It is a yarn still told in a hundred bars in tucked away ports where seafarers drink and wait out stormy weather. The story takes the reader on a smuggling voyage from the Atlantic down the Red Sea to Kenya, to Thailand and back across the Indian Ocean to Spain then the Netherlands. No notoriety, no articles in magazines, no calling for help when things get bad. Medical emergencies at sea, sharks, pirates, monsoon storms, and the Guardia Civil, notwithstanding… backing off was not an option. After 12 years of sailing and smuggling in the N. Atlantic and the Caribbean, Ranen, an old school pre electronic navigation sailor who smuggles to pay the bills for a lifestyle of dangerous freedom, heads for the Indian Ocean aboard his sleek deep ocean sailing boat, Sara. He left with a solid plan to sail new oceans, and do business in a new arena with different cultures. What happens when he gets there sends him on a path that was nothing he imagined, but such is the world of sailing and smuggling. Although Ranen has written this story in first person, It is also told from the perspective of the courageous young “Kenya Cowgirl” who became his crew and lover, all told through her journal entries from that voyage. In the days when “5/11” Beverly Johnson and Lynn Hill were winning the respect of the “rock star” climbers in Yosemite, Ranen was throwing a young Arianna Bell into the maelstrom of long distance non-stop sailing/smuggling. This is her story as well. Surprising twists of fate, cat and mouse with the law and other bad guys, as well as up close accounts of at life at sea in challenging conditions. Like living in a Dylan song.

    Will he make it out of the jail? What will happen when Roblox police show up? Will he find riches and freedom? Or will the Roblox Noob end up back in jail?

    DESTINY. REVELATIONS.DISCOVERY. WAR. REDEMPTION.From the Great Sphinx to Petra to the Great Pyramid, journey on this epic archaeology adventure, weaving between the past and the present, to uncover hidden ancient secrets and fascinating mysteries about a long lost civilization…Secret of the SandsFor 12,000 years a dark and deadly secret has been hidden deep below the Great Sphinx. In present day Egypt, two archaeologists discover mysterious artifacts belonging to an unknown civilization. A frightening and awe-inspiring story unravels as the archaeologists race against time to decipher the dangerous knowledge they hold…Destiny of the SandsSome secrets cannot remain hidden…and some cannot be forgiven…The Great Sphinx of Giza has guarded a secret, both dangerous and incredible, for 12,000 years. Now deadly enemies emerge, and those involved must face startling truths and deep sorrow, in the fight against the forces of tyranny...Revelation of the SandsA stunning revelation of secrets and destiny that will change everything…Complete the epic journey begun in Secret of the Sands...The mystery deepens. The danger is ever-present. Incredible discoveries await.The Great Sphinx is not the only ancient wonder that has incredible secrets hidden deep within it. But uncovering these secrets will have life-changing consequences. There will be no turning back. It will take a great deal of courage and the testing of faith, on multiple fronts, to face them...The final chapter in this archaeology adventure trilogy now unfolds. The characters you’ve come to know are suddenly thrust down a new, completely different, and even more personal path, to a point of no return. Their journey is about take another perilous turn with mysterious and surprising outcomes that will alter the course of their lives forever.Journey through some of the most magnificent ancient places on earth as you join this final adventure in the Secret of the Sands trilogy…

    A man who against expedition orders drove his tractor to the South Pole; a man honoured around the world for his pioneering climbs yet who collapsed on more than one occasion on a mountain, and a man who gave so much to Nepal yet lost his family to its mountains.The author, Michael Gill, was a close friend of Hillary’s for nearly 50 years, accompanying him on many expeditions and becoming heavily involved in Hillary’s aid work building schools and hospitals in the Himalaya. During the writing of this book, Gill was granted access to a large archive of private papers and photos that were deposited in the Auckland museum after Hillary’s death in 2008. Building on this unpublished material, as well as his extensive personal experience, Michael Gill profiles a man whose life was shaped by both triumph and tragedy.Gill describes the uncertainties of the first 33 years of Hillary’s life, during which time he served in the New Zealand air force during the Second World War, as well as the background to the first ascent of Mount Everest in 1953, when Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers to reach the summit – a feat that brought the pair instant worldwide fame. He reveals the loving relationship Hillary had with his wife Louise, in part through their touching letters to each other. Her importance to him during their 22 years of marriage only underlines the horror of her death, along with that of their youngest daughter, Belinda, in a plane crash in 1975. Hillary eventually pulled out of his subsequent depression to continue his life’s work in the Himalaya.Affectionate, but scrupulously fair, in Edmund Hillary – A Biography Michael Gill has gone further than anyone before to reveal the humanity of this remarkable man.

    Enveloped by mystery whether he reached Mount Everest's summit before his fall, he continues to grip the imagination. An exceptionally gifted and driven climber, his spell-binding memory inspires mountaineers to this day, attracting lively speculation as well as fact-finding expeditions to retrace his steps. Climbing Everest gathers for the first time Mallory's influential canon on mountaineering from its disparate locations in archives.Mallory was unique in drawing a new literature from his mountain craft. For him, as for his predecessors, earth was still a heroic place with hidden parts promising novel experiences while the eyes of history were trained upon them. But he was strongly inspired by the Bloomsbury group, unlike previous explorers, and a talented writer and poet. He chose to break with the Edwardian stiff upper lip in favor of emotional truthfulness about the art of climbing. The result created a novel branch of mountaineering literature, as fresh and vivid as the feelings he recorded in handwriting under the most harrowingly extreme mountain-top conditions.--From the 2010 edition.

    That passion for "feeding the rat" made him the unsung hero of dozens of horrifying epics in the mountains, including the famous Ogre expedition that almost killed Doug Scott and Sir Chris Bonington. The book is also the story of the extraordinary friendship between Mo Anthoine and A. Alvarez — the distinguished poet, journalist, and critic — whose deeply moving portrait of his longtime climbing partner is a classic of adventure literature.

    Wings of Fire Collection Tui T. Sutherland 4 Books Set Titles in the Set The lost heir, The hidden kingdom, The dragonet Prophecy, The Dark Secret

    The young army helicopter pilot was helping to move his friend’s yacht from Northern Ireland to the south coast of England. But as they sailed out into the Irish Sea, the sky turned progressively darker and the winds gathered pace.Over the next twenty-four hours the two young sailors battled to survive force-10 gales in what became known as the Fastnet disaster and which claimed the lives of fifteen sailors off the coast of Ireland. Almost seventeen years later, Trueman was at Camp 2 at 6,400 metres on Mount Everest as the May 1996 tragedy unfolded high above him. As stricken guides, clients and Sherpas tried to survive the fierce storms which engulfed the upper mountain, Trueman was able to descend and – using his twenty-four years of experience as an officer in the British Army – coordinate the rescue effort from Base Camp. The Storms is the remarkable memoir of a British Army Gurkha officer. Trueman, a veteran of twenty expeditions to the Himalaya, gives a candid account of life inside expeditions to the highest mountain in the world. He gives a unique personal perspective on the 1996 Everest storm, as well as on the fateful day in May 1999 when Briton Mike Matthews disappeared high on the mountain after he and Trueman had summited.

    Some film footage of his corpse was later shown on television. Why did these onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appalls Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a crevasse at the foot of Siula Grande in Peru in 1985. It is an uncomfortable ethical question that he is forced to confront as he attempts a difficult new route on Pumori, with a clear view of the whole South Col from close to the vantage point where Eric Shipton first spotted the way up the south side of Everest taken by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top up fixed ropes, camping amidst the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Simpson wonders if the noble, caring instincts that once characterized mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced as in other facets of today's society. On investigation, he finds it a less black and white issue that at first it seemed. "I shall never forget the horror of dying alone, the awful empty loneliness of it," he says. Yet his empathy for the victims of storms, altitude sickness, or misjudgments, is tested time and again as he explores anecdotally and in conversations with his companions on Pumori, the moral climate of mountaineering in the 1990s.

    Autobiography of Hermann Buhl, whose solo, unaided climb of Nanga Parbat is thought to be a greater achievement than Hillary and Tenzing's climb on Everest.

    The climbers on Alaska's Mt. McKinley called her "the woman." Ruth Anne Kocour, a world-class mountaineer, wasn't bothered. It was part of the challenge she faced as she joined an all-male team to conquer North America's highest peak...the mountain the Indians called Denali, or God.Faced the extreme. But nine days into this ascent, a forty-fifth birthday present to herself, the most violent weather on record slammed into the mountain. Ruth Anne and her group would be trapped on an ice shelf at 14,000 feet for the deadliest two weeks in Denali history. Pinned down by blinding snows, unable to help other teams dying around her, and her own feet freezing solid, Ruth Anne tells of a wind chill of minus 150 degrees, deadly hidden crevasses, and being trapped in a place so violent and unforgiving that it threatened to push her over the edge and into a place of no return. And yet, in prose as crystalline as the ice around her, she tells, too, of beauty, courage, and the spirit that drives true mountainers higher, as she risks all to go for the summit...and perhaps, for a transcendant moment, touch heaven.And lived to tell about it.

    BASE jumping in Europe. Climbing big walls in Yosemite. Riding bulls in Texas. These first-person stories from acclaimed climber and adventurer John Long may be vastly different in content, but they share an identifiable emotional texture, tone and delivery, and fundamentally are of one piece. This is storytelling at its best--nonfiction that reads like fiction. In Stories from the Dirt, the action leaves you breathless, but it's the characters that really leave a lasting mark. Like all stories worth a damn, this collection is all about the people.

    Andrew’s story is one of extraordinary passion, self-motivation, perseverance and resilience, as he leads us through his sixteen-year odyssey to achieve the Grand Slam of Himalayan mountaineering. We are taken through the victories, the near-misses and the great tragedies. The intense human drama of the expeditions infuses the book—sometimes funny, sometimes fierce and always fascinating stories about survival, climbing rivalries and mountaineering politics. The remote and stunning landscapes and cultures that Andrew encounters on his journeys add rich texture to his tale, culminating in his 2014 trip to Everest, where he was witness to the deadliest avalanche in the peak’s history. Ultimately, we learn ‘why does he do it?’ Why does anyone take on such a challenge, knowing how easily they might be killed? Andrew’s story is both candid and inspiring.Andrew Lock is the most accomplished high-altitude mountaineer in Australian history. He is the only Australian, the first person in the Commonwealth, and just the 18th man in the world to climb all fourteen of the world’s 8000-metre mountains. His achievements encompass eighteen summits of those 8000-metre peaks, including Mt Everest (twice) more than four times that of any other Australian, placing him in a select group of the world’s best alpinists. Additionally, Andrew accomplished the first Australian ascent of six of those mountains, a record that can never be broken. Andrew Lock is a professional motivational and keynote speaker. He can be found at www.andrew-lock.com.

    Slump and one of the strangest places on Earth!