A Viking Voyage: In Which an Unlikely Crew of Adventurers Attempts an Epic Journey to the New World


W. Hodding Carter IV - 2000
    This extraordinary book is the account of how he pulled it off. By turns thrilling and slapstick, sublime and outrageous, A Viking Voyage is an unforgettable adventure story that will take you to the heart of some of the most magnificent, unspoiled territory on earth, and even deeper, to the heart of a journey like no other. A celebration of the people and places Carter visits and a treasure-trove of fascinating Viking lore, here is an unforgettable story of friendship and teamwork–and the thrill of accomplishing a goal that once seemed impossible.

The 100-Yard War: Inside the 100-Year-Old Michigan-Ohio State Football Rivalry


Greg Emmanuel - 2004
    It transcends the years, the standings, and all other distractions. And thanks to the countless remarkable football games between Michigan and Ohio State--and hundreds of thousands of devoted alumni and followers--the rivalry is now an enormous cultural event.

Around Madagascar on My Kayak


Riaan Manser - 2010
    For over two years, he padalled a mammoth 37,000kms through 34 countries; some of which rank as the most dangerous places on Earth. It was a feat that earned him the title Adventurer of the Year 2006 and made his resulting book, Around Africa on my Bicycle, a best-seller.In July 2009 Riaan again set another world first when he became the first person to circumnavigate the world's fourth largest island of Madagascar by kayak; another expedition achieved alone and unaided. This incredible journey, 5000km in eleven months, was considerably more demanding, both physically and mentally. Daily, Riaan had to conquer extreme loneliness while ploughing through treacherous conditions such as cyclones, pounding surf and an unrelenting sun that, combined with up to ten hours in salt water, was literally pickling his body. The perseverance, of course, brought memorable close encounters with Madagascar's marine life - humpback whales breaching metres away from his kayak, giant leatherback turtles gliding alongside him and even having his boat rammed by sharks. Riaan travelled around Madagascar during a period of the country's political turmoil, which gave him unrivalled insight into the exotic island's psyche and even earned him two nights in prison on suspicion of carrying out mercenary activities. Around Madagascar in my Kayak is packed with engaging stories and beautiful photographs and is set to become another best-seller.

Boondockbob's Guide to RV Boondocking


Bob Difley - 2015
    I’ve been camping since I was a Boy Scout and RVing for more than 40 years, 17 of those years fulltiming with my wife, Lynn, in our Bounder motorhome. A good portion of the time we spent boondocking – camping off the grid – enjoying the freedom away from crowded campgrounds, exploring America’s wild lands and National Parks, camping along our scenic byways, on the shores of mountain lakes and streams, in the depths of our national and state forests, and in the wide open spaces of the Southwestern deserts. In this ebook I hope to inspire you to take the road-less-traveled and find your own private campsites – and I show you step-by-step how to do it easily and painlessly. Happy Travels.

Unchained: One Woman, One Bike, One Dream... One World


Rubina Soorty - 2019
    She is daunted by busy dangerous roads, wild animals and the possibility of getting lost. And yet in 2013, completely unprepared and unsure if she can make it to London 60 miles away, she sets off around-the-world with her bicycle, Percy, and her mother's ashes.Unchained is a deeply personal travelogue about an around-the-world bicycle tour and the journey within. The story gradually unfolds as she crosses beautiful but unfamiliar lands with a fully loaded bicycle whilst struggling with the recent loss of her mother and her feelings of love.Ruby's journey, that takes her cycling across 5 continents, is a story about the ups and downs of the road, the highs and lows of life, trusts and betrayals, the loving kindness of nameless strangers, and a slow realisation of our deep connection with nature and the oneness of humanity. But above all, it is a tale of love.

The Manaslu Adventure: Three hapless friends try to climb a big mountain


Mark Horrell - 2012
    When they returned the next year, they were met with sticks and stones, stripped naked and sent home with red cheeks.Mark Horrell and his two friends Mark and Ian shared a dream to climb an 8,000m peak, but it seemed the gods were against them too. They had made no fewer than eight attempts without success (though they had managed to return with their clothes on).With towering ice walls, monsoon rainstorms, arm-twisting crevasses and – most dangerous of all – welcoming teahouses ready to entrap them, would it be different this time?

Coles to Jerusalem: A Pilgrimage to the Holy Land with Reverend Richard Coles (Kindle Single)


Kevin Jackson - 2015
    Richard Coles, led a pilgrimage to all the major historic sites of the Holy Land: from Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee in the North, via Jericho and the Jordan River, to Bethlehem and, finally, Jerusalem. All of the pilgrims in his care were practising Christians, except one: the writer Kevin Jackson, a diffident and sympathetic atheist intrigued by the chance to take part in this modern-day version of an ancient act of piety, and to learn some more about his old friend, the media clergyman.Coles to Jerusalem is Kevin Jackson’s light-hearted diary of that pilgrimage, and a close-up portrait of Richard Coles both as priest and as man. As the journey proceeds, Coles reminisces at length about his past life as a rock star and radical gay agitator, his new life as a spiritual leader and a popular broadcaster on BBC radio and television, and the strange, unpredictable path that led him from self-destructive debauchery to faith and vocation.With a lively supporting cast of fellow pilgrims, Coles to Jerusalem ranges among the magnificence of ancient monuments and the banalities of the guided tour, the grim political background of contemporary Israel and the comedy of a group of idiosyncratic English folk abroad, the intensity of worship and the lightness of banter. It will be irresistible to all admirers of Richard Coles, who has contributed a foreword; and a revelation to those who have never encountered his wisdom and warmth.

Riding in the Zone Rouge: The Tour of the Battlefields 1919 – Cycling's Toughest-Ever Stage Race


Tom Isitt - 2019
    It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again.With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its extraordinary story is largely forgotten. Many of the riders came to the event straight from the army and had to ride 18-hour stages through sleet and snow across the battlefields on which they had fought, and lost friends and family, only a few months before. But in addition to the hellish conditions there were moments of high comedy, even farce.The rediscovered story of the Circuit des Champs de Bataille is an epic tale of human endurance, suffering and triumph over extreme adversity.

The Alaska Cruise Handbook: A Mile-by-Mile Guide


Joe Upton - 2005
    With the author's own wonderful Alaska stories and information on wildlife, native culture, landmarks, historical sites, shopping, and more, you won t miss a thing. Upton's Handbook traces the route used by most Alaska cruises, with maps and text keyed to a route numbering/navigational system that is frequently announced onboard, allowing the passenger to easily follow his ship s progress from Mile One. The wonderful illustrated maps and color photography throughout keep you informed throughout your journey, making a wonderful souvenir when it ends.

Anxiety Across the Americas: One Man's 20,000 Mile Motorcycle Journey


Bill Dwyer - 2013
    In his 20,000 mile solo journey he encounters corruption in Mexico, finds himself stranded in the highlands of Bolivia and gets arrested in Nicaragua. The road presents Bill with fears to face, immense kindness of strangers, and huge challenges to overcome, all while he copes with his anxiety disorder. Join Bill as he shares a candid account of his experiences bumbling across the Americas.

Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait


Karen Holliday Tanner - 1998
    Holliday, D. D. S., better known as Doc Holliday, has become a legendary figure in the history of the American West. In Doc Holliday: A Family Portrait, Karen Holliday Tanner reveals the real man behind the legend. Shedding light on Holliday’s early years, in a prominent Georgia family during the Civil War and Reconstruction, she examines the elements that shaped his destiny: his birth defect, the death of his mother and estrangement from his father, and the diagnosis of tuberculosis, which led to his journey west. The influence of Holliday’s genteel upbringing never disappeared, but it was increasingly overshadowed by his emerging western personality. Holliday himself nurtured his image as a frontier gambler and gunman.Using previously undisclosed family documents and reminiscences as well as other primary sources, Tanner documents the true story of Doc’s friendship with the Earp brothers and his run-ins with the law, including the climactic shootout at the O. K. Corral and its aftermath.This first authoritative biography of Doc Holliday should appeal both to historians of the West and to general readers who are interested in his poignant story.

Thinking Up a Hurricane


Martinique Stilwell - 2012
    An electrician by trade, Frank’s experience of sailing amounted to not very much – an unpleasant spell on a Scottish fishing trawler as a young man and a brief holiday on someone else’s yacht off the coast of Mozambique a couple of years before. Never one to be daunted by a challenge or to be resisted in any way, he took his nine year old twins, Robert and Nicky, out of school, persuaded his wife Maureen that they would all learn how to sail and cope with life on the open seas as they went, and prepared to follow his dream of circumnavigating the world. Facing real danger from the elements and at first having to live more by their wits than their skills, the Stilwell family set off boldly, determined to become part of a community of sailors and adventurers who spend more time on the ocean than they do on dry land. Thinking Up a Hurricane is the unique coming of age memoir of Martinique Stilwell’s recounting of her true life gypsy childhood. It is poignant and funny and heartbreaking all at the same time. With the wisdom and innocence of a child’s point of view, it is a powerful yet tender story of physical and emotional adversity, of family dysfunction and the ties that bind, and of the shackles and exhilarating freedom of growing up different.

The Crinkle Crankle Wall: Our First Year in Andalusia


Sabina Ostrowska - 2020
    As soon as they drive across Andalusia, they fall in love with its rugged beauty, whitewashed villages, red geraniums, giant aloes, and endless olive trees. After weeks of visiting ruins and dilapidated sheds advertised as homes, they find a little stone cottage in a mountain valley in the middle of nowhere. Equipped with everything that a romantic soul desires: a patio shaded by grape vines, an ancient bay leaf tree, and a formidable oak in front of a long driveway, they fall in love with this property and decide to reform it into a guest house. With little foresight or planning, they exchange cushy expats lives for a life in the sun.Quite quickly, however, they find themselves battling cowboy builders, no electricity, a dry well, torrential rain storms, and a freezing cold winter without a roof over their heads. Through all these adventures, they develop relations with their neighbours who had lived in the valley for many generations. Puzzled by the strangers’ behaviour, the neighbours teach them about olive picking, and the cultivation of local vegetables. But primarily, they offer their endless generosity and insight into life in rural Andalusia.As they begin to settle in, financial problems confront our somewhat naïve couple. Without steady pay checks and construction bills piling up, their idea of the good life starts to fall apart. Written with a wry sense of honest humour, this story is filled with twists and turns that take the reader on a journey from a life where every day was monotonously repetitive to a place where every day presents a new challenge.

Missing in the Minarets: The Search for Walter A. Starr, Jr.


William Alsup - 2001
    Rigorous and thorough searches by some of the best climbers in the history of the range failed to locate him despite a number of promising clues. When all hope seemed gone and the last search party had left the Minarets, mountaineering legend Norman Clyde refused to give up. Climbing alone, he persevered in the face of failure, resolved that he would learn the fate of the lost man. Clyde’s discovery and the events that followed make for compelling reading. Recently reissued with a new afterword, this re-creation of a famous episode in the annals of the Sierra Nevada is mountaineering literature at its best.

North To Alaska: The True Story of An epic, 16,000-mile cycle journey the length of the Americas


Trevor Lund - 2019
     Returning home to a job I didn’t enjoy, that dream burned at my mind until, as a mature student in 1999, I was given the opportunity to take a year out and decided now was my time. This was at a time of huge advances in communication technology but I chose to journey without a mobile phone or any other means of communicating with the outside world – something we might struggle to comprehend these days. If I got into trouble, if I got injured, if I became lost, it was up to me to sort myself out. No close friends were willing to leave the comforts of home, so the fledgling internet did at least prove useful in finding a travel companion. But within nine days of the start of my journey I found myself alone, close to the bottom of the world and with many thousands of miles of the unknown still ahead. This book tells how the desire to fulfil a burning ten-year dream helped me overcome illness, injury, exhaustion, loneliness and so much more; how I, a normal guy from a working-class family in Leeds – among many other adventures – found myself singing to bears to keep them at bay, ran out of water crossing the driest desert in the world, had a volcano rain ash down on me and found myself hiding out from bandits most nights while pedalling through Mexico.