True Survival

Journalist Susan Casey was in her living room when she first glimpsed this strange place and its resident sharks, their dark fins swirling around a tiny boat in a documentary. These great whites were the alphas among alphas, the narrator said, some of them topping 18 feet in length, and each fall they congregated here off the northern California coast.

Aged just seven, Suzanne Heywood set sail with her parents and brother on a three-year voyage around the world. What followed turned instead into a decade-long way of life, through storms, shipwrecks, reefs and isolation, with little formal schooling. No one else knew where they were most of the time and no state showed any interest in what was happening to the children. Suzanne fought her parents, longing to return to England and to education and stability. This memoir covers her astonishing upbringing.

Twelve-year-old Donn Fendler steps away from his Boy Scout troop for only a minute, but in the foggy mountains of Maine, a minute is all it takes. After hours of trying to find his way back, a nervous and tired Donn falls down an embankment, making it impossible for him to be found. One sleepless night goes by, followed by a second...and before Donn knows it, almost two weeks have passed, leaving him starving, scared, and delirious.

When Dr. Richard Greenberg, accompanied by his wife and three children, set out for a scenic day hike on the Nā Pali Coast of Kaua'i, he had little idea that the dream-like setting would soon be the backdrop of a living nightmare. With an unforeseen change in the weather, Dr. Greenberg and his family soon found themselves fighting for their lives. In this harrowing retelling of the unexpected events of that day and the journey that followed, Dr. Greenberg shares a miraculous story of disaster and rescue, of strength and faith, and of grief and recovery.

It is 1944. A teenager named Rudolf (Rudi) Vrba has made up his mind. After barely surviving nearly two years in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, he knows he must escape. Even if death is more likely. Rudi has learned the terrible secret hidden behind the heavily guarded fences of concentration camps across Nazi-occupied Europe: the methodical mass killing of Jewish prisoners. As trains full of people arrive daily, Rudi knows that the murders won’t stop until he reveals the truth to the world―and that each day that passes means more lives are lost.

In the summer of 1978, 21-year-old Paul Wilson jumps at the chance to join two local icons on a dream surf trip to mainland Mexico, unaware their ultimate destination lies in the heart of the drug cartel country. Having no earthly idea of where he’ll get the money to pay his share and determined to prove his mettle, he does the only thing he can think of: He robs a supermarket.

This book tells the heroic true story of one nurse’s survival and recovery from the deadliest wildfire disaster in California history. Camp Fire Girl is a gripping and poignant account of one woman's harrowing journey through the deadliest wildfire in California's history. Written by a courageous nurse who faced the inferno head-on, this book offers a personal perspective on the heart-wrenching experience of surviving a wildfire disaster. As the flames raged around her, the author takes you on a breathtaking and emotional rollercoaster, describing the chaos, fear, and determination that ...

From a young boy in the Philippines with nothing but a dream to a self-made success in America, Amboy is the gripping true story of resilience, relentless determination, and the pursuit of a better life. Rome’s journey wasn’t easy. He didn’t speak fluent English. He had no money, no connections, and no clear path forward. What he did have was an unshakable work ethic and a belief that in America, anything was possible if you worked hard enough. This inspiring immigrant memoir follows Rome from his humble beginnings in the Philippines to his daring escape from a shipping job that took ...

Monique, the daughter of San Diego Chargers football great Earl Faison, married her high school sweetheart soon after she discovered she was pregnant with his child. Her relationship with Chris was shaky from the start, but turned tumultuous as he became verbally and physically abusive. When she could no longer put up with the abuse, she left him with their children. That was when the stalking and genuine threats began. Nothing stopped him - not protection injunctions, police warnings, or even arrests. One fateful Monday morning, Chris kidnapped Monique....

An inspiring memoir about a courageous woman's survival and recovery from an adventure-induced trauma - and the power of her dreams to overcome tragedy and live life to the fullest. Her wilderness adventure turned into a nightmare. After skiing more than 200 miles along California's John Muir Trail, Jean faces death from a mountaineering accident on Mount Whitney. Broken and bleeding on the highest peak in the continental United States, she vows to realize her greatest dreams if she lives until morning.

In the early years of the 18th century, a band of French scientists set off on a daring, decade-long expedition to South America in a race to measure the precise shape of the earth. Like Lewis and Clark's exploration of the American West, their incredible mission revealed the mysteries of a little-known continent to a world hungry for discovery. Scaling 16,000-foot mountains in the Peruvian Andes, and braving jaguars, pumas, insects, and vampire bats in the jungle, the scientists barely completed their mission.

Leaving behind friends, family, and life as they know it, the Wards embark on a journey into the Alaskan wilderness that will change them forever. Winds of Skilak traces a young couple’s adventurous move from the suburbs of Ohio to a remote island on ill-tempered Skilak Lake. As Sam and Bonnie adapt to a life without running water, electricity, and telephones, the unforgiving, desolate environment tests their courage early on.

CAVEMAN: A QUEST FOR FREEDOM IN SPAIN is a humorous, thought-provoking new novel by the author of SPANISH JOURNALS: THE POSTHUMOUS DIARY OF AN EXPAT. Tom Worsley, retired postman of forty-three, is fed up of life in his Lancashire town and decides to head off to live in a cave in southern Spain. There he plans to get back to basics and lead a life of simplicity, cultivate his mind, and improve his Spanish. None of his new friends in the nearby village can dissuade him from pursuing his singular goal, but after his cave is discovered by outsiders, his life becomes a good deal more complicated.

Poor Man Always Dreams a Better Tomorrow...but Is the Life Worth the Cost? The oldest daughter who failed to weigh the cost of pleasing her much-loved father… The oldest son burdened with his father's expectations… The story of ego, pride, anger, revenge, guilt… With the powerful and raw memoir, The Guilt is Alive, author Hemalatha Gnanasekar gives an unconventional and unique examination of her life in an impoverished Indian family and explores her family's fateful decision to send the oldest son to Jamaica to work. Strap yourself in for a gripping, suspenseful, and bittersweet ...

In May 2016, Fort McMurray, the hub of Canada’s oil industry and America’s biggest foreign supplier, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster melted vehicles, turned entire neighborhoods into firebombs, and drove 88,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the lens of this apocalyptic conflagration—the wildfire equivalent of Hurricane Katrina—John Vaillant warns that this was not a unique event, but a shocking preview of what we must prepare for in a hotter, more flammable world.

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.

On January 21, 1998, the night before his 38th birthday, federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was kidnapped by a car full of gun-toting thugs. Hoping to make a large withdrawal with his ATM card, they took him, blindfolded, to a Brooklyn apartment, and improvised. All night, his captors alternately held guns to his head, threatened his family, engaged him in discussions of "gangsta" philosophy, sought his legal advice, and even offered him sexual favors from their prostitute girlfriends as a "birthday present."

Maxwell Smart was eleven years old when his entire family was killed before his eyes. He might have died along with them, but his mother selflessly ordered him to save himself. Alone in the forest, he dug a hole in the ground for shelter and foraged for food in farmers’ fields. His clothes in rags and close to starvation, he repeatedly escaped death at the hands of Nazis and Ukrainian thugs.

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.

In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.