Daring Adventures on the World's Greatest Peaks

    

    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.

    Angus is involved in a romantic liaison, which takes the edge off his customary cynicism, and for the first time in their adult lives, a positive fraternal bond exists between them.Inevitably, reality comes calling. Angus’s love affair ends and he copes poorly, Hugh becomes stratospherically arrogant on the back of a promotion and Julia, the MacNaughtons’ sister, starts dating Angus’s nemesis – Alistair ‘The Legend’ Jones. Then there are a series of further ‘hiccups’, from demanding lodge guests and marauding monkeys, to a labour protest, a run-in with a blind-drunk head chef, a winter drought, a rogue elephant that puts staff and guests in danger and the resignation of the sterling head ranger.You are guaranteed to be entertained by the hilarious antics and hard knocks as well as the fierce beauty of the African landscape in Back to the Bush: Another Year in the Wild. ‘A Year in the Wild is a delight to read [and a] hugely entertaining novel. Don’t miss it. If there’s a sequel, and I hope there is, I will be first in line to read it.’ – BRIAN JOSS, Bolander

     Mike Weiss spent nearly two years with Ferrari-Carano, a California winemaker founded in Sonoma County just over twenty years ago by Don Carano, a casino and hotel mogul from Reno. The narrative in A Very Good Year follows Ferrari-Carano’s Fume Blanc from barren vines in November to its first sampling by a customer at the Four Seasons in New York, and, over the course of the book, Weiss presents his unique insight into the making and marketing of wine today. BACKCOVER: “Superb. . . . Weiss tells a great story.” —THE NEW YORK TIMES “Finally, a wine book that explains all the ingredients. . . . You will marvel at the richness of what Mike Weiss . . . was able to capture and convey within this delicious book.” —LOS ANGELES TIMES “Compelling . . . A Very Good Year is both entertaining and comprehensive.” —THE BOSTON GLOBE “A sweeping book about tourism, globalism, environmental sustainability, immigration, and glamour. . . . The bottle of Fume Blanc . . . is like a Pandora’s box. Open it up and out spill all the vanity, marketing savvy, self-mythologizing, acres of land, buckets of money, precise science, alchemical blending, and feudal working conditions that make up the California dream known as the wine industry.” —SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

    A fascination for running in high places was born – a fascination that would direct him to Scotland. Running and racing, Jonny became the mountainside silhouette that first inspired him. His exploits inevitably led to Scotland’s supreme test of hill running: Ramsay’s Round, a daunting 60-mile circuit of twenty-four mountains, climbing the equivalent height of Mount Everest and culminating on Ben Nevis, to be completed within twenty-four hours. While Ramsay’s Round demands extraordinary endurance, the challenge is underpinned by simplicity and tradition, in a sport largely untainted by commercialism. The Mountains are Calling is the story of that sport in Scotland, charting its evolution over half a century, heralding its characters and the culture that has grown around them, ultimately capturing the irresistible appeal of running in high places.

    And every year, more than 30,000 adventure tourists try. But for each person who goes to the mountain, there are thousands more who chat about it at cocktail parties, making plans to go...someday. That's how Daniel Dorr got started: flirting with a beautiful brunette over hot cocoa and spouting impressive plans. Six months later, he was lying on the cold gravel trail at 18,000 feet, panting and hacking in the darkness.Dorr is a typical marketing exec by day but, amped up by his re-acquaintance with a romantic interest, he gained the determination to pursue one of his lifelong dreams -- summiting Kilimanjaro. When Dorr left behind the familiarity of his weekend-warrior lifestyle in Southern California to reach the top of the 19,340-foot peak, he didn't realize he would cross a threshold to a new way of life. As he fondles expensive hi-tech gear, gets vaccinated for the jungle, travels local-style across East Africa, and vomits on top of the African continent, readers share in the rewards, both large and small, of reaching for personal fulfillment through adventure travel.

     What starts with a trouble-free trek into the Nepalese highlands explodes into a gripping tale of hardship, peril, and adversity. Pushed beyond their physical and mental limits, climbers drop by the wayside. Their primal instincts for survival battle with their dogged resolve to drag themselves to the top of the world. But the focus remains: battle to the summit, and if successful, somehow get back down again. White plunges the reader into a land of subzero temperatures, asphyxiating air, and ever increasing danger. Base Camp life and the world above it come to life in this riveting, true novel. The inner workings of an Everest expedition team and what it takes to climb the highest mountain in the world are laid bare. Some return from the death zone injured. Some do not return at all. Success and failure vie for supremacy throughout. This personal, day-by-day chronicle takes the reader along every step of an Everest climb. A must for climbing enthusiasts, lovers of adventure, and adrenaline junkies; the closing chapters will leave you breathless.Alternate cover edition.ASIN: B07763H6D7

    That challenge presents itself when an old friend suggests she go for a run to distract her from the grief of her recent divorce. Excited by the clarity of mind and breathing space running offers her, she keeps it up — albeit slowly — and she decides to run seven marathons on seven continents; this becomes Ostman’s vision quest, the thing she turns to during the ups and downs of a new romance and during the hard months and years of redefining herself in the aftermath of the very restrictive, religious-based marriage and life she led up until her divorce. Insightful and uplifting, Second Wind carries the reader along for the ride as Ostman runs her way out of compliance with the patriarchal rules about “being a woman” that long held her captive and into authenticity and self-love. Her adventures — and the personal revelations that accompany them — inspire readers to take chances, find truth in their lives, and learn to listen to the voice inside them that’s been there all along.

    For a generation of American climbers, The White Spider has been a formative book--yet it has long been out-of-print in America. This edition awaits discovery by Harrer's new legion of readers.

    Or sunflowers. (Though it does wax lyrical about some stunning Alpine scenery . . . and, with the race starting in Yorkshire, even some stunning scenery not far from Bradford).From Leeds to Paris (how often do you say that?), Ned details the minutiae of his encounters with the likes of Vincenzo Nibali, David Millar, Chris Froome, Chris Boardman (or ‘Broadman’ as some would have it), Marcel Kittel, Mrs Cavendish (Mark’s wife), Peter Sagan and the rest. Their endeavours, achievements, humour and occasional rancour, sit alongside his own decade-long quest for the ideal end-of-race T-shirt.Ned weaves together the interesting, amusing and unheralded threads of the race itself, and reflects on his own perennial struggle to get round, get on and get by. 101 Damnations encapsulates all that is incredible – and incredibly ordinary – about the greatest race on earth.

    Surrounded by budget cuts and bullies, the thrill of a breaking news story is no longer enough. And at 31, still struggling to get to a fourth date and surrounded by friends settling down to married life and babies, Emma decides to grasp her life by the roots and reclaim her freedom...by running away to sea and joining a complete stranger (and his cat) on a yacht in Borneo.Reflective yet humorous and self-deprecating, we share Emma's excitement and fear at leaving a good job for an unknown adventure, and join her as she travels to some of the most exotic places in the world and starts to realise what really matters in life. She discovers the supreme awkwardness of sharing a tiny space with total strangers, the unimaginable beauty of paradise islands and secret jungle rivers, glimpses lost tribes, works all hours for demanding superyacht owners, and has a terrifyingly near miss with pirates. Fending off romantic propositions from a Moldovan pig farmer and a Sri Lanken village chief amongst others, Emma finds adventure and happiness in the most unlikely places.From planning each day meticulously to learning to let go and leave things to chance, Emma's story shows that it is possible to break free and find happiness - and love - on your own terms.

    The hull glides in silence and with such perfect balance as to report no motion. I sit up for another stroke, now looking down as the blades ignite swirling pairs of white constellations of phosphorescent plankton. Two opposing heavens. ‘Remember this,’ I think to myself.”Few people have ever considered the eastern United States to be an island, but when Nat Stone began tracing waterways in his new atlas at the age of ten he discovered that if one had a boat it was possible to use a combination of waterways to travel up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the eastern seaboard. Years later, still fascinated by the idea of the island, Stone read a biography of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman who had attempted to sail the same route a century before. Stone decided he would row rather than sail, and in April 1999 he launched a scull beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to see how far he could get. After ten months and some six thousand miles he arrived back at the Brooklyn Bridge, and continued rowing on to Eastport, Maine. Retracing Stone’s extraordinary voyage, On the Water is a marvelous portrait of the vibrant cultures inhabiting American shores and the magic of a traveler’s chance encounters. From Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where a rower at the local boathouse bequeaths him a pair of fabled oars, to Vanceburg, Kentucky, where he spends a day fishing with Ed Taylor -- a man whose efficient simplicity recalls The Old Man and the Sea -- Stone makes his way, stroke by stroke, chatting with tugboat operators and sleeping in his boat under the stars. He listens to the live strains of Dwight Yoakum on the banks of the Ohio while the world’s largest Superman statue guards the nearby town square, and winds his way through the Louisiana bayous, where he befriends Scoober, an old man who reminds him that the happiest people are those who’ve “got nothin’.” He briefly adopts a rowing companion -- a kitten -- along the west coast of Florida, and finds himself stuck in the tidal mudflats of Georgia. Along the way, he flavors his narrative with local history and lore and records the evolution of what started out as an adventure but became a lifestyle. An extraordinary literary debut in the lyrical, timeless style of William Least Heat-Moon and Henry David Thoreau, On the Water is a mariner’s tribute to childhood dreams, solitary journeys, and the transformative powers of America’s rivers, lakes, and coastlines.From the Hardcover edition.

    Nominated for running book of the year in The Running Awards 2019.

     A relatable must-read for anyone who has lost a loved one, this memoir lights the way to afterlife and afterdeath where forgiveness supersedes pain, blame, remorse and regret. In her effort to understand the generational effects of alcoholism and subsequent dysfunctional adult relationships, Marlayna takes her youngest son and her father's ashes on a personal journey, embarking on an emotional voyage to both physical and mental states of being. She confronts her own existence as a mother and a daughter, seeking and ultimately finding peace with her disappointment, anger, failed marriage, and complex relationships with her own four children.