought leaders, spiritual masters, heroes, and icons in the world, including Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, the Dalai Lama, and Barack Obama.

Falling Upwards tells the story of the enigmatic group of men and women who first risked their lives to take to the air and so discovered a new dimension of human experience. Why they did it, what their contemporaries thought of them, and how their flights revealed the secrets of our planet in wholly unexpected ways is its subject.

This is an incredible story of adventure, human ingenuity, persistence, and resilience that shows firsthand what it is to adventure as a woman in the most dangerous of circumstance, what it is to be truly alone in the wild, and why someone would challenge themselves with an expedition others would call crazy. For Marquis, her story is about freedom, being alive and wild by nature.

From award-winning author Tim Jeal comes a vivid examination of the six larger-than-life men and one extraordinary woman who set out to find the source of the White Nile in the 19th century.

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.

One of the world’s most well-traveled rock climbers, Clune takes us on an up-close journey though the evolution of the sport over the decades. From his home turf in the Gunks of New York State, to cliffs in far flung regions of the planet, Clune brings to life hilarious and sometimes horrifying escapades while he tests his mettle. Along the way, he deftly illustrates the changes that morphed rock climbing from a dirtbag activity for somewhat eccentric people to today’s Olympic sport status for its most dedicated practitioners.

For a moment in the 1980s, Carolyn Pfeiffer was the only woman in Hollywood who could greenlight a movie. Working with directors like Sam Shepard and Wes Craven, and with actors like River Phoenix and Bette Davis, she had a hand in producing or distributing many landmark films, among them Ridley Scott's The Duellists, Alan Rudolph's Choose Me, and the Academy Award-winning Kiss of the Spider Woman. However, long before establishing herself as a player in the world of film, Carolyn was a horseback-riding tomboy who dreamed of exploring the world beyond her small hometown.

What marvels and mysteries await Dak, Sera, and Riq in the Golden Age of Baghdad? Europe is in the grip of the Dark Ages, but there is a light in the dark: Baghdad. The great city has become a center of learning, populated by scholars, merchants, and explorers from all across the known world. But danger lurks in the desert...and Dark, Sera, and Riq must act fast to save the world's greatest library from utter destruction.

In 1935, Fred A. Birchmore left the small American town of Athens, Georgia, to continue his college studies in Europe. In his spare time, Birchmore toured the continent on a one-speed bike he called Bucephalus (after the name of Alexander the Great's horse). A born wanderer, Birchmore broadened his travels to include the British Isles and even the Mediterranean. After a lengthy, unplanned detour in Egypt, Birchmore put his studies on hold, pointed Bucephalus eastward, and just kept going.

Sourced from Pierre-Esprit Radisson’s journals, which are the best firsthand accounts of 17th-century Canada, Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure, a man more trading partner than colonizer, a peddler of goods and not worldview - and with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.

Based on a true story originally written by one of the survivors, Neta Lohnes Frazier's account of seven children traveling westward still has the power to astonish. In the 1840s, the Sager family set off on the Oregon Trail, a dangerous and adventure-filled journey. Tragedy struck when both the mother and father succumbed to fever, orphaning the youngsters - one just a newborn. The entire wagon train adopted them, until they arrived at the Whitman Mission in Oregon.

John Greystone is a twenty year old who lands a summer job as a wildfire spotter in Sequoia National Park. A helicopter pilot drops him off on a remote mountain top with a promise to return an hour later with supplies. The next day the pilot has not returned and John is out of water.

Bound for Distant Seas begins sailing author James Baldwin's epic tale of his second circumnavigation. His story is seasoned by his adventures during his first circumnavigation in 1984-86 as told in Across Islands and Oceans. Alone with little money aboard Atom, his now-engineless 28-foot sailboat, James embarks on his odyssey without the comforts and equipment most sailors consider essential.