Explorer Memoirs

World-famous competitive skydiver and coach Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld presents proven tools and techniques for success and explains how they can be used in everyday life. Dan survived a plane crash from which 16 of the 22 people on board were killed. He was left critically injured and woke up from a six-week-long coma with a broken neck, broken skull, severe head trauma, a collapsed lung, and other serious internal injuries. Against all odds, Dan recovered and went on to become one of the greatest competitive skydiver in the world.

Sourced from Pierre-Esprit Radisson’s journals, which are the best firsthand accounts of 17th-century Canada, Bush Runner tells the extraordinary true story of this protean 17th-century figure, a man more trading partner than colonizer, a peddler of goods and not worldview - and with it offers a fresh perspective on the world in which he lived.

This anthology of survival stories covers the craziest and most enthralling wilderness encounters in American history. After mining our 126-year archive, we uncovered 10 tales of adventure and near tragedy that include close calls with aggressive grizzly bears, epic blizzards, hungry wolves, and much more. The thread that ties all of these narratives together is the authors’ grit and will to preserve — and then tell the tale.

On the edge of the remote salt flats of Australia, a young woman blows in from nowhere and disturbs the precarious equilibrium of a family farm. The boy is fascinated by her, his mother despises her, and the brutish farmhand wants to possess her. When the woman mysteriously disappears, the only trace of her a bloodied dress, the boy sets out in search of an Indian hawker who may or may not have the answers. As he journeys through the broken landscape, accompanied only by his horse and his dog, the boy becomes aware of another party converging murderously on his destination.

The Canadian North is a vast and lonely land where bears roam free, fires rage unchecked, and storms blast every living thing on the tundra. When Stephan Kesting, already no stranger to pushing his own physical limits, was faced with a rare illness, he knew the only way for him to recover in both body and mind was to dig even deeper. Despite the dangers inherent in the sub-arctic, Kesting sets out on an unimaginably difficult journey.

At a time when Vancouver Island was still an extremely remote and sparsely populated backwater, a young widow packed her five children into a 25-foot boat dubbed The Caprice and set off on an adventure. Summer after summer the brave young mother, who became known as "Capi," would set sail and explore the rugged coastline for months with her young crew. Although the hazards the family faced were numerous-tides, fog, storms, rapids, cougars, and even grizzlies-Capi brought them through it all.

Christopher Columbus needed a sponsor for a dangerous expedition, but the King of Portugal wasn't interested. He repackaged his proposal for the Queen of Spain. She put Columbus on retainer and the rest is history. Columbus may not have been the first to discover America, but he had a great publicist. That's where Jeff Blumenfeld comes in. For many years, using a PR specialty called adventure marketing, Jeff has connected explorers and their projects with corporate sponsors looking to demonstrate product performance in extreme conditions.

Tom Crean was the farmer’s son from Kerry who sailed on three major expeditions to the unknown Antarctic over a century ago. He served with both Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, spent longer on the ice than either and outlived them both. But Tom Crean returned to Ireland and never spoke about his exploits, taking his incredible story to the grave - until the publication of An Unsung Hero, which unearthed his story and saw him rightfully placed amongst the annals of the great explorers.

Over the course of twenty years of delivering sailboats to far-flung quaysides, John Kretschmer has had innumerable adventures, both humorous and terrifying. In Flirting with Mermaids, he recounts the most memorable of them. He crosses the Western Caribbean with a crew of eccentric Swedes researching ancient Mayan mariners, lands in Aden at the outbreak of civil war, and endures a North Atlantic crossing during which he discovers the existence of Force 13 winds.

Slave Girls, a new series by bestselling author Louise Allen, reveals a shocking modern-day scandal of County Lines–the single most dangerous form of systematic child abuse prevalent today.

Admired by millions as the star of Man vs. Wild and the acclaimed NGC series Running Wild, global adventurer Bear Grylls has explored places few would dare to go. Now, he shares time-honored lessons for leading an adventurous life through stories drawn from his personal experiences, as well as encounters with a diverse group of celebrities who have participated in his wildly popular television shows.

In this inspiring travelogue, celebrated traveler and photographer Jessica Nabongo—the first Black woman on record to visit all 195 countries in the world—shares her journey around the globe with fascinating stories of adventure, culture, travel musts, and human connections.

In this true story of adventure, author Jack Nisbet recreates the life and times of David Thompson—fur trader, explorer, surveyor, and mapmaker. From 1784 to 1812, Thompson explored western North America, and his field journals provide the earliest written accounts of the natural history and indigenous cultures of the what is now British Columbia, Alberta, Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Thompson was the first person to chart the entire route of the Columbia river, and his wilderness expeditions have become the stuff of legend.

Bare-Faced Messiah tells the extraordinary story of L. Ron Hubbard, a penniless science fiction writer who founded the Church of Scientology, became a millionaire prophet, and convinced his adoring followers that he alone could save the world. Bare-Faced Messiah exposes the myths surrounding the fascinating and mysterious founder of the Church of Scientology - a man of hypnotic charm and limitless imagination - and provides the definitive account of how the notorious organization was created.

She was 17 years old on a Christmas Eve flight 40 years ago to join her father for Christmas when the unimaginable happened. The Lockheed L-188A Electra, on the way from Lima to Pucallpa, flew directly into a thunderstorm. A strike of lightning left the plane incinerated and Juliane Diller (Koepcke) still strapped to her plane seat falling through the night air two miles above the Earth. Her survival is unexplainable and considered a modern-day miracle. Her mother was among the 91 dead and Juliane the sole survivor.

In 1968, I was a sixteen-year-old girl with three passions: writing, my boyfriend, and sex. So… I started a diary, got married, and had a baby. Now, in 2025, I am a seventy-three-year-old woman with three passions: writing, my family, and, well… It's time to tell my story... As a teenager, Dawn had everything she wanted in suburban Toronto—good grades, proud parents, and a passionate romance with an ambitious young artist. But when her father's affair shattered her family and her mother warned "you can't trust men," her world turned upside down.

In 1982, at the age of just 23 and halfway through her architecture studies, Elspeth Beard left her family and friends in London and set off on a 35,000-mile solo adventure around the world on her 1974 BMW R60/6. Reeling from a recent breakup and with only limited savings from her pub job, a tent, a few clothes, and some tools, all packed on the back of her bike, she was determined to prove herself. She had ridden bikes since her teens and was well-traveled. But nothing could prepare her for what lay ahead.

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way. The route takes her through the valleys and snowy mountain passes of Europe and India to the scorching deserts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the metal of her bicycle, Rozinante (named after Don Quixote's steed), becomes too hot to touch.

Pocahontas was the daughter of Powhatan. When Captain John Smith was captured by these Indians in 1607, he was brought before Powhatan, who sentenced him to death. Sixteen-year-old Pocahontas convinced her father to spare Captain Smith's life, thus becoming a friend of the settlers and eventually influencing her father to be friendly, too.

Camila's Story is the 12th instalment in the popular Thrown Away Children series by Louise Allen.