Southern Memoirs

For fans of The Lost City of Z, Walking the Amazon, and Turn Right at Machu Picchu comes naturalist and explorer Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon - a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land and presents an impassioned call to save it.

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the 45 original passengers and crew, only 16 made it off the mountain alive. For 10 excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, these men and women not only had to keep their faith; they had to make an impossible decision: Should they eat the flesh of their dead friends?

Eastbourne or Bust A not-at-all-serious account of one man, one bike, and the long, painful road to the coast. Ever thought cycling the South Downs Way would be a charming, leisurely jaunt through scenic countryside? Yeah, so did I. Idiot. What actually happened was a four-day, mud-splattered odyssey of mechanical failures, chalky cliffside death slides, possessed bike saddles, and a surprising number of historical detours involving Romans, smugglers, haunted windmills and at least one overly dramatic Victorian tunnel. Armed with questionable fitness, a half-functioning bicycle, and the ...

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father, broke through a racial barrier—but no one knew it. Oberon was "passing" for white. In the first biography of Oberon in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and untapped archival material to capture the life of an oft-forgotten talent.

Former tour manager and plane crash survivor Ron Eckerman reveals the rigors of life on the road as Lynyrd Skynyrd takes the world by storm in 1976, and the ironic turn of events preceding the tragic plane crash in 1977.

On a beautiful October day in the San Fernando Valley, teenager Missy Avila was lured into the woods, beaten, tortured, and drowned. Missy's best friend, Karen Severson, publicly vowed to find the killer and even moved in with Missy's family to help. Three years later, a surprise witness exposed the murderers as Missy's two best friends—one of whom was Karen. New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury delivers a story full of twists, turns, betrayals, and confessions.

One ordinary spring morning in Reykjavik, Iceland, Thordis Elva kisses her son and partner good-bye before boarding a plane to do a remarkable thing: fly 7,000 miles to South Africa to confront the man who raped her when she was just 16. Meanwhile, in Sydney, Australia, Tom Stranger nervously embarks on an equally life-changing journey to meet Thordis, wondering whether he is worthy of this milestone.

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly re-creates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling, and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience, and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader.

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

Raul Ramos brings you his emotional, raw, and inspiring autobiography. Follow along on his uplifting journey from street gang life in South Central Los Angeles to earning the rank of Master Chief in the United States Navy. His one-of-a-kind story is certain to motivate and remind you that you control your destiny – no matter what hand you were dealt.

At 33, Virginia Vallejo was part of the media elite. A renowned anchorwoman and socialite, and a model who appeared on magazine covers worldwide, Vallejo was the darling of Colombia's most powerful politicians and billionaires. Meeting Pablo Escobar in 1983, then becoming his mistress for many years, she witnessed the rise of a drug empire that was characterized by Escobar's far-reaching political corruption, his extraordinary wealth, and a network of violent crime that lasted until his death in 1993.

The story begins in a dusty village lost in the Argentine pampas, where a girl, born out of wedlock, scrambles her way to the capital city by the time she is 15. It ends with the embalmed corpse of Eva Perõn being hidden away by nervous politicians for fear that if the working people of Argentina knew where it was buried, it would inspire them to revolution.

No. 1 Best Seller in New Zealand Travel, Family Travel, Australia & Oceania Travel, Humor Essays, Off the Beaten Path, Guidebook Series, Senior Travel and Auto & RV Travel. No. 1 New Release in Italian Travel, South Pacific Travel, Travel Writing & Food, Lodging & Transportation When Denise is captured by a policeman on her first day of school and kicked off the bus for having crabs, little does she know that it will be the beginning of a hilarious romp through life. Will she and her family survive a mysterious UFO encounter, deadly gas, ghostly goings-on, a cataclysmic quake, Cockney ...

Rassie Erasmus has been called a genius. He’s been called reckless. All his life, he’s done things differently. Now, with his trademark candour, Rassie talks openly about his adventures and misadventures. Listeners will enjoy the behind-the-scenes information about interactions and controversies and previously untold stories from a truly maverick life.

In May 1971, Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were two seventeen-year-olds driving to an end-of-the-school-year party in a rundown Studebaker Lark, when they seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Police back then didn't do enough to try and find them. Investigators thirty years later did too much. Two families endure decades of pain as they await answers of what happened to their girls. When a third family is pulled into the mystery, they quickly learn their nightmare is just beginning.

Drag icon Ginger Minj brings her signature humor and sass to this tongue-in-cheek memoir-cum-life manual-cum-cookbook. Featuring Ginger’s favorite Southern-inspired recipes, Southern Fried Sass showcases some of her most vulnerable and celebratory moments, revealing the most valuable lessons she’s learned after years in drag and the pearls of wisdom she’s gleaned from her grandmother’s personal brand of Southern resilience.

In John Prine, Eddie Huffman traces the long arc of Prine’s musical career, beginning with his early, seemingly effortless successes, which led paradoxically not to stardom but to a rich and varied career writing songs that other people have made famous. He recounts the stories, many of them humorous, behind Prine’s best-known songs and discusses all of Prine’s albums as he explores the brilliant records and the ill-advised side trips, the underappreciated gems and the hard-earned comebacks that led Prine to found his own successful record label, Oh Boy Records.

In this riveting and relentless nonfiction thriller, award-winning investigative reporter William C. Rempel tells the harrowing story of former Cali cartel insider Jorge Salcedo, an ordinary man facing an extraordinary dilemma—a man forced to risk everything to escape the powerful and treacherous Cali crime syndicate.

During the Roaring Twenties, two of the most revered and influential men in American business proposed to transform one of the country’s poorest regions into a dream technological metropolis, a shining paradise of small farms, giant factories, and sparkling laboratories. Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s “Detroit of the South” would be 10 times the size of Manhattan, powered by renewable energy, and free of air pollution. And it would reshape American society.

Ellen Ann Fentress is a veteran writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She’s also a seasoned southern woman, specifically a white Mississippi one. “Women do a lot for free, no matter the era, no matter the location,” she observes in The Steps We Take: A Memoir of Southern Reckoning. As a good southern woman, Fentress felt a calling to help others.