This breathtakingly personal true story will thrill those wanting to sail off into the sunset or enjoy the wonders of the world from the comfort of home. Escape from the Ordinary reminds you of the unlimited possibilities in life and nudges the reader into thoughts of their own dreams.  Not a technical book about sailing or storm tactics but vividly described, full-tilt adventures on foreign shores.   WHAT READERS ARE SAYING “Secretly, we wish we had it in us, but life, fear, jobs, money or whatever creates roadblocks. What courage they must have had to follow this dream! So many places, so many adventures, and lessons learned. All along, because of Julie's descriptions, you are thinking, "How would I have handled that?" "What would I have done?" I love that it's written from a woman's point of view; and from someone who had little sailing experience. I recommend it highly!”“Couldn’t put it down,” described one reader, “as Escape from the Ordinary took me beyond the glimpses of liveaboard life told in sailing and travel magazines.  I felt like I was onboard as they fought storms in the north Atlantic their first week at sea, navigated the Panama Canal dwarfed by oil tankers, and snorkeled in crystal clear Polynesian waters.”“Told with keen observations and sparkling with wry humor, Julie Bradley describes the terrors and pleasures of living an independent life where simple decisions have big consequences; where the mundane is seconds away from a life-threatening scare; and where seafaring obstacles can pale next to facing personal challenges.  If you have an ounce of adventure in your soul, read this book.”   “Ordinary people can do extraordinary things...This is not a trip to Cabo for a two-week vacation.  This is true life …, on the edge real adventure.  I loved it…” Amazon Reviewer GREAT PEOPLE, PLACES AND PROSE You will want an atlas by your side as you travel from one epic adventure to the next with Glen and Julie on board their floating home; an Amel sailboat.  Immerse yourself deeply into islands and cultures and come along as they dodge voodoo curses in the Bahamas, claw their way out of an underwater cavern in the South Pacific, and experience adventures of a lifetime in places such as:* Bequia* Caribbean* Trinidad* Venezuela* Colombia* San Blas islands* Peru* Galapagos Islands* Marquesas Islands* Tuamotu Islands* Tahiti* Palmerston Island* Niue* Tonga* New Zealand* Fiji

    Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. As the people of Fuling hold on to the China they know, they are also opening up and struggling to adapt to a world in which their fate is uncertain.Fuling's position at the crossroads came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. He found himself teaching English and American literature at the local college, discovering how Shakespeare and other classics look when seen through the eyes of students who have been raised in the Sichuan countryside and educated in Communist Party doctrine. His students, though, are the ones who taught him about the ways of Fuling — and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society.As he learns the language and comes to know the people, Hessler begins to see that it is indeed a unique moment for Fuling. In its past is Communist China's troubled history — the struggles of land reform, the decades of misguided economic policies, and the unthinkable damage of the Cultural Revolution — and in the future is the Three Gorges Dam, which upon completion will partly flood thecity and force the resettlement of more than a million people. Making his way in the city and traveling by boat and train throughout Sichuan province and beyond, Hessler offers vivid descriptions of the people he meets, from priests to prostitutes and peasants to professors, and gives voice to their views. This is both an intimate personal story of his life in Fuling and a colorful, beautifully written account of the surrounding landscape and its history. Imaginative, poignant, funny, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

    Rocked by 60-foot swells and 87-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.Chaney Kwak is a travel writer used to all sorts of mishaps on the road, but this is a first even for him: trapped on the battered cruise ship, he stuffs his passport into his underwear just in case his body has to be identified. As the massive cruise ship sways in surging waves, Kwak holds on and watches news of the impending disaster unfold on Twitter, where the cruise ship's nearly 1,400 passengers are showered with "thoughts and prayers." Kwak uses his twenty-seven hours aboard the teetering ship to examine his family history, maritime tragedies, and the failing relationship back on shore with a man he's loved for nearly two decades: the Viking Sky, he realizes, may not be the only sinking ship he needs to escape. The Passenger takes readers for an unforgettable journey from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco. Kwak weaves his personal experience into events spanning decades and continents to explore the serendipity and the relationships that move us--perfect for readers who love to discover the world through the eyes of a perceptive and humorous observer.

    In This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of us could otherwise imagine.Ehrlich unlocks the secrets of this severe land and those who live there; a hardy people who still travel by dogsled and kayak and prefer the mystical four months a year of endless darkness to the gentler summers without night. She discovers the twenty-three words the Inuit have for ice, befriends a polar bear hunter, and comes to agree with the great Danish-Inuit explorer Knud Rasmussen that “all true wisdom is only to be found far from the dwellings of man, in great solitudes.”This Cold Heaven is at once a thrilling adventure story and a meditation on the clarity of life at the extreme edge of the world.

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    This Irish-American couple told of their decision to emigrate in reverse, to settle in Christine's great-grandmother's cottage in the west of Ireland, in "O Come Ye Back to Ireland." They chronicled their further adventures, and the adoption of their daughter, Deirdre, in "When Summer's in the Meadow." Now they take us with them on their travels by foot, bicycle, car and boat through the island they have come to know and love in search of that "Irish feeling, " the feeling which first called them back to Ireland.

    And that was just the beginning. This is their incredible true story.

    All she knew about her was that the baby had been born in Wuhu, a city in southern China, and left near a police station in her first three days of life. Her birth mother had left a note with Lulu's western and lunar birth dates. In 1999 Emily and her daughter–now a happy, fearless four-year-old--returned to China to find out more. That journey and its discoveries unfold in this lovely, touching and sensitively observed book.In Wuhu Diary, we follow Emily and LuLu through a country where children are doted on yet often summarily abandoned and where immense human friendliness can coexist with outbursts of state-orchestrated hostility–particularly after the U. S. accidentally bombs the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. We see Emily unearthing precious details of her child’s past and LuLu coming to terms with who she is. The result is a book that will delight anyone interested in China, and that will move and instruct anyone who has ever adopted--or considered adopting--a child.

    Now his adventurous spirit leads him to deepest Mongolia, setting out on foot this time, on a very long walk back home to Hong Kong. Rob and his cameraman companion Leon take a 3,000 mile hike through the dramatic landscapes and extreme temperatures of back road China - in winter. In this page turning tale of endurance and survival, we visit a host of rarely seen parts of rural China and hear fascinating stories from the people who dwell in the remote plains of the Gobi Desert. Rob writes with humour and honesty about the physical hardships of his trip and reflects on the absurdity of life, the importance of faith and on the benefits of not taking oneself so seriously.

    Tim Mackintosh-Smith follows the first stage of Ibn Battutah's journey, from Tangier to Constantinople. Destinations include and Islamic Butlin's in the Egyptian desert, Assassin castles in Syria, the Kuria Maria Islands in the Arabian Sea and some of the greates cities in Medeival Islam. He also compares the the contemporary Muslim world with the past.

    If I were a betting man I’d have reckoned on the most dangerous thing in this state being sheer boredom. The scenery hadn’t changed for weeks and I was slowly dissolving into stimulation-deprived madness. My current predicament, then – attempting to escape through cornfields from a gun-toting alcohol-soaked rancher – was not something I expected. Just months after graduating from university, Leon received disastrous news: he had been offered a job. Terrified at the prospect of a life spent behind a desk, without challenge or adventure, he took off to cross America on an overloaded bicycle packed with everything but common sense. Over five months and 6,000 miles, Leon cycled from New York to Seattle and then on to the Mexican border, facing tornados, swollen river crossings and one hungry black bear along the way. But he also met kind strangers who offered their food, wisdom, hospitality and even the occasional local history lesson, and learned what happens when you take a chance and follow the scent of adventure.

    A stressed-out New York men's magazine editor gets posted to the UK and realises happiness is more easily achieved by adopting the British attitude to life - expecting the worst and going to the pub.

    An extreme landscape in both its beauty and challenges, the state is nicknamed "The Last Frontier" with good reason: Here is a paradoxical landscape where boundaries—between community and isolation, bounty and deprivation, conservation and exploitation—are constantly in flux.But the state has also always been a place for reinvention, a refuge as much for those desperate to escape something as for those on a quest for something else. In Tide, Feather, Snow, Miranda Weiss, a young woman who grew up landlocked in well-kept East Coast suburbs, moves with her boyfriend to Homer, Alaska, where the days are quartered by the most extreme tides in the country, where the years are marked by seasons of fish, and where locals carry around the knowledge of fish, tides, boats, and weather as ballast. At first, she struggles to make a place for herself in this unfamiliar country. But ultimately, Weiss learns the skills to survive on her own, from setting a fishing net to befriending the locals, from jarring rosehip butter to skinning a sea otter.Weiss's keenly observed prose introduces readers to the memorable people and peculiar beauty of Alaska's vast landscape and takes us on her personal journey of adventure, physical challenge, and culture clash. In the tradition of John McPhee's Coming into the Country, this elegant and affecting memoir is nature writing at its best.

    A self-described "middle-aged wreck," Miles set out with his wife, Guislaine, to walk across France, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.Setting for themselves the goal of twenty miles a day, Miles and Guislaine made their way past farmyards and riverbanks, through dusty village squares and ripening vineyards, into ancient walled cities and over sand dunes. And as the hot, dry countryside unfolded slowly before them, the couple looked back with relief -- and wonder -- at the tense, frenzied corporate life they had left behind.The story of a walk, a marriage, an adventure, and a dream made real, A WALK ACROSS FRANCE marks the debut of an enormously entertaining writer.

    He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman. When Tim suggests "chucking it all" to travel cross-country in a converted bus, Doreen asks, "Why can't you be like a normal husband in a midlife crisis and have an affair or buy a Corvette?" But she soon shocks them both, agreeing to set forth with their sixty-pound dog, two querulous cats--and no agenda--in a 340-square-foot bus.Queen of the Road is Doreen's offbeat and romantic tale about refusing to settle; about choosing the unconventional road with all the misadventures it brings (fire, flood, armed robbery, and finding themselves in a nudist RV park, to name just a few). The marvelous places they visit and delightful people they encounter have a life-changing effect on all the travelers, as Doreen grows to appreciate the simple life, Tim mellows, and even the pets pull together. Best of all, readers get to go along for the ride through forty-seven states in this often hilarious and always entertaining memoir, in which a boisterous marriage of polar opposites becomes stronger than ever.