Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Rail


Mary Morris - 1991
    As in Nothing to Declare, her celebrated travelogue of South America, Morris combines vivid portrayals of people and historical portraits of Soviet events with a more personal journey--her search for roots, family, and her ancestral home in the Ukraine.

Life in a Jungle: My Autobiography


Bruce Grobbelaar - 2018
    And yet, question marks have followed him around; question marks about his goalkeeping suitability after arriving on Merseyside; question marks about his integrity after match fixing allegations were laid against him. Here, Grobbelaar takes you to Africa, where nothing is at it seems; he takes you back to an era when Liverpool ruled Europe; he takes you to the benches of the Anfield dressing room, where only the strongest personalities survived. For the first time, he takes you inside the court room, detailing the draining fight to clear his name.

Vuelta Skelter: Riding the Remarkable 1941 Tour of Spain


Tim Moore - 2021
    Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic. What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation. Along the way Tim recounts the civil war's still-vivid tragedies, and finds the gregarious but impressively responsible locals torn between welcoming their nation's only foreign visitor, and bundling him and his filthy bike into a vat of antiviral gel.'Bill Bryson on two wheels' Independent

A Corner in the Marais: Memoir of a Paris Neighborhood


Alex Karmel - 2002
    He concludes with a walking tour of the Marais, through Paris' rich history.

Tales from the Torrid Zone: Travels in the Deep Tropics


Alexander Frater - 2004
    On this tiny island in the South Seas republic of Vanuatu, his grandfather, a Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, converted the inhabitants, his father ran the hospital and his mother built its first schoolhouse in their front garden. And it was on Iririki where, on the eve of his sixth birthday, Frater fell victim to “le coup de bamboo . . . a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily, there is no cure,” and which has compelled him, again and again, to return to the “seeding, breeding, buzzing, barking, fluttering, squawking, germinating, growing” deep tropics. His travels take him to nearly all of the eighty-eight countries encompassed by this remarkable, steamy swath of the world. He delves deeply into the history and politics of each nation he visits, and into the lives of the inhabitants, and of the flora and fauna. He is, at once, tourist, explorer and adventurer, as fascinated with—and fascinating about—the quotidian as he is with the extraordinary. But certainly, he does not lack for the extraordinary: dining with the Queen of Tonga in a leper colony; making his way across tropical Africa—and two civil wars—in a forty-four-year-old flying boat; delivering a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island. From Fiji to Laos, Mexico to Peru, Senegal to Uganda, Taiwan to Indonesia, Frater gives us a richly described, wonderfully anecdotal, endlessly surprising picture of this diverse, feverish, languorously beautiful world—as much a state of mind as it is a geographical phenomenon.

England For All Seasons


Susan Allen Toth - 1997
    Now, with England for All Seasons, she will entice even an experienced London visitor into exciting new adventures, from sharing the most scenic London bus routes to bargain-hunting to out-of-the-way places and personal walking tours of eccentric museums. With whimsy and a trenchant eye, she also traverses the country outside London: the estuaries and rivers of Cornwall, the lonely beaches of Anglesey, and the wild sea-lochs of Mull.Whether looking for literary landscapes or the most delicious sherry trifle, Susan Allen Toth illuminates the nooks and crannies of a multifarious culture, the vibrant, real England that every Anglophile dreams of finding. At once entertaining and contemplative, England for All Seasons is as delightful a travel companion as your liveliest, most trusted friend.

Father, Son and the Kerry Way: 9 Days & 125 Miles around the Kingdom of Kerry


Mark Richards - 2019
    Impossible to read without laughing out loud.” That’s what people said about the first two books in the series. Now the third book sees Mark Richards and his youngest son walking the Kerry Way in South West Ireland. Over the nine days of the walk they meet the usual cast of oddball characters and have more than their fair shares of misadventures. Well, one of them does… ‘Father, Son and the Kerry Way’ will be published in early Autumn at £3.99. Until then you can pre-order it for £2.99. The book will be delivered to your Kindle as soon as it is published and that’s when your account will be charged. There will also be a paperback out in good time for Christmas

Rowboat in a Hurricane: My Amazing Journey Across a Changing Atlantic Ocean


Julie Angus - 2008
    The 145-day journey gave Angus, a trained scientist, a unique perspective on the ocean. The slow-moving boat became an ecosystem unto itself, attracting barnacles, dorado fish, trigger fish, turtles, sharks, whales, birds, and more, which she was able to observe and document. Angus also saw unmistakable signs of the ocean's devastation, with far more plastic bottles, wrappers, toys, and bags than sharks or other once-common sea life. Four cyclones, including two hurricanes, hammered the small boat so intensely that Angus and her companion weren't sure they would survive. Rowboat in a Hurricane records this amazing journey in meticulous, dramatic detail, in the process offering a personal record of an awe-inspiring ecosystem, its fascinating denizens, and the mounting threats to its existence.

My Week at the Blue Angel: Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas


Matthew O'Brien - 2010
    Thompson’s Las Vegas, with the Good Doctor as tour guide. A Lord of the Rings-like adventure in the city’s underground flood channels. A seven-day stay at a seedy motel on East Fremont Street.The stories in My Week at the Blue Angel aren’t about Steve Wynn, Cirque du Soleil, or how to play poker and they aren’t set in Caesars Palace, XS Nightclub, or a 2,000-seat showroom. They’re about prostitutes, ex-cons, and the homeless and they’re set under Caesars Palace and in trailer parks and weekly motels.In this creative-nonfiction collection, Matthew O’Brien—author of Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas—and veteran photographer Bill Hughes show a side of the city rarely seen. A side beyond the neon lights, themed facades, and motel-room doors. A side beyond the barbwire fences, “No Trespassing” signs, and midnight shadows.A side of Las Vegas many locals and visitors are curious about, but few ever explore.

Madam Millie: Bordellos from Silver City to Ketchikan


Max Evans - 2002
    The story of Silver City Millie, as she referred to herself, is the story of one woman's personal tragedies and triumphs as an orphan, a Harvey Girl waitress on the Santa Fe railroad, a prostitute with innumerable paramours, and a highly successful bordello businesswoman. Millie broke the mould in so many ways, and yet her life's story of survival was not unlike that of thousands of women who went West only to find that their most valuable assets were their physical beauty and their personality. Petite at five feet tall with piercing blue eyes, Millie captured men's attention by her very essence and her unmistakable joie de vivre. Born to Italian immigrant parents near Kansas City, she and her sister were orphaned early and separated from each other. Millie learned hard lessons on the streets, but she never gave up and she vowed to protect and support her ailing older sister. Caught in a domestic squabble in her foster home, Millie wound up in juvenile court with Harry Truman as her judge. This would be only the first of many brushes in her life with prominent politicians. West to a Catholic home in Deming, New Mexico, Millie moved with her. Expenses ran high and after a brief stint waiting tables as a Harvey Girl, Millie found that her meagre tips could easily be augmented by turning tricks. Thus, out of financial need and devotion to her sister, Mildred Cusey turned to a life of prostitution and a career at which she soon excelled and became both rich and famous.

Voyage of the Liberdade


Joshua Slocum - 1994
    A 19th-century maritime classic brimming with courage, ingenuity, and daring.

Gringo: A Coming of Age in Latin America


Chesa Boudin - 2009
    The first is the sweeping transformation of Latin American politics that started with Hugo Chávez's inauguration as president of Venezuela in 1999. In that same year, an eighteen-year-old Chesa Boudin leaves his middle-class Chicago life -- which is punctuated by prison visits to his parents, who were incarcerated when he was fourteen months old for their role in a politically motivated bank truck robbery -- and arrives in Guatemala. He finds a world where disparities of wealth are even more pronounced and where social change is not confined to classroom or dinner-table conversations, but instead takes place in the streets. While a new generation of progress-ive Latin American leaders rises to power, Boudin crisscrosses twenty-seven countries throughout the Americas. He witnesses the economic crisis in Buenos Aires; works inside Chávez's Miraflores palace in Caracas; watches protestors battling police on September 11, 2001, in Santiago; descends into ancient silver mines in Potosí; and travels steerage on a riverboat along the length of the Amazon. He rarely takes a plane when a fifteen-hour bus ride in the company of unfettered chickens is available. Including incisive analysis, brilliant reportage, and deep humanity, Boudin's account of this historic period is revelatory. It weaves together the voices of Latin Americans, some rich, most poor, and the endeavors of a young traveler to understand the world around him while coming to terms with his own complicated past. The result is a marvelous mixture of coming-of-age memoir and travelogue.

Travels With Myself and Another


Martha Gellhorn - 1979
    As a journalist, Gellhorn covered every military conflict from the Spanish Civil War to Vietnam and Nicaragua. She also bewitched Eleanor Roosevelt's secret love and enraptured Ernest Hemingway with her courage as they dodged shell fire together.Hemingway is, of course, the unnamed other in the title of this tart memoir, first published in 1979, in which Gellhorn describes her globe-spanning adventures, both accompanied and alone. With razor-sharp humor and exceptional insight into place and character, she tells of a tense week spent among dissidents in Moscow; long days whiled away in a disused water tank with hippies clustered at Eilat on the Red Sea; and her journeys by sampan and horse to the interior of China during the Sino-Japanese War.

Cold Cases Solved Vol. 2: More True Stories of Murders That Took Years or Decades to Solve


Mike Riley - 2015
    2:  This follow-up book to Cold Cases Solved continues where the first book left off detailing more true stories of criminal cases that went cold and were eventually solved, sometimes many years later. Some of the cases include: Martha Moxley – the case with a Kennedy connection, Jeanine Nicarico – the case that took over 20 years to solve, Sherri Rasmussen – fresh eyes caught the right clue, The 16th Baptist Church Bombing – solved after 14 years, Leslie Long – the young mother kidnapped, raped and murdered, The Outlaw Clubhouse Murders – a motorcycle gang wiped out, and many others. The closure attained by solving these cases must at least provide a modicum of relief for the friends and family of the victims. The authorities involved in the investigations and in bringing the perpetrators to justice must also feel a sense of accomplishment when they are able to successfully close a long-standing case.Grab your copy TODAY and read about more Cold Cases Solved!

The Inn at the Top: Tales of Life at the Highest Pub in Britain


Neil Hanson - 2013
    It is a wild, wind-swept place, set alone in a sea of peat bog and heather moorland that stretches unbroken as far as the eye can see. With only sheep and grouse for company, their closest neighbour was four miles away and the nearest town twelve. They had no experience of licensed trade or running a pub, no knowledge of farming and a complete inability to understand the dialect of the sheep farmers who were their local customers. Eager, well-meaning, but in over their heads, our two heroes embarked on a disaster-strewn career that somehow also turned into a lifelong love affair with the Dales.The Inn at the Top is an entertaining ramble around the Inn, the breath-taking Dales countryside and a remarkable array of local characters, giving an insight into life in a very different different time and place.