Women Explorers

Reporter Diana Marcum is in crisis. A long-buried personal sadness is enfolding her - and her career is stalled - when she stumbles upon an unusual group of immigrants living in rural California. She follows them on their annual return to the remote Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where bulls run down village streets, volcanoes are active, and the people celebrate festas to ease their saudade, a longing so deep that the Portuguese word for it can’t be fully translated.

Read by Hattie Morahan, with an author's note read by Kate Mosse. 'Mosse is a master storyteller' – Madeleine Miller, bestselling author of Circe A sweeping story of love, adventure and adversity, The Map of Bones by Kate Mosse is an epic tale of courageous women battling to survive in a...

At the age of 19, Lara Prior-Palmer discovered a website devoted to "the world's longest, toughest horse race" - an annual competition of endurance and skill that involves dozens of riders racing a series of 25 wild ponies across 1,000 kilometers of Mongolian grassland. On a whim, she decided to enter the race. Riders often spend years preparing to compete in the Mongol Derby, and many fail to finish. Rough Magic captures the extraordinary story of one young woman who forged ahead, against all odds, to become the first female winner of this breathtaking race.

The image we have of Amelia Earhart today - a tousle-haired, androgynous flier clad in shirt, silk scarf, leather jacket, and goggles - is only one of her many personas, most of which have been lost to us through the years. Through years of research and interviews with many of the surviving people who knew Amelia, Susan Butler has recreated a remarkably vivid and multifaceted portrait of this enigmatic figure.

This is an incredible story of adventure, human ingenuity, persistence, and resilience that shows firsthand what it is to adventure as a woman in the most dangerous of circumstance, what it is to be truly alone in the wild, and why someone would challenge themselves with an expedition others would call crazy. For Marquis, her story is about freedom, being alive and wild by nature.

In 2019, Landen Hoffmann was thrown from the third-floor balcony of the largest mall in America—a 39-foot drop onto a concrete foundation. Medical professionals who happened to be at that exact place at that exact time found Landen lifeless—no breathing and no pulse. However Landen’s mother, Kari Hoffmann, immediately began praying and pleading for everyone in the mall to pray for her son.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the groundbreaking backstairs look at the White House, The Residence, comes an intimate, news-making look at the true modern power brokers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the First Ladies, from Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama. One of the most...

Conquering Kilimanjaro embodies making a life-changing decision of saying yes to accomplish an insurmountable feat to most. After spending years desiring to climb, Jodi made her way across the Atlantic to ascend the majestic roof of Africa.

The average person can keep a secret for forty-seven hours. Babs Walters held the worst kind of secret for nearly 70 years. Beginning at the age of 11, Babs suffered childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her father. His edict, “Children should be seen and not heard,” defined her childhood and groomed her to silence. Desperate to be loved and seeking approval, the good little girl absorbed both the responsibility and the shame that was not hers to begin with.

From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galapagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these 14 delightful, award-winning true tales will inspire listeners to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked.

Experience Alexandra David-Neel's captivating and inspirational journey to become the first Western woman to reach the Tibetan holy city of Lhasa and be received by the Dalai Lama. Enduring backbreaking travel, threatening militaries, disease, and countless other dangers, David-Neel's journey is an epic demonstration of perseverance and courage.

Two stories about William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army; two stories about amazing women aviators; and two true-to-life adventures!

Leslie White knew she wanted more out of life - She found it in an unlikely place. Devastated from the loss of both parents to cancer nine months apart, Leslie vowed to change her life. She bought the neighbor’s old motorhome, found a job as a traveling histologist, and hit the road. But she found she could not trust the one person she was still holding onto.

The New York Times best-selling author of Jumanji and The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg has garnered the National Book Award, multiple Caldecott Medals, and the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. Queen of the Falls highlights the death-defying attempt of 62-year-old former charm school teacher Annie Edson Taylor to be the first woman to survive the perilous plunge over Niagara Falls.

When Kathy decides to leave her abusive marriage, she is 59 years old. She’s unprepared to live on a reduced income when her estranged husband hides his assets from the court. She’s shocked by the cost of rentals in Southern California. She didn’t realize how impossible it would be to land a job at her age and after being out of the market for two decades while she raised her kids. She hasn’t anticipated that her nearly grown children would be mad at her for finally standing up for herself.

Em 2021, em plena pandemia, a navegadora Tamara Klink partiu da França com o objetivo de chegar até a costa brasileira pelo mar. Nessa empreitada ambiciosa, contou apenas com a companhia permanente de seu caderno e do barco, Sardinha. À distância, teve o apoio (e também a preocupação) constante da família, dos amigos, de Henrique — conselheiro de primeira hora —, e dos admiradores nas redes sociais, que seguiram a viagem praticamente em tempo real.

A fearless and funny memoir about love, loss, adventure, and the photographs we take to remember who we are. The Love Offensive travels from a Massachusetts childhood to wanderlust-fueled trips across the world — and into the heart of what it means to lose and find yourself again. Through humor, grief, friendship, family, and art, Tara tells a story about the things that break us, the things that save us, and the extraordinary ways we learn to keep going.

Trial and tribulation are nothing new to Vera Simpson Gaines. When her mother sickened and died when Vera was a young girl, the effects were devastating, yet she managed to come through with her sanity intact and a strong sense of determination which served her well in later years as she faced more difficulties. Firmly rooted in her faith and the belief that God does not give you more than you can handle, in the intervening years she has faced estrangement from her father and other family members, an often rocky marriage, and scores of health problems that would have felled a lesser woman.

For swimming champion Nancy Stearns Bercaw, the pool was a natural habitat. But on land, she could never shake the feeling of being a fish out of water. Starting at age two, Nancy devoted her life to swimming, even qualifying for the 1988 Olympic Trials in the fifty-meter freestyle event. But nearly two decades later, when she hung up her cap and goggles, she was confronted with a different kind of challenge: learning who she was out of the lanes.

Situated in the early decades of the magnificent Mughal Empire, this first ever biography of Princess Gulbadan offers an enthralling portrait of a charismatic adventurer and unique pictures of the multicultural society in which she lived. Following a migratory childhood that spanned Kabul and north India, Gulbadan spent her middle years in a walled harem established by her nephew Akbar to showcase his authority as the Great Emperor.