Showing titles in Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

'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. 

She was 17 years old on a Christmas Eve flight 40 years ago to join her father for Christmas when the unimaginable happened. The Lockheed L-188A Electra, on the way from Lima to Pucallpa, flew directly into a thunderstorm. A strike of lightning left the plane incinerated and Juliane Diller (Koepcke) still strapped to her plane seat falling through the night air two miles above the Earth. Her survival is unexplainable and considered a modern-day miracle. Her mother was among the 91 dead and Juliane the sole survivor.

When Dr. Sanjay Gupta travels the world for CNN to report on natural disasters, conflicts, and catastrophes, he illuminates the stories of the affected and the afflicted. But a few times in his career, while reporting abroad, he’s been asked to don his surgeon’s cap and gloves to intervene in high-stakes medical emergencies. Far from his controlled and highly regulated operating rooms, Gupta found himself trying to save lives in the most makeshift and trying conditions.

Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belong. What she discovers is vastly different. The Kingdom is a world apart, a land of unparalleled contrast. She finds rejection and scorn in the places she believed would most embrace her.

Tom Crean was the farmer’s son from Kerry who sailed on three major expeditions to the unknown Antarctic over a century ago. He served with both Captain Robert Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton, spent longer on the ice than either and outlived them both. But Tom Crean returned to Ireland and never spoke about his exploits, taking his incredible story to the grave - until the publication of An Unsung Hero, which unearthed his story and saw him rightfully placed amongst the annals of the great explorers.

Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to only a handful of people, is a harsh and lonely place. So when James Campbell's cousin Heimo Korth asked him to spend a summer building a cabin in the rugged Interior, Campbell hesitated about inviting his 15-year-old daughter, Aidan, to join him. Would she be able to withstand clouds of mosquitoes, the threat of grizzlies, bathing in an ice-cold river, and hours of grueling labor peeling and hauling logs? But once there, Aidan embraced the wild.

When foster carer, Cathy Glass, is asked to foster Darcy-May, a two-day old baby, she is very concerned. The baby is coming to her straight from hospital and will have no contact with her teenage mother, Haylea. Even more worrying, she will be brought to Cathy with a police escort as it’s...

She has to be OK, I pleaded silently to myself. She has to be. ‘We’ve alerted the RNLI and they’re sending a lifeboat out.’ ‘The RNLI?’ I said, surprised. ‘They do that?’ Saved from the Waves is a heart-warming collection of first-hand accounts from RNLI volunteers of the myriad...

Der Tibetkenner Heinrich Harrer lebte als einziger Europäer am tibetanischen Königshof und wurde zum engem Vertrauten des Dalai Lama. Übersetzungen in mehr als vierzig Sprachen und Auflagen in Millionenhöhe ließen seine Erinnerungen zu einem Weltbestseller werden. Fünfzig Jahre nach der spektakulären Flucht Heinrich Harrers über den Hinmalaja nach Tibet kam das Abenteuer des Jahrhunderts in der Verfilmung von Jean-Jacques Annaud mit Brad Pitt in der Hauptrolle in die Kinos.

Die 27-jährige Sozialarbeiterin Sarah Kokot aus dem Leipziger Land hat es ausprobiert: allein, in 300 Tagen, über 7 Kontinente. Sie ahnte das Abenteuer, aber nicht, dass es sie so verändern würde. Sarah arbeitete in einem Kinderschutzprojekt in Südafrika, sie zeltete ohne Zaun in der afrikanischen Wildnis, kletterte auf über 5000 Meter hohe Berge im Himalaya und aß Insekten in Kambodscha. Dabei stellte sie fest, dass es sich mit leichtem Gepäck am besten reist und dass sie letztendlich das Wenige braucht, um näher zu sich selbst zu kommen.

September 1, 1985. The RMS Titanic, which has been missing since April 15, 1912, is found in the North Atlantic where it lies at a depth of 3,821 metres. Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a commander in the French Navy, directed underwater research of part of many expeditions to the wreck, from 1987 until...

My eyes lifted to the horizon and the unmistakable snowy outline of Everest. Everest, the mountain of my childhood dreams. A mountain that has haunted me my whole life. A mountain I have seen hundreds of times in photographs and films but never in real life. In April 2018, seasoned adventurer...

From bestselling author and teacher Mary Maccracken comes the engaging and inspiring story of five troubled children who she fought to bring back from the brink Joey is the class clown, but alone proves to be an intensely dark seven-year old who still can’t read. Eric is a kindergartener, left...

A classic of travel writing, ‘A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush’ is Eric Newby’s iconic account of his journey through one of the most remote and beautiful wildernesses on earth. It was 1956, and Eric Newby was earning an improbable living in the chaotic family business of London haute...

Pourquoi Christopher McDougall a-t-il mal aux pieds quand il court ? Pour répondre à cette entêtante question, l'auteur – journaliste et coureur de longues distances – part à la recherche d'une tribu légendaire et d'un mystérieux Caballo blanco, dans les replis inaccessibles des Copper Canyons, au Mexique. Sous la menace de narcotrafiquants, au cœur de reliefs vertigineux où se blottissent des villages invisibles, l'auteur va rencontrer la tribu des Tarahumaras, et surtout découvrir un mode de vie qui révolutionnera le monde de la course à pied.

The story begins in a public square in New Delhi. On a cold December evening a young European woman of noble descent appears before an Indian street artist known locally as PK and asks him to paint her portrait - it is an encounter that will change their lives irrevocably.

ഭാരതത്തിന്റെ തന്നെ ഏറെ പ്രശസ്തവും ആദരണീയവുമായ പരീക്ഷകളിൽ ഒന്നായ UPSC പരീക്ഷയെ സ്വന്തം നിശ്ചയദാർഡ്യവും...

Matta charts his course through neglect and emotional hardship in this emotive-reflective micro-memoir, interlaced with evocative poetry. His premature birth triggered latent cancer in his mother, leaving him under the stern care of his faith-bound grandmother. His childhood, thus, becomes an icy saga of dread and isolation. Haunted by survivor’s guilt and unjust blame, Antonio’s tale of silent suffering and self-inflicted harm sheds light on the invisible wounds many bear. Yet, amidst this torment, Born Premature, Loved Overdue emerges as a beacon of human resilience.

This is the gripping, urgent and moving diary of young Ukrainian refugee Yeva Skalietska. It follows twelve days in Ukraine that changed 12-year-old Yeva's life forever. She was woken in the early hours to the terrifying sounds of shelling. Russia had invaded Ukraine, and her beloved Kharkiv home was no longer the safe haven it should have been. It was while she and her granny were forced to seek shelter in a damp, cramped basement that Yeva decided to write down her story. And it is a story that the world needs to hear.

Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future. Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world.