Her first bike was stolen in Bulgaria, she was knocked down by a buffalo cart in India and battled with a parasitic illness in Malaysia. These were some of the challenges she had to deal with, but above all, what stood out for Ann was the depth of human kindness she experienced throughout her travels.

    with a catch When Sophie’s uncle leaves her a castle in the Italian Riviera in his will, she can’t believe her luck. The catch? She and her estranged sister, Rachel, must live there together for three months in order to inherit it. Having worked in Rome for four years, Sophie’s excited to revisit to Italy, even if it reignites memories of a cheating ex who soon learns of her return and wants to rekindle their spark. Sophie realises that distance does indeed make the heart grow fonder – but for her friend back home, Chris, who she discovers is more to her than just a friend.With the clock ticking, can Sophie and Rachel stick it out and heal old wounds, or are the sisters destined to go their own way at the end of the three months? And does Chris feel the same way about Sophie as she does for him?A beautiful story of romance and sisterhood, perfect for fans of Alex Brown and Lucy Coleman.

    Caught in the inescapable hurricane of life,the protagonist decides to snap out of the everyday mendacity and go on a 4000 km motorbike journey across Ladakh. Little does he know whether he can complete this arduous and uncertain journey and finds himself struggling with the whims and fancies of the mountain. But soon, his journey transforms into a metamorphic one, unsettling the dusts in his mind and teaching him invaluable lessons. The changing landscapes take him on a quest to discover his true identity as he learns to break free and introspect. He finds a connection to his past and finds his way to build his future, the future he always wanted to build but never had the courage to do so. He learns to annihilate the impediments on his path to creativity and entrepreneurship which were created by fear and uncertainty and goes on to follow his bliss. 'When the Road Beckons' is not merely a travelogue but a valuable read for anyone on a quest for meaning of life but is afraid to step into the unknown. It's a story that will take you to that one person whom you are quite eager to discover. And that person is You.

    He wanted to do it in a four-wheel drive, taking his own camper-trailer with him, to live at the edge of deserts and at the rim of tropical jungles, to drive the highest roads, and the lowest, to be free to make his own choices. He found a nut who wanted to do it with him, a picture editor of a leading man's magazine in New York, and the Trans World Expedition was born. This is their incredible journey. The did it, and how they did it is their tale told in his exciting book.

    Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come. With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kittten named Halifax, Simon withstands months of crushing loneliness, sudden blindness, and private demons. Trapped in a boat buried beneath the drifting snow, he struggles through the perpertual darkness toward a spiritual awakening and an understanding of the forces that conspired to bring him there. He emerges five months later a transformed man. Simon's powerful, triumphant story combines the suspense of "Into Thin Air" with a crystalline, lyrical prose to explore the hypnotic draw of one of the earth's deepest and most dangerous wildernesses.

    Though I didn't regret anything, flat on my back in the doctor's office on the cusp of my fiftieth birthday, my health was crumbling.I no longer recognized myself.I turned my head and saw a calendar on the wall: Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah beckoned me with its mysterious sandstone hoodoos.A road trip traveling through the national parks was just what I needed to rediscover the girl I'd been. It could help me turn a corner into my new career as a writer, and my husband would enjoy a chance to photograph the natural wonders we saw. Sometimes, a twelve-thousand-mile road trip is also a personal quest. An absorbing travel narrative about defining and facing the limitations and opportunities of midlife. KIRKUS

    Inspiring. Heartbreaking.In the summer of 1845 Rebecca Springer and her family join the Oregon wagon train in search of land thousands of miles away. It's a hard and dangerous journey through blizzards and searing heat, over prairies, desert plains and mountains and, at times, it seems as if it will never end. But an unbreakable bond develops amongst the travelling women as they are tested, physically and emotionally, and their shared experiences of new life and tragic death will bring them closer than blood ever could.How the west was won and the terrible price that was paid.A Small Part of History is an epic, heartfelt story of courage in the face of appalling adversity, and a haunting portrayal of how America was forged. Above all, it is a story of people and how the ties that bind us most strongly are those of friendship, of family and of love.

    The plan hits troubled waters as she arrives in France with her marriage on the rocks and three children who speak no French. Her first attempts at surfing are disastrous; resulting in bruises, broken bones and a damaged ego, but when she experiences the euphoric feeling of catching her first wave and sets up the Mamas Surf Club, it's all worth it.

    In 1906, he reversed his steps and went back to Iowa. In 1915, he went by car, and, later, even flew over the trail in a plane. He spent most of his ninety-eight years promoting the Oregon trail and founded the Oregon Trail Association. In 1922, he published "Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail," an outstanding memoir of his many days along the trail.

    That unmistakable urge was already growing inside of Mike Krabal when he received advice from a wise soul of eighty-one years to "get out more." In October 2011, he traded his life in a small West Virginia town for 132 days on America's open road. Through vivid observation, he tells of hair-raising run-ins with wild animals, wild people, and the wicked Hangover Fairy. Youthful curiosity charts the course, and his trusty motorcycle, the Goose, hauls the gear. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, exotic landscapes, fresh mornings in unfamiliar towns, and more than 17,000 miles pass. No detail is left behind in this friendly, funny, and mischievous story of discovery away from home. (black and white ebook) *Update 2/23/2016: I've just released 132 Days A journey A journal and some Whiskey COLOR PHOTO EDITION. It features over 900 color photos to best capture the essence of a coast-to-coast American adventure, and it's now available on Amazon.com. Here's the link - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01B...-

    Their experience included reading a few books, watching a couple of instructional videos, and sailing once a week for a year. They were land-lubberly, middle-class twentysomethings, audacious and in love. All they wanted was to be together and do something extraordinary. They quit their jobs, bought a boat that was categorically considered "too small" for ocean sailing, and left Portland, Oregon for the Sea of Cortez.The Box Wine Sailors tells the true story of a couple's ramshackle trip down the coast, with all the exulting highs and terrifying lows of sailing a small boat on the Pacific. From nearly being rammed by a pair of whales on Thanksgiving morning and the terrifying experience of rounding Punta Gorda—hanging on to the mast for dear life and looking about at what seemed like the apocalypse—to having their tiller snap off while accidentally surfing coastal breakers and finding ultimate joy in a $5 Little Caesar's pizza. It also tells the story of two very normal people doing what most people only dream of, settling the argument that if you want something bad enough you can make it happen.

    On their travels, Edward works to overcome the challenge of reintegrating with his siblings and parents. They try to work together in search of a brighter future, all feel the strain of losing their home and livelihood. Edward is not the same boy as when he left home and must balance his hard-fought independence with his role as brother and son.Despite optimism for the future and escaping the destruction of Azalon, a dark threat looms over the family’s hope of rebuilding. Edward’s skills continue to progress, but will it be enough to protect the family’s fragile beginnings? Overcoming his own fears and personal demons is the biggest challenge Edward must face as he chooses a future with his family, or one of an adventurer.

    The extraordinary brilliance of her eye confers the reader a total immersion in the rimy realms she explores. Glaciers, Arctic floe, verglas, frost and snow — I can think of no better or warmer guide to the icy ends of the Earth’ Dan Richards, author of Climbing DaysA vivid and perceptive book combining memoir, scientific and cultural history with a bewitching account of landscape and place, which will appeal to readers of Robert Macfarlane, Roger Deakin and Olivia Laing.  Long captivated by the solid yet impermanent nature of ice, by its stark, rugged beauty, acclaimed poet and writer Nancy Campbell sets out from the world’s northernmost museum – at Upernavik in Greenland – to explore it in all its facets. From the Bodleian Library archives to the traces left by the great polar expeditions, from remote Arctic settlements to the ice houses of Calcutta, she examines the impact of ice on our lives at a time when it is itself under threat from climate change. The Library of Ice is a fascinating and beautifully rendered evocation of the interplay of people and their environment on a fragile planet, and of a writer’s quest to define the value of her work in a disappearing landscape.‘The Library of Ice instantly transported me elsewhere... This luminous book is both beautifully written and astute in its observations, turning the pages of time backwards and revealing, like the archive of the earth’s climate stored in layers of solidified water, the embedded meanings of the world’s icy realms. It is a book as urgently relevant as it is wondrous’ Julian Hoffman, author of The Heart of Small Things ‘An extraordinary work not only for the perspicacity and innate experience of the author who leads the reader carefully across intertwined icy tracks of crystallised geographics, melting myths and frozen exploration histories, but through her own tender diagnostics of what reading ice can show us in these times … Perilous in its scope, exacting in its observation, wild in intellect, The Library of Ice captures the reader’s attention almost as if caught in ice itself’ Kirsten Macgillivray, poet   ‘This is travel writing to be treasured. A biography of ice, the element that has another life, with hard facts thawed and warmed by a poet's voice. Campbell's writing is companionable, curious, deeply researched and with no bragging about the intrepidity that has taken her between winter-dark Greenland, Polar libaries, Scottish curling rinks, Alpine glaciers and Henry Thoreau's pond at Walden’ Jasper Winn, author of Paddle

    I couldn’t jack it in and go home, because I didn’t have a home to go to anymore. The bicycle and the tent were now home. Wherever I found myself on any given night was now home. And that meant, for tonight, Genoa Piazza Principe Railway Station was home.I was cycling across Europe in search of Utopia, a place I believed was located somewhere in Greece. When I found it, I would start a new life there. It was my big, fat, Greek midlife crisis. But now I was having a crisis within a crisis. What the hell had I been thinking?

    Their idyllic existence was brutally interrupted when four armed intruders invaded their house and viciously attacked them, leaving them for dead. The violent assault and the trauma of almost dying left him questioning assumptions he had lived by since childhood. For the first time, he encountered the face of evil and the terror of the unknown. He felt like a foreigner in the land of his birth.This book is his account of a series of treks he took in the high Himalayas following his convalescence—to Bandar Punch (the monkey’s tail), Nanda Devi, the second highest mountain in India, and Mt. Kailash in Tibet. He set himself this goal to prove that he had healed mentally as well as physically and to re-knit his connection to his homeland. Undertaken out of sorrow, the treks become a moving soul journey, a way to rediscover mountains in his inner landscape. Weaving together observations of the natural world, Himalayan history, folklore and mythology, as well as encounters with other pilgrims along the way, Stephen Alter has given us a moving meditation on the solace of high places, and on the hidden meanings and enduring mystery of mountains.