Travel Classics

Joshua Slocum was believed to be the first man to sail single-handed around the world. After a distinguished career, where he worked his way up from cabin boy to captain, Joshua Slocum wrecked his ship off the coast of Brazil. Turning this catastrophe to his advantage, he built a sailing canoe from the wreckage and sailed back to New York. Moreover, he wrote Voyage of the Liberdad, a chronicle of his trip, and earned some literary success.

A touch of computer keys, a blast of heat, and suddenly the Murry twins, Sandy and Dennys, are gasping in a shimmering desert land. If only the brothers had normal parents, not a scientist mother and a father who experiments with space and time travel. If only the Murry twins had noticed the note on the door of their mother's lab: Experiment In Progress. Please Keep Out. But it's too late for regrets.

Goethe was probably the greatest universal genius who ever lived. Although known primarily as a poet, playright, and novelist, he was also known for his work in anatomy, botany, color, art criticism, and jurisprudence. Many people are deterred from attempting to read anything by Goethe because of his extremely penetrating intelligence and dense prose. But his travel diary, Italian Journey, is by far easier to digest than anything else by him.

Originally published in 1893, Ingersoll Lockwood's nearly forgotten Baron Trump's Marvellous Underground Journey blends science fiction and fantasy in a story told by Little Baron Trump, an aristocratic boy who sets out from Castle Trump to discover the World Within a World that he read about in a 15th-century manuscript of the "celebrated thinker and philosopher", the learned Spaniard Don Fum.

After Hank Morgan of Hartford, Connecticut, takes a blow to the head, he inexplicably awakens in sixth-century Camelot. At first lost and confused, the time traveler soon realizes that he can use modern knowledge and his ability to foretell the future to his advantage. Consequently, he is granted a place in the king’s court as Arthur’s right-hand man. When the Catholic Church grows fearful of his power, the Connecticut Yankee aims higher and concocts a grandiose plan to bring American ideals to sixth-century England to change the future.

In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th Birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1994 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author, as Madeleine L'Engle reads A Wind in the Door.

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.

A scientist and gentleman inventor in industrialized Victorian England claims to have irrefutable proof that time is not simply a concept - it's a whole other dimension. When he reveals the prototype of a time-traveling machine to his peers, he's met with skepticism at first...until he returns one week later, disheveled, bloody, and with a fantastic story to tell.

Gulliver's Travels is an adventure story (in reality, a misadventure story) involving several voyages of Lemuel Gulliver, a ship's surgeon, who, because of a series of mishaps en route to recognized ports, ends up, instead, on several unknown islands living with people and animals of unusual sizes, behaviors, and philosophies, but who, after each adventure, is somehow able to return to his home in England where he recovers from these unusual experiences and then sets out again on a new voyage.

When the Tootings return to Zobrowski Terrace at the end of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again, they find that home is looking a lot like Jurassic Park. But this is no theme park - a very real and very hungry Tyrannosaurus rex is charging them! Thanks to Dad inadvertently yanking Chitty's "Chronojuster" lever, the spirited car has flown them back to prehistoric times, where the family - and especially Baby Harry - has a narrow escape.

A flash of lightning, quivering ground, and, instead of her grandparents' farm, Polly sees mist and jagged mountains - and coming toward her, a group of young men carrying spears. Why has a time gate opened and dropped Polly into a world that existed 3,000 years ago? Will she be able to get back to the present before the time gate closes - and leaves her to face a group of people who believe in human sacrifice?

Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.

Travel to other planets is now a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity of finding habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. There’s a problem though—because the spaceships are slower than light, any communication between the exploring ships and Earth would take years.

Tom and Pat are identical twin teenagers. As twins they’ve always been close, so close that it seemed like they could read each other’s minds.

Ostensibly written by an English knight, The Book of Marvels and Travels claim to recount his experiences in Egypt, the Levant, India, and China. It describes a journey from Europe to Jerusalem and further into Asia, and the many weird and wonderful peoples and practices of the East. The author claims to have traveled in land populated by Amazons, dog-headed people, cannibals, one-footed tribes, and Pygmies.

One of the most entertaining travelogues ever written, Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra is a heady mix of fact, myth, and depictions of secret chambers, desperate battles, imprisoned princesses, palace ghosts, and fragrant gardens, described in a wistful and dreamlike eloquence.

Experience The Force Awakens as a Shakespeare play, complete with Elizabethan verse, Shakespearian monologues, and theatrical stage directions! As the noble Resistance clashes with the vile First Order, Rey, Finn, Poe Damaron, Kylo Ren, and BB-8 are pulled into a galaxy-wide drama - in iambic pentameter! Star Wars fans and Shakespeare enthusiasts alike will enjoy the authentic meter, reimagined movie scenes and dialogue, and hidden Easter eggs throughout.

This riveting history is a firsthand account of the long and arduous search for one of the greatest explorers of the 19th century. Journalist and adventurer Henry M. Stanley was known for his search for the legendary David Livingstone, and their eventual meeting led to the popular quotation "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" A real-life adventure story, How I Found Livingstone in Central Africa tells of the incredible hardships - disease, hostile natives, tribal warfare, impenetrable jungles, and other obstacles - faced by a daring explorer. This must-have account also includes a wealth of information on various African peoples.

Somerset Maugham set out on an extraordinary trip in September of 1922. He would remain abroad for nine months and end up traveling by canoe, riverboat, rickshaw and mule from Rangoon to Mandalay in Upper Burma, down through Thailand to Bangkok, then to Phnom Penh and across the jungle by river to Angkor Wat. From there he went down river to Saigon, then by ship to Hue and Haiphong. He ends the audiobook with an anecdotal story of his fellow passengers while on shipboard to Haiphong.

In honor of Madeleine L'Engle's 100th Birthday, fans are invited to enjoy this archival audiobook, originally recorded in 1996 and newly restored! Listen to the voice of the author as Madeleine L'Engle reads A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

Created as an experiment by the time-traveling goddess Pallas Athene, the Just City is a planned community populated by over 10,000 children and a few hundred adult teachers from all eras of history, along with some handy robots from the far human future - all set down together on a Mediterranean island in the distant past.