Outer Hebrides, 600 acres . . . Puffins and seals. Apply . . . ”.In this radiant and powerful book, Adam describes, and relives, his love affair with this enchantingly beautiful property, which he inherited when he was twenty-one. As the islands grew to become the most important thing in his life, they began to offer him more than escape, giving him “sea room”—a sailing term Nicolson uses to mean “the sense of enlargement that island life can give you.”The Shiants—the name means holy or enchanted islands—lie east of the Isle of Lewis in a treacherous sea once known as the “stream of blue men,” after the legendary water spirits who menaced sailors there. Crowned with five-hundred-foot cliffs of black basalt and surrounded by tidal rips, teeming in the summer with thousands of sea birds, they are wild, dangerous, and dramatic—with a long, haunting past. For millennia the Shiants were a haven for those seeking solitude—an eighth-century hermit, the twentieth-century novelist Compton Mackenzie—but their rich, sometimes violent history of human habitation includes much more. Since the Stone Age, families have dwelled on the islands and sailors have perished on their shores. The landscape is soaked in centuries-old tales of restless ghosts and ancient treasure, cradling the heritage of a once productive world of farmers and fishermen.In passionate, keenly precise prose, Nicolson evokes the paradoxes of island life: cut off from the mainland yet intricately bound to it, austere yet fertile, unforgiving yet bewitchingly beautiful.Sea Room does more than celebrate and praise this extraordinary place. It shares with us the greatest gift an island can bestow: a deep, revelatory engagement with the natural world.

    Paris, My Sweet is a personal and moveable feast that’s a treasure map for anyone who loves fresh cupcakes and fine chocolate, New York and Paris, and life in general. It’s about how the search for happiness can be as fleeting as a sliver of cheesecake and about how the life you’re meant to live doesn’t always taste like the one you envisioned. Organized into a baker’s dozen of delicacies (and the adventures they inspired) that will tempt readers’ appetites, Paris, My Sweet is something to savor.

    A few years later, she left her job, her marriage, and a dissatisfied life and walked back into those mountains.In her new memoir, Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home, Heather, whose trail name is "Anish," conveys not only her athleticism and wilderness adventures, but also shares her distinct message of courage--her willingness to turn away from the predictability of a more traditional life in an effort to seek out what most fulfills her. Amid the rigors of the trail--pain, fear, loneliness, and dangers--she discovers the greater rewards of community and of self, conquering her doubts and building confidence. Ultimately, she realizes that records are merely a catalyst, giving her purpose, focus, and a goal to strive toward. (Mountaineers Books)

    Life had become routinized and unexciting. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis, or maybe just a yearning for one last big adventure. Mike decides to try hiking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, just to see what happens. Mike convinces his wife, Margo, to join him. Together they embark on a five-month hike full of anticipation. They hike through some of the most stunning and remote places in the country on a trail full of unique, offbeat characters. But the trail had even more to offer than either of them had anticipated.

    Its exciting account of air adventure, combined with lyrical prose and the spirit of a philosopher, makes it one of the most popular works ever written about flying. Translated by Lewis Galantière.

    Her deep empathy and understanding, her years of observing Kenya’s rich variety of wildlife, and her pioneering work in perfecting the right husbandry and milk formula have saved countless elephants, rhinos, and other baby animals from certain death. In this heartwarming and poignant memoir, Daphne shares her amazing relationships with a host of orphans, including her first love, Bushy, a liquid-eyed antelope; Rickey-Tickey-Tavey, the little dwarf mongoose; Gregory Peck, the busy buffalo weaver bird; Huppety, the mischievous zebra; and the majestic elephant Eleanor, with whom Daphne has shared more than forty years of great friendship.  But this is also a magical and heartbreaking human love story between Daphne and David Sheldrick, the famous Tsavo Park warden. It was their deep and passionate love, David’s extraordinary insight into all aspects of nature, and the tragedy of his early death that inspired Daphne’s vast array of achievements, most notably the founding of the world-renowned David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and the Orphans’ Nursery in Nairobi National Park, where Daphne continues to live and work to this day.  Encompassing not only David and Daphne’s tireless campaign for an end to poaching and for conserving Kenya’s wildlife, but also their ability to engage with the human side of animals and their rearing of the orphans expressly so they can return to the wild, Love, Life, and Elephants is alive with compassion and humor, providing a rare insight into the life of one of the world’s most remarkable women.

    Joined by a friend, Joyce learned lessons that can help all of us travel on life's up-and-down journey with more grace and lightness. She shares them in this enjoyable recounting of her journey across mountains and valleys, cities and farms.

    Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been told—until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.

    Somehow she finds herself leading fourteen squabbling middle-aged women—until she inadvertently loses them and sets out on her own. That is when her real adventure begins, as she battles loneliness, hunger, and exhaustion.But she also encounters charming villages, thickly forested vales, and more compatible pilgrims, including an enigmatic fair-haired man, whose appearance has been predicted by a psychic. By journey's end, Christmas has discovered that it is the detours of life that leads us to our heart's desire.

    Twain's abundant humor waxes as freely as ever; this time, however, his amusement bears a more cynical cast, as he regards the grand tourist sights of 'Innocents' through older and more experienced eyes.

    For on that rainy morning, the young Yale professor Hiram Bingham III climbed into the Andes Mountains of Peru and encountered an ancient city in the clouds: the now famous citadel of Machu Picchu. Nearly a century later, news reports have recast the hero explorer as a villain who smuggled out priceless artifacts and stole credit for finding one of the world's greatest archaeological sites. Mark Adams has spent his career editing adventure and travel magazines, so his plan to investigate the allegations against Bingham by retracing the explorer's perilous path to Machu Picchu isn't completely far- fetched, even if it does require him to sleep in a tent for the first time. With a crusty, antisocial Australian survivalist and several Quechua-speaking, coca-chewing mule tenders as his guides, Adams takes readers through some of the most gorgeous and historic landscapes in Peru, from the ancient Inca capital of Cusco to the enigmatic ruins of Vitcos and Vilcabamba. Along the way he finds a still-undiscovered country populated with brilliant and eccentric characters, as well as an answer to the question that has nagged scientists since Hiram Bingham's time: Just what was Machu Picchu?

    A long-buried personal sadness is enfolding her—and her career is stalled—when she stumbles upon an unusual group of immigrants living in rural California. She follows them on their annual return to the remote Azorean islands in the Atlantic Ocean, where bulls run down village streets, volcanoes are active, and the people celebrate festas to ease their saudade, a longing so deep that the Portuguese word for it can’t be fully translated.Years later, California is in a terrible drought, the wildfires seem to never end, and Diana finds herself still dreaming of those islands and the chuva—a rain so soft you don’t notice when it begins or ends.With her troublesome Labrador retriever, Murphy, in tow, Diana returns to the islands of her dreams only to discover that there are still things she longs for—and one of them may be a most unexpected love.

    Not beginning long-distance hiking until age 60, Mary takes us with her on her trail journeys to experience encounters with the beauty of wilderness from the Eastern ranges of the Appalachian Trail, the challenges of desert, snow, granite and thick forests of the Pacific Crest Trail, and the rugged and the remote grandeur of the Continental Divide Trail. Along the way, she introduces the Trail Community. Hikers of many ages and walks of life labeled with colorful monikers called trail names, and trail angels, planned and total surprises, grace her journey. Bears, moose, deer, coyotes, turkey vultures, hawks, eagles, owls, pronghorn, and endless supplies of squirrels and chipmunks share the world through which she walked. Everyday challenges of completing seemingly endless miles, encountering new adventures, sometimes with friends and much of the time solo, brought Mary to the first pages of this book on a glorious day sighting two grizzly bears and completing long-distance hiking's Triple Crown at age 76. Throughout this inspirational journey, Mary shares the perspective of an aging adult. Challenges of failing body parts add drama and obstacles to be overcome like rocks in the trail or adapted to like the trails that wind slowly up steep mountains. Come along and experience long trails with the Old Lady on The Trail.

    Blehm narrates this true account of the disappearance and search for Randy Morgenson, a National Park Service ranger who, one morning after 28 seasons on the job, failed to answer his radio call.The introverted Morgenson was more comfortable with the natural world than with people. A gifted photographer and a lyrical writer, he dropped out of college to begin a career that would send him into the remote parts of California's Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Passionate about the mountains, he excelled at his responsibilities, which ranged from clearing away garbage left by careless campers to rescuing injured hikers. Dedicated to keeping the wilderness undisturbed, he was proud of his ability to leave no trace of himself wherever he camped.That skill would prove costly when, at age 54, he went missing. Blehm seamlessly combines a detective story with a celebration of nature that calls to mind the works of classic American writers like Thoreau and Emerson. His gripping narrative will cause readers' hearts to ache at the disappearance of this undervalued soul. But their spirits will soar at the grandeur and mysticism of nature expertly captured in its most primal state.

    He gained a unique gaze on life, death, sadness and humour. With a family tragically affected by World War Two, and a father who died early because of his injuries, James, his sister and mother were left to the mercy of a gold mine with little use for them. His upbringing was mainly by a tribal ayah and an elderly Swahili man with pretensions beyond his station, but the soul and heart of a lion, who feared nobody, except his wife in Nubian-gin-inspired fury. James learnt to fish with home-made line and hooks, to eat insects, and, to the amusement of the watu, to abuse the European hierarchy on the mine in Swahili they did not understand. At boarding school in Arusha James befriended boys of different nations who were, in their separate ways, also outcasts or non conformers. He presented a dilemma to the teachers - a white boy with a "black spirit." His gang got up to nefarious enterprises, bringing them into a state of permanent conflict with the system. James became imbued with the history of Tanganyika, back to its time as the German Colony of Deutsch Ost Africa, which ended in 1918. The unparalleled courage and brilliance of the massively outnumbered German leader Obestleutnant Paul von Lettow Vorbeck and his schutztruppe in the bush war against the British became a beacon to James of what can be accomplished, even in the most adverse of circumstances.