Explorer Memoirs

An acclaimed bow hunter who defies the stereotype that hunting is a man's game, Eva Shockey is a TV and social media phenomenon at the forefront of a new wave of women and girls who are passionate about outdoor sports.

From the beginning, it was clear that Ralph Nutter was an exceptional navigator. Rapid promotion followed when he was assigned as Maj. Gen. Curtis the Eagle LeMay's personal navigator. Later, he was picked by Maj. Gen. Haywood Possum Hansell, the 20th Air Force Commander, to be his personal navigator. The author's vivid recollections of those halcyon years make for exciting, informative listening.

Jim Donini has been an icon of American climbing for the past fifty years, pushing the boundaries of alpine ascents around the world, and inspiring generations with his achievements. In Survival Is Not Assured, award-winning author Geoff Powter dives into Donini's remarkable life story, exploring his groundbreaking climbs and his tumultuous experiences both on and off the rock.

As a scout, I needed all my five senses and every faculty of my mind at highest efficiency at all times. There is nothing that sharpens a man’s senses so acutely as to know that bitter and determined enemies are in pursuit of him night and day. In many lines of endeavor, errors may be repeated without fatal results, but in an Indian or savage war, or in a bitter feud, one little slip entails the “absent” mark forever against a man’s name. Solitude intensifies the perceptions. The herd with a thousand eyes trusts itself to a solitary sentinel with only two.

When Krystal Evans was 14, the house that she shared with her mother and little sister burned down. Krystal narrowly escaped by breaking a window and jumping out head-first; suffering burns, smoke inhalation, PTSD—and the unimaginable tragedy of losing her six year-old sister. But horrific as events were, the account of what led the family to that fatal night, and how they coped with its aftermath, is a richer and more complex story.

Looking out his porch window one spring morning, Adam Shoalts spotted a majestic peregrine falcon flying across the neighbouring fields near Lake Erie. Each spring, falcons migrate from southernmost Canada to remote arctic mountains. Grabbing his backpack and canoe, Shoalts resolved to follow the falcon’s route north on an astonishing 3,400-kilometre journey to the Arctic.

The cruising tale is full of the sights and sounds, the fragrances and native customs of foreign lands, especially Central American and the Caribbean. It is a story of a leisurely sail through the Gulf of Cortez and on through Panama Canal to the Azores and England. Cruising in Seraffyn is also a carefully thought out guide to living aboard a small boat, with fun and economy as the guiding principles. Four appendices provide data that is vital for anyone comtemplating long-distance cruising.

The epic, never-before-told story of Columbus's final, and perhaps greatest, journey to the New World. The final voyage of Christopher Columbus was by far his most dangerous, unexpected, exhilarating, and consequential. It was, as Pulitzer Prize-winner Samuel Eliot Morison put it, "a story of adventure which imagination could hardly invent; a struggle between man and the elements, in which the most splendid manifestations of devotion, loyalty and courage are mingled with the vilest human passions."

When Kat Ward put down her pen after finishing the seventh book in her “KERI” series, she considered her mission complete. Nearly twenty years had passed since her therapist originally recommend writing as a means of healing her childhood wounds. And after taking listeners on a stomach-twisting journey through her hellish formative years, she was ready to look in the mirror again.

One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley. This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

In 2018, amateur cyclist Jenny Graham left family and friends behind in Scotland to become the fastest woman to cycle around the world. Alone and unsupported, she crossed the finish line at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin four months later, smashing the female record by nearly three weeks. With infectious wit and honesty, Jenny brings listeners into her remarkable Round the World adventure, as she takes on four continents, 16 countries – and countless cups of coffee.

Christian Beamish, a former editor at The Surfer's Journal, envisioned a low-tech, self-reliant exploration for surf along the coast of North America, using primarily clothes and instruments available to his ancestors, and the 18-foot boat he would build by hand in his garage. How the vision met reality - and how the two came to shape each other - places The Voyage of the Cormorant in the great American tradition of tales of life at sea, and what it has to teach us.

One of the earliest known autobiographies by a woman, this is the extraordinary tale of Catalina de Erauso, who in 1599 escaped from a Basque convent dressed as a man and went on to live one of the most wildly fantastic lives of any woman in history. A soldier in the Spanish army, she traveled to Peru and Chile, became a gambler, and even mistakenly killed her own brother in a duel. During her lifetime she emerged as the adored folkloric hero of the Spanish-speaking world. This delightful translation of Catalina's own work introduces a new audience to her audacious escapades.

"You seriously mean to tell me that the ship is doomed?" asked Frank Worsley, commander of the Endurance, stuck impassably in Antarctic ice packs. "What the ice gets," replied Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition's unflappable leader, "the ice keeps." It did not, however, get the ship's twenty-five crew members, all of whom survived an eight-hundred-mile voyage across sea, land, and ice to South Georgia, the nearest inhabited island.

Near the end of her life, Mary Mann Hamilton (1866-c.1936) was encouraged to record her experiences as a female pioneer. The result is the only known firsthand account of a remarkable woman thrust into the center of taming the American South - surviving floods, tornadoes, and fires; facing bears, panthers, and snakes; managing a boardinghouse in Arkansas that was home to an eccentric group of settlers; and running a logging camp in Mississippi that blazed a trail for development in the Mississippi Delta.

Blair Braverman fell in love with the North at an early age: By the time she was 19, she had left her home in California, moved to Norway to learn how to drive sled dogs, and worked as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube charts Blair's endeavor to become a "tough girl" - someone who courts danger in an attempt to become fearless.

From Frederick Forsyth, the grand master of international suspense, comes his most intriguing story ever - his own. For more than 40 years, Frederick Forsyth has been writing extraordinary real-world novels of intrigue, from the groundbreaking The Day of the Jackal to the prescient The Kill List. Whether writing about the murky world of arms dealers, the shadowy Nazi underground movement, or the intricacies of worldwide drug cartels, every plot has been chillingly plausible because every detail has been minutely researched.

At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

Once a person hikes a long trail, they catch the bug, but does it get any easier the second time around? Four years after starting the Appalachian Trail with his brother, Brian takes to the Continental Divide Trail for his second thru-hike in familiar company. However, trail life is not always as rewarding and romantic as the pictures you see or second-hand stories you hear.

In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice. The disaster left Shackleton and his men alone at the frozen South Pole, fighting for their lives. Their survival and escape is the most famous adventure in history.