True Adventure

When Sammy Shine’s plane takes off unexpectedly, he ends up in a whole new world; no longer does he live in comfort in his shoe box in Hank’s room. Now he’s lost in the woods with no way to get home, while a dangerous enemy lurks. Fortunately, a group of new friends, including a mouse, an injured crow, a newt, and a shrew, will help him find and repair his plane so he can try to get back home.

Most young girls dream of becoming a princess. But unlike most girls, Jerramy Fine never grew out of it. Trapped in a rural Colorado with embarrassing hippie parents, Jerramy spends her childhood writing love letters to Buckingham Palace and studying modern-day princesses throughout the world. Years later, when her sense of destiny finally brings her to London, she dives headfirst into a whirlwind of society parties in search of her royal soulmate. She drinks way too many martinis and kisses far too many Hugh Grant lookalikes, yet life in England is not the fairy tale she hoped for.

Betty Pack was charming, beautiful, and intelligent - and she knew it. As an agent for Britain's MI6 and then America's OSS during World War II, these qualities proved crucial to her success. This is the remarkable story of this "Mata Hari from Minnesota" ( Time) and the passions that ruled her tempestuous life - a life filled with dangerous liaisons and death-defying missions vital to the Allied victory.

For eight centuries, the Texas frontier has seen conquest, exploration, immigration, revolution, and innovation, leaving to history a cast of fascinating characters and captivating tales. Its historic period began in 1519 with Spanish exploration, but there was a prehistory long before, nearly fifteen thousand years earlier, with the arrival of people to Texas. Each story pulls a new perspective from this long history by examining nearly all angles—from archaeology to ethnography, astronomy, agriculture, and more.

Chas Smith grew up deeply enmeshed in the evangelical Christian world that grew out of Southern California in the late 1960s. His family included famous missionaries and megachurch pastors, but his cousin Daniel Courson was Grandma’s favorite. Smith looked up to Cousin Danny. He was handsome, adventurous, and smart, earned a degree from Bible college, and settled into a family and a stable career. Needless to say, it was a big surprise when Cousin Danny started robbing banks.

From Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson to Alive! and Adrift, tales of survival have captivated readers. Here are the most remarkable stories imaginable of maroons, castaways, and other survivors from the 1500s to the present: their moral dilemmas, their personalities, and their influence on society, literature, and art.

As the summer of 1993 begins, Sam and Swami Brecht roll into town with a twenty-six-foot Winnebago camper van, their three young kids, and the deed to Woodchuck Rafting Company. Sam and Swami met as young adventurous river guides but, a decade later, find themselves weighed down by money worries and the demands of adulthood. The town of Thunderwater, in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, could be the fresh start their marriage needs. But Woodchuck, once the property of Sam’s eccentric uncle, has seen better days and will need a serious overhaul if it is going to stand a chance at survival.

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest POW escape in the Second World War – organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944 the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place – 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a...

Elora has been suspended from the council...but it’s only the beginning of her journey. Elf Elora is something of a celebrity in her home city. After being tested as a child, it’s discovered that her magical ability is off the charts - it can’t even be measured. Since working as a paranormal investigator at the royal palace and working on a cure for “half curses”, Elora has been putting her abilities to good use. Until now....

Will Chaffey is 18 when he boards a plane in New York bound for Australia. Taking time off to work and travel, Will meets an enigmatic wanderer and herpetologist. Together they cross the inland desert to the tropical northwest coast, home to the saltwater crocodile, a known man-eater and a predator who has been hunting since the age of the dinosaurs. They devise a plan to explore the remote Prince Regent River, a trek so dangerous it had never been attempted by outsiders.

High on a cliff in Hawaii in 1807, an irrepressibly curious native boy dives into the sea and swims to an American merchant ship anchored offshore, embarking on an extraordinary adventure that will change history.

In April 1861, Wayland Fuller Dunaway left his college classroom and entered the ranks of the men who fought the bloodiest war ever waged on the North American continent. A Captain in the Army of Northern Virginia, he marched hundreds of miles in Stonewall Jackson's command; saw Generals Lee and Longstreet; was among the first soldiers to fight at Gettysburg, where he also participated in Pickett's Charge; and fought against the lines of strangers in blue who, no matter how many times they were defeated, always returned to invade his beloved Virginia.

In 1690, a dramatic account of piracy was published in Mexico City. The Misfortunes of Alonso Ramírez described the incredible adventures of a poor Spanish-American carpenter who was taken captive by British pirates near the Philippines and forced to work for them for two years. After circumnavigating the world, he was freed and managed to return to Mexico, where the Spanish viceroy commissioned the well-known Mexican scholar Carlos de Sigüenza y Góngora to write down Ramírez's account as part of an imperial propaganda campaign against pirates.

Fashion is a business of smoke and mirrors, notorious for crushing the souls of most who dare to be part of the industry. Go on a global expedition with New York City-based fashion buyer, strategist, and consultant, Mercedes Gonzalez, as she learns that there is no glamour in fashion and that only cutthroat corporate espionage prevails. From politicking with blood diamond dealers and Russian kingpins to living in indigenous villages, she has relied on her street smarts and fear of her uncle in order to outwit the industry tyrants at their own game.

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.

Lidie is hard to scare. She is almost shockingly alive - a tall, plain girl who rides and shoots and speaks her mind, and whose straightforward ways paradoxically amount to a kind of glamour. We see her at 20, making a good marriage - to Thomas Newton, a steady, sweet-tempered Yankee who passes through her hometown on a dangerous mission. He belongs to a group of rashly brave New England abolitionists who dedicate themselves to settling the Kansas Territory with like-minded folk to ensure its entering the Union as a Free State.

Olivia Hunt's Hollywood life has come to a grinding halt. A hotshot producer accustomed to first-class amenities, Olivia has just been unceremoniously fired after her last movie tanked. Her boyfriend, Michael, has dumped her. And she's not the blonde she used to be: dark roots are coming in at an alarming rate. Her next project is a well-crafted suicide note.

In The Beer's Folded and the Laundry's Cold: Mostly True Adventures in Housewifery, Paige Kellerman follows up her hilarious debut - At Least My Belly Hides My Cankles - with the natural next step-taking on budgeting, babies, and trying to keep the day drinking down to a minimum while staying at home.

Lots of strange things are going on at Starling Academy, and some of the girls are suspicious. As they begin investigating, they wonder if there’s any connection between Scarlet getting kicked out of the Star Darlings and Leona’s troubled mission. When Vega gets sent to Wishworld, she is determined to solve the puzzle fast, but her Wisher is incredibly secretive. Scarlet watches from the sidelines as Ophelia, who is hopelessly unprepared, is chosen to go on a mission.

Some people are meant to travel the globe, to unwrap its secrets, and share them with the world. And some people have no sense of direction, are terrified of pigeons, and get motion sickness from tying their shoes. These people are meant to stay home and eat nachos. Geraldine DeRuiter is the latter. But she won't let that stop her. Hilarious, irreverent, and heartfelt, All over the Place chronicles the years Geraldine spent traveling the world after getting laid off from a job she loved.