Outdoor Adventure

This enthralling audiobook takes us on a tour of the most dangerous, exciting, and often eccentric escapades of literature's sailing stars and how these true stories inspired and informed their best-loved works. Arthur Ransome, Erskine Childers, Jack London, and many others are featured as we find out how extraordinary fact fed into unforgettable fiction.

During March of each year, 70 million people fill out the National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament bracket, either in national contests or office pools. The goal is to predict all the winners for a tournament of 68 teams. The odds against perfection are astronomical. A small group of social media marketers, led by mathematician Sinclair Dane, see this annual quest as an under-appreciated opportunity to make money on sports betting. For a $2 entry fee, they offer one billion dollars for anyone who can predict the winners of all the games.

The Golly Toy and Game Company is hosting the regional rounds for the next Gollywhopper Games, and this time it's brother against brother in the physical challenges and mental puzzles. The companion to the popular The Gollywhopper Games will appeal to fans of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Chasing Vermeer. Chock-full of puzzles, riddles, and challenges for the listener to solve along with the main characters, this fast-paced companion to The Gollywhopper Games is bigger, bolder, and braver!

The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-la is a breathtaking account of the ill-fated October 1998 expedition of an American whitewater kayaking team who traveled deep into the Tsangpo Gorge in Tibet to run the Yarlung Tsangpo, known in paddling circles as the "Everest of rivers." For Wick Walker and Tom McEwan, extreme whitewater pioneers, best friends, and trip leaders, the Tsangpo adventure was the culmination of a twenty-five-year quest for glory. Yet the team's magnificent dreams crumbled when their ace paddler was swept over a thunderous eight-foot waterfall, never to be seen again.

Fed up with questions about what he was going to do when he retired, Edward decided to get on his bicycle and ride from Le Havre to the Mediterranean. He struggled in Normandy to get directions from old men tipsy on Calvados by 9 am, passed by prairies of corn and acres of sunflowers, and hit his stride on the towpath of the Burgundy canal. He explored the mystery of what an ouvrier eats for lunch, and was barred from a swimming pool because his trunks were too decent.

Solo circumnavigation of the globe. Fewer than 300 sailors in history have accomplished it, less than the number of people who have climbed Mt. Everest, or even those who have gone to space. In 1990, Istvan Kopar set out to earn his place among this elite fraternity - and to do so with only one stop.

In the long hot summer of '88, the author packed up his motorcycle and pulled out of the garage with no destination or return date in mind. The year 1988 would prove to be the worst drought since the dustbowl of the 1930s. Yellowstone would burn, Ronald Reagan would shake his fist at the Evil Empire, and the author, oblivious to it all, hit the road and never looked back. That trip would consume the entire summer, logging over 12,000 miles from sea to sea and back.

Rescue offers riveting stories about what happens when things go terribly wrong in some of the world's most perilous places: Himalayan peaks, African plains, vast oceans, remote Arctic wilderness. The result is a collection of first-rate prose read by masterful narrators that makes for compulsive listening.

Like all of us, Michael Anders has a dream. Ever since he was a kid in junior rodeo, he has dreamed of becoming a world-champion rodeo cowboy - riding bulls and bareback horses, scoring high, winning big buckles, basking in the glory. And now it all seems within his reach. Michael has filled his permit and is now a full member of the Professional Association of Rodeo Cowboys. So he sets out on this rodeo run with his two traveling partners, Kirby Jordan and Jim Ed Sarkos.

Feel the adrenaline rush as Dave Norell plunges over huge waterfalls, gets lost in the Philippine jungles, and experiences carnage in Costa Rica. In need of medical attention, Dave and his extreme kayaking friends trudge through waist-high sugar cane fields full of poisonous snakes, in search of a road that hasn't been washed out by recent flood-waters. Dave and fellow kayakers travel throughout Idaho, British Columbia, other parts of Canada and the US in their quest for whitewater adventure.

The Kingdom of Shivas Irons is the enchanting story of Murphy's return to Scotland to investigate reports of further visitations by Shivas Irons and to answer questions about him and MacDuff that have haunted Murphy since his original trip to Burningbush some 31 years before. Murphy and his companion, Buck Hannigan, a skeptical physicist fascinated by Shivas's connections to metanormal events, embark on a magical quest for Irons and MacDuff - and their wisdom about golf and human potential.

Interwoven with legends and lore, this story chronicles one man's adventure on Lake Superior, one of the world's most dangerous bodies of water.

Florida's government is building a bridge to North Captiva Island, which will ultimately result in a second bridge to Cayo Costa. Breeze takes action as only he can. He finds himself in an unlikely alliance with the governor as a result. He's given another assignment that appears to be out of his league. Can he pull it off, or will it be his downfall?

Recently recovered from his epic bicycle journey that took him from the Delaware shore to the Oregon coast, distinguished climate scientist David Goodrich sets out on his bike again to traverse the Western Interior Seaway - an ancient ocean that once spread across half of North America. When the waters cleared a geologic age ago, what was left behind was vast flat prairie, otherworldly rock formations, and oil shale deposits.

In bow hunting, being at full draw is the height of adventure, the moment when you're poised to take your best shot. Hunting enthusiasts and popular Discovery Channel personalities David and Karin Holder believe you can live the same way you hunt - at full draw, excited, and ready for whatever God has in store for you.

Learn how to call for owls, walk like a fox and expand your sensory perceptions. Wild Nights Out is a wonderful new hands-on guide for those who wish to take kids (of all ages) outdoors for fun, thrilling nighttime nature adventures.

In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas. Nearly a century later, the book Laurie Lee wrote - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain - the landscapes and the spirit - and with Laurie's style of travel. Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway.

Tourists visit popular islands of the Caribbean by the planeload. What they don't see from their resort hotels are the hundreds of out-of-the-way, uninhabited islands sprinkled along the West Indies, from Florida to South America. This alluring archipelago, strung with beaches accessible only by boat but spaced temptingly close together, led Mississippi adventurer Scott B. Williams to embark upon an open-ended quest to see how far south he could go in a 17-foot sea kayak.

In the late 1990s, John Pollack was working as a Washington speechwriter when, frustrated by the cynicism and hypocrisy on Capitol Hill, he quit his job to pursue a boyhood dream: to build a boat made entirely of wine corks and take it on an epic journey. Cork Boat tells the story of Pollack's improbable quest. Overcoming one obstacle after another, he convinces skeptical bartenders to save their corks, corrals a brilliant but disorganized partner, and eventually cajoles more than one hundred volunteers who help build the boat until their fingers bleed.

Jeff Alt takes you along every step of his 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail adventure. This entertaining journey includes bears, bugs, blisters, captivating characters, skunk bedmates, and hilarious food cravings. Alt walked more than five million steps in tribute to his brother, who has cerebral palsy and lives in a home called Sunshine. This trail adventure has inspired an annual event that has raised more than $200,000 for Sunshine. It includes hiking tips for the whole family.