Adventure Biography

In May 2006, armed only with a small rucksack and a staff, Tony Kevin, an overweight, sedentary, 63-year-old former diplomat, set off on an eight-week trek across Spain. But this was not just a very long walk — it was a pilgrimage. From Granada, in the southeast, to Santiago de Compostela, in the far northwest, Tony followed the Via Mozarabe and the Via de la Plata, two of the many pilgrim trails that crisscross Spain and Portugal and that all lead to a single destination.

Death on the River of Doubt takes listeners inside the thrilling journey that unfolded as Theodore Roosevelt and his companions navigated the Amazonian River of Doubt through an unforgiving and unpredictable jungle. With new threats at every turn, from bloodthirsty piranhas and raging rapids to starvation, disease, and a traitor in their own ranks, it seemed that not everyone would make it out alive.

True Raiders tells the untold true story of Monty Parker, a British rogue nobleman who, after being dared to do so by Ava Astor, the so-called “most beautiful woman in the world,” headed a secret 1909 expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant. Like a real-life version of Raiders of the Lost Ark, this incredible story of adventure and mystery has almost been completely forgotten today. Using recently uncovered records from the original expedition and several newly translated sources, True Raiders is the first retelling of this group’s adventures.

Her agent told her not to get on the plane. The male leads weren't even cast. The financing was shaky at best. The script had been rewritten countless times. And yet something about Wild Oats lured Shirley MacLaine to the film's location shoot in the far-off Canary Islands - and straight to the center of one of the most thrilling and paradigm-shifting adventures of her life.

Holly FitzGerald and her husband, Fitz - married less than two years - set out on a yearlong honeymoon adventure of a lifetime, backpacking around the world. Five months into the trip their plane crash lands in Peru at a penal colony walled in by jungle, and their blissfully romantic journey turns into a terrifying nonstop labyrinth of escape and survival.

As technology has evolved, so has crime. Digital technologies have brought with them a whole host of crimes committed online—unsuspecting people are cheated of crores of rupees, duped by false advertisements on fake websites, incited to click on suspicious links through payment gateways, and download apps that give remote access of their device to criminals. From credit card fraud to phishing, the list is endless. Cyber Encounters delves deep into this nebulous cyberspace, to bring twelve fascinating fictional accounts of cybercrime.

This extraordinary travel book tells the true story of how in 1997 writer Michael Paterniti agreed to take a road trip from New Jersey to California, reuniting the preserved brain of the great scientist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) with his granddaughter Evelyn. Paterniti's improbable travelling companion is 84-year-old Thomas Harvey, the pathologist who not only removed Einstein's brain from his head during the autopsy but purloined it from Princeton Hospital also!

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination - and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts.

Rebecca Rusch has run the gauntlet of endurance sports over her career as a professional athlete—climbing, adventure racing, whitewater rafting, cross-country skiing, and mountain biking—racking up accolades and world championships along the way.

In 2015 Benji had the picket-fence cottage in the quiet suburban street, a promising career and a loving wife. Three months later it was all gone. What do you do when the world crumbles around you? Where do you go when you have nothing to lose? Benji tells his story with brutal honesty, describing some of the wildest parts of Australia with a passionate attention to detail. Jump on and hold tight for the ride of a lifetime as he takes you from his rock bottom to the highs of setting a new Guinness World Record: The fastest man across 10 Australian deserts....

"This book is in part a detective story. After 9/11 I knew, if I needed further reinforcement, that we are living in a new world - the world of a global capitalist economy that is vastly more flexible, resilient, open, self-correcting, and fast-changing than it was even a quarter century earlier. It's a world that presents us with enormous new possibilities but also enormous new challenges. The Age of Turbulence is my attempt to understand the nature of this new world." (Alan Greenspan)

Homme de famille et homme d'affaires, Bruno Rodi a aussi le voyage dans le sang. Il est probablement le plus grand voyageur vivant en terre québécoise. Il a répondu à l'appel de l'aventure, d'abord en se lançant à l'assaut du plus haut sommet de chaque continent, puis en se rendant au pôle Nord et au pôle Sud en ski. En l'an 2000, il a commencé un tour du monde unique en son genre qui l'a occupé pendant 17 ans. Il a ainsi mis les pieds sur tous les pays, territoires et dépendances de la planète.

Jonathan’s older brother is away fighting with General Washington in Pennsylvania. But at 13, Jonathan is too young to fight. Still too young. Then one morning, April 3, 1778, the tavern bell sounds, calling men to arms. Eager to prove his mettle, with blood pounding in his ears, Jonathan joins the gathering men at the tavern to hear the news. With a 12-pound, six-foot-long flintlock musket loaned to him by the tavern keeper, Jonathan finds a place in with the other men, marching to battle.

Pirates, parrots, hurricanes, and Himalayas. Stalked by jaguars in the jungle of Guatemala! Will they survive pirates off Costa Rica? How does he escape war in Kashmir? Hanging out with Jim Morrison, surviving a huge tornado at sea, saving the life of a lone fisherman helpless in a storm… Whether you are a landlubber or sailor, an armchair adventurer or world traveler, you'll understand why everyone said he should write a book…

Faced with an empty nest, stagnant jobs, and an economy in freefall, Kim Brown Seely and her husband decided to embark on a grand adventure. On an impulse, they purchased a sailboat, learned to sail, and set off toward untamed wilderness in search of the elusive blonde Kermode bear that only lives in a secluded forest in the Pacific Northwest.

Sharks have been on this planet for over 400 million years, so there is a lot they can teach us about survival and adaptability. For example: how do sharks, which unlike other fish are denser than water, stay afloat? They keep moving. When Jasmin Graham, an award-winning young shark scientist, started to feel that the traditional path to becoming a marine biologist was pulling her under, she remembered this important lesson: keep moving forward.

During a culture-shocked exchange year in Japan, 15-year-old Lisa Dempster's imagination is ignited by the story of the henro michi, an arduous 1,200-kilometre Buddhist pilgrimage through the mountains of Japan. Perfectly suiting the romantic view of herself as a dusty, travel-worn explorer (well, one day), she promises to return to Japan and walk the henro michi, one way or another, as soon as humanely possible. Fast-forward 13 years, and Lisa's life is vastly different to what she pictured it would be.

A deeply personal travel memoir that combines alpine adventure, family connections, and spiritual encounters in two very different worlds: a Himalayan village and Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, Michael Schauch and his wife, Chantal, undertook an expedition deep in the Himalaya of northern Nepal, into a remote valley that had been closed off to outsiders for decades. They led a team of artists (a photographer, a musician, and a painter), with the objective of capturing a moment in time through their unique lenses.

"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.

Turning Pages: The Adventures and Misadventures of a Publisher is the well-told story of forty years in the publishing business. For twenty-four of those years, John Sargent ran one of America’s largest publishing companies. Rather than a straight chronological narrative, Sargent uses the best stories of those years to give us an intimate look inside book publishing. In weaving these stories together, he brings the listener with him through triumph and despair, and a very interesting daily life.