Travel Writing Memoirs

Early one May, Sam Neumann arrived in the breathtaking wilderness of Denali, Alaska with a smile on his face and adventure in his heart. But less than 24 hours later, both had evaporated as he stood behind the counter of a filthy gas station - his new place of employment - and tried to piece together what exactly had gone wrong.

Hailing from the beautiful island of Barbados, where I was a primary school teacher, I emigrated to the USA as a young boy where I quickly changed careers and joined the banking industry where I worked for Chase Bank for several years. My last job before retirement was as a quality assurance analyst for Mastercard in St. Louis, Missouri.

The true story of the faith and travel of two missionaries through 25 years of marriage. Listen and learn how they navigated through some of the challenges in their lives. Find out some of the sacrifices they had to make to accomplish their goals and aspirations. Laugh along with them as they take you on a journey of learning how to cope with different cultures, adjust to other languages, and experience various types of food.

What’s it like to be a park ranger? What happens when you get bucked off a horse, dangled from a cliff, bitten by bloodthirsty horseflies, or fall smack-flat onto your butt while leading a group of people down a trail? These hilarious and eye-popping adventures will capture your imagination and carry you right into the experience of what it's like to be an outdoor adventurer, camper, and park ranger. With vivid descriptions of our beautiful state and national parks, children and adults alike will laugh out loud listening to these comical short stories.

Why a unicycle? Why a cross-country trip? Why leave a prominent New York magazine and return to the simple life in Kentucky? Reminiscent of classic literary travelogues, Mark Schimmoeller's Slowspoke: A Unicyclist's Guide to America takes listeners on an inward, emotional journey as he inches across landscapes and communities from North Carolina to Arizona. Schimmoeller became inspired by his unicycle as an adolescent.

As a young woman, Kate Betts nursed a dream of striking out on her own in a faraway place and becoming a glamorous foreign correspondent. After college—and not without trepidation—she took off for Paris, renting a room in the apartment of a young BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) family and throwing herself into the local culture. She was determined to master French slang, style, and savoir faire, and to find a job that would give her a reason to stay.

Losing her TV news career and her home in the same year wasn’t on Casey Roman’s 2018 Bingo card. Neither was sleeping in Walmart parking lots and nearly deciding to end her own life. But the world is full of blind curves, and salvation comes in unusual forms, like a cargo van. What began as a three-week road trip to erase her “news lady” image became a 12,000-mile solo journey that saved Casey’s life.

If you are thinking about a healthy, life-changing, totally immersive, climate-friendly, adventurous voyage, listen to our story: Tales of the oceans, sharing life with indigenous people in remote locations, alternating solitude with deep and joyous relationships, confronting danger, storms, and shipwreck. We survive to tell the story, in a gentle, easy-to-listen to, style.

An eclectic mix of exciting stories every surfer will love. This eclectic mix has something for everyone, from classic tales of monster waves and epic battles to stories of when life among the breakers goes wrong. There are accounts of death and disaster, as well as bravery and triumph. The bizarre and the extreme rub shoulders with perfect breaks and beautiful beaches. Be thrilled by legendary surfers like Laird Hamilton and Shane Dorian as well as learning about local heroes who never made the headlines.

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".

Shane K. Bernard's Teche examines this legendary waterway of the American deep south. Bernard delves into the bayou's geologic formation as a vestige of the Mississippi and Red Rivers, its prehistoric Native American occupation, and its colonial settlement by French, Spanish, and eventually, Anglo-American pioneers. He surveys the coming of indigo, cotton, and sugar; steam-powered sugar mills, and riverboats; and the brutal institution of slavery. He also examines the impact of the Civil War on the Teche.

Does the geographic cure actually work? Through a fast-paced journey of saying yes to the unfamiliar, pack your bags and set out into the world with a gay Jew determined to answer that universal question of Seriously...What Am I Doing Here?

The listener travels through time and space to when Aly has little-to-no money, works in tourism, learns how to garden, lives on a commune, dumpster dives, discovers herbal medicine, and falls for all the wrong men and women. In her heartfelt travel memoir, Unpacked, Aly Coy goes into raw detail about her sexually charged, sometimes hilarious, sometimes disturbing, life abroad.

A chronicle of life on the resplendent island. Adele Barker and her son, Noah, settled into the central highlands of Sri Lanka for an 18-month sojourn, immersing themselves in the customs, cultures, and landscapes of the island: its elephants, birds, and monkeys; its hot curries and sweet mangoes; the cacophony of its markets; the resonant evening chants from its temples. When, having returned home to Tucson, Barker awakes on December 26, 2004, to see televised images of the island's southern shore disappearing into the ocean, she decides she must go back.

For more than half a century, a shared love of canals and narrowboats has been inseparable from the marriage of Timothy West and Prunella Scales. The two iconic actors have spent many of the happiest days of their life together enjoying the calming pleasures of watching land and nature unfold before them at four miles an hour.

Following his hilarious introduction to Paris in French Like Moi, Midwesterner Scott Dominic Carpenter returns to the scene of the crime with more tales of intrigue. This time, though, the story starts with sorrow as Carpenter's wife struggles with dementia. Humor may be the best medicine, but even the antics of a vandal in their building can’t cement the tiles of her memory for long. Before he expects it, the author finds himself alone in a capital that is also blighted by the pandemic.

Jean McNeil spent a year as writer-in-residence with the British Antarctic Survey, and four months on the world’s most enigmatic continent. Ice Diaries is the story of McNeil’s years spent in ice, not only in the Antarctic but her subsequent travels to Greenland, Iceland, and Svalbard, culminating in a strange event in Cape Town, South Africa, where she journeyed to make what was to be her final trip to the southernmost continent. In the spirit of the diaries of Antarctic explorers, McNeil mixes travelogue, popular science, and memoir to examine the history of our fascination with ice.

In the 1970s, Madeleine Blais's in-laws purchased a vacation house on Martha's Vineyard for the exorbitant sum of $80,000. Two-point-two miles down a poorly marked, one lane dirt road, the house was better termed a shack - it had no electricity, no modern plumbing, the roof leaked, and mice had invaded the walls. It was perfect. Sitting on Tisbury Great Pond - well-stocked with oysters and crab for foraged dinners - the house faced the ocean and the sky, and though it was eventually replaced by a sturdier structure, the ethos remained the same.

Jennifer Coburn has always been terrified of dying young. So she decides to save up and drop everything to travel with her daughter, Katie, on a whirlwind European adventure before it's too late. Even though her husband can't join them, even though she's nervous about the journey, and even though she's perfectly healthy, Jennifer is determined to jam her daughter's mental photo album with memories - just in case.

In 1976, after graduating from Harvard College, Mike Jacker embarked on a year-long voyage aboard Rhiannon with two friends named Louis and Clark. The three Midwestern boys had never experienced ocean sailing. Mike's captivating narrative takes you along on his remarkable adventures at sea and on land.