Originally a bestseller in France selling over 60,000 copies, Wild By Nature will appeal to fans of Cheryl Strayed's Wild.

    An incorrigible wanderer, Shaffer has a habit of fleeing domesticity for the joys and rigors of the open road. This time her destination is Ghana, and what results is a transformative year spent roaming the African continent. Eager to transcend the limitations of tourism, Shaffer works as a volunteer, building schools and hospitals in remote villages. At the heart of her tale are the profound, complex, often challenging relationships she forms with those she meets along the way.Whether recounting a perilous boat trip to Timbuktu, a night of impassioned political debate in Ghana, or a fumbled romance in Burkina Faso, Shaffer portrays the collision of African and North American cultures with self-deprecating humor and clear-eyed compassion. Filled with warmth, candor, and an exuberant sense of adventure, Somebody’s Heart is Burning raises provocative questions about privilege, wealth, and the true meaning of friendship.

    Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor – actor and self-confessed bike nut – noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. It was a revelation he couldn’t get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor and bike enthusiast. ‘Charley,’ he said. ‘I think you ought to come over for dinner…’From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls’ testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads.And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride over twenty thousand miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. Long Way Round is the result of their adventures – a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream.

    There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, and gives birth to a previously unrealized passion for adventure.  As her journey takes her to Australia and South America, Rachel discovers and embraces her love of travel and unlocks more truths about herself than she ever realized she was seeking. Along the way, the erstwhile good girl finally learns to do something she’s never done before: simply live for the moment.

    Dreaming no farther than Czechoslovakia, the young reporter found himself sent to India. Wide-eyed and captivated, he would discover in those days his life’s work—to understand and describe the world in its remotest reaches, in all its multiplicity. From the rituals of sunrise at Persepolis to the incongruity of Louis Armstrong performing before a stone-faced crowd in Khartoum, Kapuscinski gives us the non-Western world as he first saw it, through still-virginal Western eyes.The companion on his travels: a volume of Herodotus, a gift from his first boss. Whether in China, Poland, Iran, or the Congo, it was the “father of history”—and, as Kapuscinski would realize, of globalism—who helped the young correspondent to make sense of events, to find the story where it did not obviously exist. It is this great forerunner’s spirit—both supremely worldly and innately Occidental—that would continue to whet Kapuscinski’s ravenous appetite for discovering the broader world and that has made him our own indispensable companion on any leg of that perpetual journey.

    Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years.Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her father loved. She travelled from the exuberant chaos of Lagos to the calm beauty of the eastern mountains; from the eccentricity of a Nigerian dog show to the empty Transwonderland Amusement Park—Nigeria's decrepit and deserted answer to Disneyland. She explored Nigerian christianity, delved into its history of slavery, examined the corrupting effect of oil, investigated Nollywood. She found the country as exasperating as ever, and frequently despaired at the corruption and inefficiency she encountered.But she also discovered that it was far more beautiful and varied than she had ever imagined, and she was seduced by its thick tropical rainforest and ancient palaces and monuments. Most engagingly of all, she introduces us to the people she meets and gives us hilarious insights into the Nigerian character: its passion, wit, and ingenuity.

    Yet over a succession of Holy Weeks, Toibin found himself traveling to places where Catholicism still possesses mystery and power, from Poland to Lithuania, from Lourdes to Santiago, and from Croatia to Ireland. And in seeing how the faith persisted in other people's lives, he discovered how it still resonated in his own. In this beautifully observed work of travel writing and spiritual reportage, Toibin turns his eye on Catholicism's rituals and processions, its high-minded fanatics and humble communicants. He shows how it ripples outward into the history and politics of homelands. Yet Toibin also encounters the cross-shaped wound that lies at his own center--and it is his unflinching examination of that wound that makes The Sign of the Cross as moving as it is perceptive and urbane."A writer of considerable poetic gifts. Toibin's descriptions are enlivening."--Los Angeles Times Book Review"An extraordinary document."--Entertainment Weekly

    Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavié (the name means "wait a little more") in tiny and underdeveloped Togo, Packer reveals his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of townspeople--peasants, chiefs, charlatans, children, market women, cripples, crazies, and those who, having lost or given up much of their traditional identity and fastened their hopes on "development," find themselves trapped between the familiar repetitions of rural life and the chafing monotony of waiting for change.

    It is also a narrative of finding exotic beauty, inspiration, inner strength, and unexpected love.

    Celebrating life with gusto and in inimitable style, he describes a journey fraught with discomfort, mishap, ecstasy, disillusionment, discovery and astonishing human encounters; a journey that would be acceptable madness in a white man but is regarded by the author s fellow Africans as an extraordinary and inexplicable expenditure of time and money.As Sihle's famous counterpart Paul Theroux, author of Dark Star Safari, comments, Dark Continent, My Black Arse is uniquely an African travel story: the story of 'an African travelling on his own money and motivation, from one end of Africa to the other'. An inspiring story, it carries the following warning: Reading this book might cause you to resign from your boring job, leave your nagging / ungrateful / insecure partner, stop merely existing and start living the life you have always longed and yearned for.

    After more than a decade of planning, John Higham and his wife September bid their high-tech jobs and suburban lives good-bye, packed up their home and set out with two children, ages eight and eleven, to travel around the world. In the course of the next 52 weeks they crossed 24 time zones, visited 28 countries and experienced a lifetime of adventures. Making their way across the world, the Highams discovered more than just different foods and cultures; they also learned such diverse things as a Chilean mall isn’t the best place to get your ears pierced, and that elephants appreciate flowers just as much as the next person.  But most importantly, they learned about each other, and just how much a family can weather if they do it together. 360 Degrees Longitude employs Google’s wildly popular Google Earth as a compliment to the narrative. Using your computer you can spin the digital globe to join the adventure cycling through Europe, feeling the cold stare of a pride of lions in Africa, and breaking down in the Andes.  Packed with photos, video and text, the online Google Earth companion adds a dimension not possible with mere paper and ink.  Fly over the terrain of the Inca Trail or drill down to see the majesty of the Swiss Alps—without leaving the comfort of your chair.John Higham is an aerospace engineer with an expertise in satellites. He is also an avid traveler, frequently writing and lecturing on his own experience traversing the globe. The Highams live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit him online at www.360DegreesLongitude.com.The Voyages of Tim Vetter interviews 360 author John Higham about what it is like to travel with children, his bucket list and what he and his family have been up to since traveling around the world. Available at http://bit.ly/podcast360 or on search for "360 Degrees Longitude" on your favorite podcast store.

    A lioness prises open the door of a terrified couple. A leopard helps itself to a family’s picnic breakfast. A fleeing impala leaps through an open car window. A lion charges around inside a busy rest camp. A hyaena snatches a baby from a tent. A tourist takes a bath in a croc-infested dam… These are just a few of the 101 jaw-dropping sightings, scrapes and encounters in this collection of extraordinary true stories from the roads, camps, picnic sites and walking trails of South Africa’s Kruger National Park, as told by the very people who experienced them. There are no game ranger tales here – each and every story happened to an ordinary Kruger visitor doing what over a million tourists do in this spectacular reserve each year. It is a book to keep by your bedside in Kruger, to dip into at home when you’re missing the bush, to lend to friends who’ve never visited Kruger or to pore over before your next trip. Just don’t expect to ever sleep soundly in a safari tent again…

    His arrival at his destination, the legendary tower of Qabus, although a wonder in itself, it not nearly so amazing as the thoroughly captivating, at times zany, record of his adventures. In addition to its entertainment value, The Road to Oxiana also serves as a rare account of the architectural treasures of a region now inaccessible to most Western travellers. When Paul Fussell "rediscovered" The Road to Oxiana in his recent book Abroad, he whetted the appetite of a whole new generation of readers. In his new introduction, written especially for this volume, Fussell writes: "Reading the book is like stumbling into a modern museum of literary kinds presided over by a benign if eccentric curator. Here armchair travellers will find newspaper clippings, public signs and notices, official forms, letters, diary entries, essays on current politics, lyric passages, historical and archaeological dissertations, brief travel narratives (usually of comic-awful delays and disasters), and--the triumph of the book--at least twenty superb comic dialogues, some of them virtually playlets, complete with stage directions and musical scoring."

    Praised by travel experts across the spectrum, from Glamour to The Women’s Review of Books, from The Whole Earth Catalog to American Express, U.S. News and World Report, and Parade, and written about in over forty major dailies, A Journey of One’s Own has become an established title in the travel book category.Although geared to women and including much information specific to women (how to deal with sexual harassment, for example) A Journey of One’s Own has also found an audience with men who value the extensive information and excellent advice that is not gender-specific.The third edition sports a livelier and more compact text design, a smaller format, and shorter page count. The author has thoroughly updated the material and added new sections on health, safety, and traveling during times of international upheaval.Yet, the basic structure has been maintained: excerpts from many women’s travel stories are interlaced with -detailed advice on practical matters (how to stay healthy, be safe, avoid theft, etc.). And the author’s own stories, which reflect on political and cultural explorations from her extensive travels, are engaging and thoughtful, and add depth to discussion of issues such as getting acquainted with new cultures, accepting hospitality, bargaining, and communicating without language."Thalia Zepatos is . . . teacher, spokeswoman, and heroine of sorts to a generation of travelers, both women and men, who understand travel as more than the periodic recreational migration that our commercial culture promotes."—Seattle Times"Superlatives generally make us suspicious, but we must say: This is THE best women’s travel resource we’ve seen, ever. . . . It’s authoritative; it’s supportive; it’s amusing; it really does have it all."—New York Daily NewsThalia Zepatos is the author of Adventures in Good Company and Women for a Change: A Grassroots Guide to Activism and Politics.

    Philip Ells dreamed of turquoise seas, sandy beaches and palm trees, and he found these in the tiny Pacific island state of Tuvalu. But neither his Voluntary Service Overseas briefing pack nor his legal training could prepare him for what happened there.He learned to deal with rapes, murders, incest, the unforgivable crime of pig theft and to look a shark in the eye. But he never dared ask the octogenarian Tuvaluan chief why he sat immobilised by a massive rock permanently resting on his groin.Well, you wouldn't, would you?This is the story of a UK lawyer colliding with a Pacific island culture. The fallout is moving, dramatic, bewildering and often hilarious.