Travel Memoir

When you dive into Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad, you have to be ready to learn more about the unadorned, ungilded reality of 19th-century “touring” than you might think you want to learn. This is a tough literary journey. It was tough for Twain and his fellow “pilgrims”, both religious and otherwise. They set out, on a June day in 1867, to visit major tourist sites in Europe and the near east, including Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, “the Holy Land”, and Egypt. What Twain records are the day-to-day ups and downs of discovering the truth about people and places.

This is the diary of Claire Bullimore, a person who was diagnosed at the age of 25 with a life threatening intraventricular meningioma - in other words, a brain tumor the size of a grapefruit! It is not always easy for a person from the outside to see what is really happening to someone affected by a traumatic experience such as this. The book shows the true emotion of a person dealing with the hardships of a brain tumor, surgery, recovery, and then the scars inside and out.

An Oxford-educated scholar of the Middle East and a former foreign correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, Hugh Pope lived and worked in two dozen countries throughout the region. Following in the footsteps of Sir Richard Burton and Lawrence of Arabia, Hugh Pope's explorations of the people, politics, religion, and culture of Islamic nations shows there is no such thing as a monolithic "Muslim World".

From the authors of the number-one best-selling The Sea Hunters comes more unforgettable true adventures with famous shipwrecks.

Curious about the modern love affair with criminal personalities, investigative reporter Conor Woodman spent four years exploring the hidden depths of dynamic cities across the globe. Sharks takes us on a journey through the lawless backstreets of cities as diverse as Mumbai, Bogotá, New Orleans, Barcelona and London. In each he uncovers the people and the scams that keep the global black economy moving.

Canoeing the Congo narrates the journey of Phil Harwood, who undertook an epic five-month solo attempt to canoe the Congo River in war-torn Central Africa. It was a historic 'first descent' from the true source in the highlands of Zambia. Just short of 3,000 miles long, the Congo River is the eighth longest in the world and the deepest river in the world, with a flow rate second only to the Amazon. Along the way, Phil encountered numerous waterfalls, huge rapids, man-eating crocodiles, hippos, aggressive snakes...

The ultimate laugh-out-loud, good life, meet the eccentric locals, house-hunting, foodie, travel-tour, fun memoir. There were highs, heartbreaks and cliff-hangers as British-born author Diz White scrambled between the Cotswolds, looking for a bargain cottage, and Hollywood, taking every hilariously wacky acting job to earn the down payment. Her search doubles as a travel tour, taking in every delight of this area.

'I would be most unhappy to think that any part of this memoir should be cut on grounds of 'decency', for those bits are essential....' So begins the lively true story of aristocrat and travel writer Roderic Fenwick Owen. Born in 1921, Fenwick Owen had an extraordinary life, which careered between some of the biggest moments in history and took him to the ends of the earth, meeting (and even living with) some of the 20th century's most well-known people along the way, including Eisenhower, Jackson Pollock, Christopher Lee and Sean Connery.

Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.

The plan is simple. George and Ben have three weeks to cycle 1000 miles from the bottom of England to the top of Scotland. There's just one small problem - they have no bikes, no clothes, no food, and no money. Setting off in just a pair of Union Jack boxer shorts, they attempt to rely on the generosity of the British public for everything from food to accommodation, clothes to shoes, and bikes to beer.

Sean Mallen was ecstatic when he unexpectedly got the chance he’d always craved: to be a London-based foreign correspondent. Except: his tearful wife and six-year-old daughter hated the idea of uprooting their lives and moving to another country. Falling for London is the hilarious and touching story of how he convinced them to go, how they learned to live in and love that wondrous but challenging city, and how his dream came true in ways he could have never expected.

When American writer Stephanie Saldana finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus Road, the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, she is a new wife trying to navigate a fragile terrain, both within her marriage and throughout the country in which she has chosen to live. Pregnant with her first child, Stephanie struggles to protect her family, their faith, and herself from the cracks of Middle Eastern conflict that threaten to shatter the world around her.

In 1975, seven-year-old Doina Cornell left England with her father Jimmy Cornell, mother and brother to spend the next six years sailing around the world on a small yacht. The author has drawn on her memories, diaries and stories, to re-create the perfect life led by a sailing child: swimming, diving and playing the days away in deserted anchorages; visiting some of the most beautiful islands in the world; falling in love with the sea in all its ever-changing moods, from balmy trade wind ocean passages to the treacherous breakers that crash onto tropical reefs.

Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with motor neurone disease, also known as ALS, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand. Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: 50 things he wanted Royd to do after his death.

Faced with buying a car and getting a real job - or taking the money and blowing it on a six-month adventure around Asia...well, there really is no contest! Who wouldn't want to visit exotic places, like Borneo, Cambodia, and China? Who wouldn't want to tackle the world's most dangerous hiking path, tangle with the Vietnamese Mafia, and suffer days in the dreaded Mongolian saddle? And who wouldn't want to try five-organ soup? All he has to do is survive long enough to realize his dreams.

Standing above the dramatic arches underpinning the Basilica of Assisi and carried away by the beauty of the moment, Joan and Roger were determined to move to Italy. It took time, effort, grit, money, heavy doses of humor, and even stronger servings of Italian pazienza; but in the end, move they did. Launching a new career hosting vacationers, they persevered, renovating Le Vigne; an old farmhouse. This is their story of good fortune, at times matched in equal measure with frustration.

Written with humor and personality, this debut memoir recounts a woman’s spiritual quest of experiencing thirty religions before her thirtieth birthday. Post-Traumatic Church Syndrome is for questioners, doubters, misfits, and seekers of all faiths, and tackles the universal struggle to heal...

Ever wonder what it would be like to hike 2,174 miles from Georgia to Maine along the world’s longest continuously marked footpath? Join Marathon as he provides a humorous autobiographical account of a “real” walk in the woods. Anyone who enjoys travel or adventure will love Marathon’s story. This audiobook is required for any outdoor enthusiast and will certainly assist anyone wanting to plan an Appalachian Trail (AT) section or thru-hike. Live vicariously through this entertaining account, which is narrated by the author.

Mit Anfang 20 hat Josua alles, was er sich immer erträumt hat: Familie, Freunde und ein erfolgreiches Start-up. Doch als seine Freundin nach Thailand auswandert, kommen ihm Zweifel. Ist das Leben, das er sich aufgebaut hat, wirklich das, was er will? Kurzerhand beschließt er, seiner Liebe nachzureisen. Er verkauft alles, was er hat, und macht sich auf den Weg – ganz ohne Flugzeug. Zu Fuß, per Anhalter und mit Bus und Bahn legt er über ein Jahr Kilometer um Kilometer zurück.

Douglas Mawson, born in 1882 and knighted in 1914, was Australia’s greatest Antarctic explorer. On 2 December 1911, he led an expedition from Hobart to explore the virgin frozen coastline below, 2000 miles of which had never felt the tread of a human foot. After setting up Main Base at Cape Denision and Western Base on Queen Mary Land, he headed east on an extraordinary sledging trek with his companions, Belgrave Ninnis and Dr Xavier Mertz. After tragedy struck, Mawson found himself all alone, 160 miles from safety, with next to no food.