Now in a world forever changed, a place where magic is real, and monsters have come to life. A place where magic and science blend with pop culture

    ‘Flying the Knife Edge’ is the story of an ordinary man experiencing extraordinary things as a pilot in Papua New Guinea in the 1990s. After an untimely exit from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, New Zealander Matt McLaughlin took a leap into the unknown, travelling to Papua New Guinea to work as a missionary pilot. He soon switched from missionary to mercenary, and over the next three and a half years, as he built up the necessary experience to chase his goal of becoming an airline captain, his life was a rollercoaster ride of adventure, risk, near-misses, and tragedy. Matt lived on the knife edge of bush pilot ops in one of the world’s most dangerous flying environments. Along the way he soaked up some fascinating local history: the country's vital role in WWII’s Pacific Theatre; the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart; the chaos of the Bougainville civil war; the Morobe gold rush of the 1930s... “The gap in the cloud became smaller and smaller as I descended, a shrinking tunnel twisting down the gorge. In a matter of seconds I was so low my wheels barely cleared the trees on the valley floor as I passed, and jungle-clad walls closed in on me until I was a mere wingspan from both sides of the valley. And then, in an instant, the gap was gone and I was flying blind. In cloud. In the bottom of a gorge. With terrain on both sides rising thousands of feet above me. Time stopped. The passengers started screaming, anticipating the aircraft impacting the side of the mountain. And their deaths. I had the capacity for just one other thought: Will I hear the sound of the airframe smashing into the trees as we crash, or will I be dead before it registers?”

    This book is a powerful and enriching synthesis of the 12-Step recovery programs and the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. It is sure to appeal to anyone touched by addiction, including those looking for new ways to understand and work with the tried-and-true 12-Step system. Tens of millions of Americans suffer from alcoholism and other forms of dependence, and 12 Steps on Buddha's Path offers hope and help for any one of them.Though writing anonymously out of deep respect for 12-Step policies, the author is in fact a well-known professional author, deeply involved in the recovery and meditation communities.

    Parched, tinder-dry fields. There are alien invasions, military maneuvers and toxic waste, and all before the Wood family even start their Alpine caravan adventure. Why? Because it is fun. It is holidays. Travelling in a Box is about a family and their passion for all things camping and caravanning. As they embark upon a pan-European adventure with their thirty-year-old caravan in tow, will their unbreakable tolerance for ‘fun’ be pushed to new limits?

    

    I was in no real rush to get back home immediately and I fancied a bit of a stroll anyway. This stroll took me over a month to complete, and as the chilly autumn became a very cold winter I realised that living the life of a hobo wasn't as easy as one may think. The only only items on my person that kept me going through the seven weeks or so was a hot water bottle, a single calor gas stove and my radio. But there were times when even those life savers ran out of their respective fuels, and soon depression, hunger and eventual thieving, took priority for my needs.      This is the story of my 250 mile walk home to Birmingham from St. Ives, Cornwall, in the autumn of 1990.

    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.

    He places us on the outcrops, rock hammer in hand, to examine the evidence for how these rough-hewn lands came to be. We see California and its gold assembled from pieces of old ocean floor and the relentless movements of the Earth’s tectonic plates. We witness the birth of the Rockies. And we investigate the violent earthquakes that continue to shape the region today. Into the West’s geologic story, Meldahl also weaves its human history. As we follow the adventures of John C. Frémont, Mark Twain, the Donner party, and other historic characters, we learn how geologic forces have shaped human experience in the past and how they direct the fate of the West today.

    Its history reads like a history of pleasure itself. It is also a story of invasions and migrations, of artists and conmen, of drop-outs and love-ins. The Carthaginians established a cult to their goddess of sex there, and named the island after Bez, their god of dance. Roman centurions in need of a bit of down time between campaigns would go to Ibiza to get their kicks. And over the centuries, cultures around the Med have used the island either as a playground or a dump for the kind of people who didn't quite fit in back home, but who you'd probably quite like to meet at a party...This is the history of Ibiza, the fantasy island, framed by one long, golden summer where anything can happen - and it usually does.

    It led him to begin exploring these questions, prompting a journey westwards to Land's End through one of the most fascinating regions of Europe.From the Neolithic ritual landscape of Bodmin Moor to the Arthurian traditions of Tintagel, from the mysterious china-clay country to the granite tors and tombs of the far south-west, Marsden assembles a chronology of our shifting attitudes to place. In archives, he uncovers the life and work of other 'topophiles' before him - medieval chroniclers and Tudor topographers, eighteenth-century eighteenth-century antiquarians, post-industrial poets and abstract painters. Drawing also on his own travels overseas, Marsden reveals that the shape of the land lies not just at the heart of our history but of man's perennial struggle to belong on this earth.

    Ignoring claims that he was a fool and a dreamer, Clifford pressed on, until he unbelievable found the Whydah...and then the real story begins in a spellbinding story that will capture your imagination.

    For more than a billion people living in India and abroad, Hinduism is the religion and a way of life. In this book Swami Achuthananda cracks open the opium poppy pods, analyzes the causes for euphoria, and comes away with a deeper understanding of the people and their religion.This is a comprehensive book on Hinduism. It tells you why Hindus do the things they do - and don't. Written in a casual style, the book guides you through the fundamentals of the religion. It then goes further and debunks a number of long-standing myths, some of them coming from the academia (of all places). While most books shy away from contentious issues, this book plunges headlong by taking on controversies, like the Aryan Invasion Theory, idol worship, RISA scholarship and many more. In fact one-third of the book is just on controversies that you rarely find in any other literature.

    He stepped into a gap among cedar trees to look for the next portage—and did not return. More than four hours later, Dan awakened with a lump on his head from a fall and stumbled deeper into the woods, confused.  Three years later, Jason Rasmussen, a third-year medical student who loved the forest’s solitude, walked alone into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on a crisp fall day. After a two-day trek into a remote area of the woods, he stepped away from his campsite and made a series of seemingly trivial mistakes that left him separated from his supplies, wet, and lost, as cold darkness fell.  Enduring days without food or shelter, these men faced the full harsh force of wilderness, the place that they had sought out for tranquil refuge from city life. Lost in the Wild takes readers with them as they enter realms of pain, fear, and courage, as they suffer dizzying confusion and unending frustration, and as they overcome seemingly insurmountable hurdles in a race to survive.

    'Europiloode' documents his journeys through Naples, Pompei, Rome, Vatican, Switzerland, Paris etc.

     But when one night over a beer his friend suggests they do just that, he surprisingly agrees. It may have been slightly more than just one beer. In his own hapless style, Stevens recalls their adventure; six days of getting lost, scared, wet, tired and more than occasionally drunk.