Adventure Writing

Scary stories, funny stories, philosophical stories, strange-but-true stories, and more. 17 personal stories altogether to share with your friends to keep the conversation going when words expire.

A true story of how a middle-aged married couple abandon lucrative white-collar professional careers to become long-haul truck drivers for Schneider National in Green Bay, Wisconsin. David Hamel, a mechanical engineer, and Shelley Hamel, past Director of Product Development for the American Girl doll company, decide to ditch their urban life and go to truck-driving school. For David, driving school was a piece of cake. For Shelley, it was murder. Nearly flunking out of truck driving school, Shelley successfully faces her twin demons of double-clutching and 10 nasty gears.

Life for a group of cats changes after a new kitten is brought into their family. Shaman is a Conjurepurr, one of a long-forgotten tradition of feline sorcerers. His arrival unlocks hidden mysteries and unleashes ancient nightmares on their peaceful home.

Desmesurada, cosmopolita y muy americana. Esta sería una buena descripción para Los Ángeles...si sólo hubiera una. Y es que las siglas "LA" defi nen un conglomerado de lugares tan variado y excéntrico como las diferentes tierras que integran la vecina Disneylandia. Bajo el manto de la eterna juventud se esconde la auténtica esencia de California.

From the author of such travel adventure classics as Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Road Fever, comes an informative and entertaining travelogue through one of America's favorite destinations: Yellowstone National Park. On his several-hundred-mile trek across the wilderness, the author explores such natural wonders as glaciers and geysers, muses about the microbiology of thermal pools, and witnesses moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight.

Tony James Slater knew nothing about Australia. Except for the fact that he'd just arrived there. The stage is set for an outrageous adventure: three people, one van, on an epic, 20,000-mile road trip around Australia. They're crisscrossing the continent through some of the most inhospitable land on the planet - the infamous Aussie Outback. Unprepared, underqualified, and hopelessly inept, Tony battles gigantic pumpkins, mechanical mishaps, and suicidal kangaroos, armed only with a thong and a sense of humor.

On his very first visit to America, motorcycle traveller Lawrence Bransby embarks on a journey that will take him from Southern California to the northernmost points of both Alaska and Canada then back across the USA to Texas. Along the way he has numerous adventures, meets people, has an accident somewhere above the Arctic Circle and, in the process, attempts to understand a little of what it means to be American. Bransby's writing is intimate, raw and immediate, taking the listener along with him as a vicarious pillion passenger.

BESTSELLER travelogue mixes it up on the Asian Trail in a voice that's by turns personal, passionate and ohhhh so very soulful. "So I get up at dawn and marvel at fog burning off into mist tumbling down like the finest mosquito netting of silk. The hills beyond the rivers' confluence, like shoulders of a woman undressing, the way the misty shroud lifts off feminine curves, higher and higher ... I tingle all over, feeling there on Borneo the dream tug of Joseph Conrad's fiction, notably Lord Jim." By turns literarily pathbreaking and intimate, this smorgasbord of travel essays scales down ...

This is the riveting true story of a young man’s solo bicycle odyssey: freezing in the Anatolian mountains of Turkey, confounded by butterflies in the empty Iranian desert, passing through the rubble of a coup in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and surviving dire illness in Pakistan's Indus valley. His journey ends in the heart of the subcontinent, having glimpsed true freedom. This is an account of humankind’s essential goodness, of trusting unseen hands that can steer us from disaster, and of learning that the way out is through.

Here is William Dalrymple's highly praised and greatly entertaining account of his 1986 trip made while a student at Cambridge, which retraced Marco Polo's route across land from Jerusalem to Xanadu. With him, he took a phial of Holy Oil, 600 pounds and Laura until Lahore, and Louisa from there to Xanadu.

At 35, Leslie Buck made an impulsive decision to put her personal life on hold to pursue her passion. Leaving behind a full life of friends, love, and professional security, she became the first American woman to learn pruning from one of the most storied landscaping companies in Kyoto. Cutting Back recounts Buck's bold journey and the revelations she has along the way.

From dim sum in Hong Kong to giant platters of Peking duck in Beijing, fresh-baked croissants in Paris and pierogi on the snowy streets of Moscow, Platt takes us around the world, re-tracing the steps of a unique, and lifelong, culinary education. Providing a glimpse into a life that has intertwined food and travel in exciting and unexpected ways, The Book of Eating is a delightful and sumptuous trip that is also the culinary coming-of-age of a voracious eater and his eventual ascension to become, as he puts it, “a professional glutton.”

Many an incredible story may have been told about young courageous men and women cycling the globe in search of adventure, covering vast distances at speed each day with not a care in the world. Well, this story is a little different. It is a story about a 350-pound middle-aged, disabled, working-class husband and father. I was never a regular cyclist, and I knew nothing about bicycle maintenance and repair. Solo, self-financed, with no support network and without any fixed route plan other than, “I’m going that way.” What could go wrong? I wondered.

Rye, a twenty-two-year-old veteran of the Texas Revolution, returns to the Republic of Texas in 1839 after three years of wandering. While traveling through Lost Maples Canyon he discovers a gold mine filled with rattlesnakes. After filing claim to the land, Rye sends word to his friend Kel, brother Darryl, and cousin Dennis who help him build the Lost Maples Ranch and operate the Rattlesnake Gold Mine. The four young cowboys become befuddled but enthusiastic fathers to Kara, a three-year-old Karankawa girl orphaned by the Comanche and rescue Heidi, a seventeen-year-old German immigrant who...

The modern part of the story begins in Hobart, Tasmania through a chance discovery at a home auction. Hidden in a nondescript and decrepit shed are what at first appear to be valuable antiquities but are revealed to be high-end forgeries. In parallel, the ancient part of the story begins with the eruption of Mt Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii. Archaeological adventurers Jameson Rowley and Elspeth Poole arrive in Italy, drawn by their passion for history and the hint of mystery surrounding the forged artifacts. The story brilliantly draws the reader into the lucrative and often ...

"Fast paced, gorgeous world building, more twists and turns than the Hairpins of Montvernier and just as scenic.10/10, high recommended!" –KJ Fieler, author of Shadow Runner When a young couple take a coastal holiday to celebrate with their new baby, they hope to return home with happy memories. Now, it seems they may not return at all. For they have crossed the line into an alternate reality, one which has been taken over by a malevolent and totalitarian sorcerer. The ethereal spirits of these realms need a saviour. Their senses pick up on the arrival of the young family. In particular, ...

“A thrilling adventure saga, featuring a duo from two very different worlds who must use all their wits and courage against formidable adversaries determined to destroy them.” –Jill Hand, author of White Oaks After an impossible escape from Stronghold Valley, and a perilous journey to Cantor, Raymond and Hanshee found King Moton IX more than willing to aid them in eluding their tireless pursuers. With the king's help, they now travel the Merchant Way, the road that links the nations of the northern plains and mountains to the prosperous southern ports on the eastern coast of the Great...

What would it be like to cast aside the industrial bustle of the early 20th century to hop a freighter bound for the verdant jungles and untamed wildlife of the fabled Amazon? H.M. Tomlinson did just that, trading the streets of Swansea, Wales, for the open sea of the Atlantic. Thanks to Tomlinson's sharp eye for detail, his spellbinding account of this 1909 journey is much more than a standard travel narrative.

In 2001, martial arts-trained biker Glen Heggstad began a journey from California to the tip of South America on his motorcycle and made it as far as Colombia, where he was kidnapped by local rebels and held captive. Undeterred by more than a month of traumatic incarceration, the 'Striking Viking' finished his trip after being released. Three years later he set out into the world on his bike again, this time searching for truth on his own terms in a world that had become strangled by a climate of fear.

Throughout his almost four decades of life on the road, Charles Kuralt has introduced us to people and places that have warmed our hearts. Now in Charles Kuralt's Spring, he disposes with winter's chill by recounting some of the most miraculous rites of spring he has witnessed over the years.