Mountain Memoir

Surround Yourself with Greatness takes listeners around the world while looking through the eyes, mind, and heart of Chad Lewis - a once freckle-faced, four-eyed, skinny teenager who at an early age wrote in his journal, “My goal and quest is to surround myself with greatness...only greatness will penetrate the walls of my heart.”

In her hilarious yet sage debut essay collection, Midstokke demonstrates that battles with freeloading varmints, clogged stove pipes, childhood trauma, and one surprisingly aggressive boulder are unexpected, if not wonderfully entertaining, pathways to personal growth and joy. All the Things delivers the irreverent, fearless, and brilliant voice of a woman who laughs in the face of failure and soothes her wounds by splitting wood, often in her skivvies.

In this book, honesty and perspective are what I hope to share by giving you full access to what goes on during hypnotherapy sessions. In the stories that follow, I open the doors of my office and give you a glimpse of what it’s really like...what people are really like. Once you listen to details about all the things that trouble and puzzle others, you’ll probably feel reassured about the issues that bother you.

His cheeks are as tender as raw meat on a butcher's block. And those are just the cheeks of his face. As he slumps in the saddle, watching the road disappear into the distance, he aches in parts of his body that he's only just discovering he has. When Mark travels to Ecuador to go hiking and climbing, he discovers a land of dramatic volcanoes rising through the clouds and wide-open horizons rich in history.

At 29 years old, Mary and her newlywed husband embark at a two-year diplomatic assignment to South Africa. A continued campaign of economic sanctions from the international community has pressured President De Klerk to negotiate with recently-freed Nelson Mandela to end apartheid with the end goal of democratic government. Uncertainty about the future hangs like a cloud cover over the South African heat.

Just past midnight, on February 3, just hours from their destination, the Dorchester was torpedoed and sank, throwing its passengers into the frigid waters and creating the worst single loss of an American personnel convoy during WWII. Many of the survivors credit the four chaplains with saving their lives. Those chaplains would become known as the “Immortal Chaplains” for their heroism in making the ultimate sacrifice.

Hidden among the photographs, uniforms, revolvers, and war medals of the Civil War are the remarkable stories of some of the most unlikely heroes: women. This audiobook brings to light the incredible stories of women from the Civil War that remain relevant to our nation today. Each woman's experience helps us see a truer, fuller, richer version of what really happened in this country during this time period.

For 18 years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's 14 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the Top is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the flat, safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and deadly places where only he can go.

Voices From the Hills is a history of female participation in mountain running, a development that was fiercely resisted in its early years. Steve Chilton has researched his subject deeply, interviewing many female athletes whom he rightly describes as pioneers. Thanks to them, female participation has become accepted and followed avidly in all its aspects including the long distance, high ascent runs over ranges such as the Mamores and recognized challenges such as the Bob Graham Round.

Joe Mitchell and his family have lived in China off and on for a total of seven years beginning in 1993. During three of those years they lived on a one acre property with a minority Nosu family. This true, first person account is alive with stories of their lives there and the friendships they enjoyed.

This third book in a series chronicling a young doctor in rural mountain practice immerses us once again in the lives of Dr. Walt Larimore and his family as an unexpected turn of events compels them to leave Bryson City.

For over two decades Charles Long thrilled opera audiences, performing at some of America's and the world's most famous venues, and singing alongside some of its greatest stars. In his insightful, frank and humorous new memoir, Long recounts many of those experiences. In the process he sheds light into a world many of us respect, admire and love, but which few of us have ever encountered in such intimate detail.

After a shocking diagnosis for a rare pituitary disease, and with her eighteen-year marriage in shambles, Risa's life has fallen far from picture-perfect. Recovering from brain surgery and desperate to get back to her former self, she signs up for the bike tour of a lifetime-six weeks from Canada to Mexico on the Pacific Coast Highway. The old Risa could have done the ride in her sleep, but for the new Risa, trapped in a body that no longer feels like her own and stuck in the company of her brain tumor, Bubba, the ride becomes a challenge unlike anything she's ever faced.

In the late 1960s, MacInnes led the Glencoe Mountain Rescue team and together they developed innovative techniques and equipment in order to save lives - often risking their own in the process - whether night or day, and always at a moment’s notice. He was a central figure in the rescue during the 1963 New Year tragedy in the Cuillins on the Isle of Skye, and led groundbreaking rescues on Buichaille Etive Mor, Ben Nevis, Bidean nam Bian and many other legendary Scottish mountains.

A much-lauded essayist and poet, Jeff Mann writes of the passion and pain of being a Southern gentleman who happens to be invested in many worlds: the hungers of gay bear culture, the propensities of leather and bondage, the frustrations of academia, and the perspectives of an Appalachian who has traveled the world. In Binding the God, his second collection of essays, Mann offers listeners another tour of his consciousness and experiences.

The little mountain hamlet of Bryson City, North Carolina, offers more than dazzling vistas. For Walt Larimore, a young "flatlander" physician setting up his first practice, the town presents its peculiar challenges as well. With the winsomeness of a James Herriott book, Bryson City Tales sweeps you into a world of colorful characters, the texture of Smoky Mountain life, and the warmth, humor, quirks, and struggles of a small country town.

In the spring of 2018 writer / reporter Holly Nadler gave up her year-round apartment on Martha’s Vineyard even as everyone cried out, “Don’t do it! You’ll never find another one!” And they were right! Follow her around the Vineyard with her dear old thug of a Boston terrier as she lodges in a lilac-walled cottage which is enchanting except for the fact that it has no running water.

Jose "Pepin" Almeida is an unlikely hero. He never acted in the movies, never threw the winning pass, never sat in high office. Even his involvement in the event that u-turned his life, the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, failed and became a national embarrassment.

When empty nester Paula Whyman climbs to a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, her plans for a backyard ecology project quickly morph into a massive endeavor. In Bad Naturalist, Whyman struggles with conflicting advice from experts, an influx of invasive species, delayed plans, and the occasional rattlesnake—but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting the land.

In 2011, Jessica Buchanan found herself in the middle of a nightmare she could never have prepared for; she was a hostage in the desert, captured by Somali pirates, who held a 45 million dollar ransom demand on her head. Taken at gunpoint while on a routine field mission for her non-governmental organization, Jessica was forced to live in deplorable conditions, regularly tortured, and kept on a starvation diet for 93 days. On January 25, 2012, Jessica was successfully rescued by SEAL Team VI, upon order of President Obama, and finally brought home.