Tales of heroics, wrecks and rescues are all captured in this unique collection of epic tales that will have fans of the show and readers alike setting sail for adventures on the frigid Bering Sea.

    After serving customers and locking the doors for the night, the kids began their regular cleanup to ready the restaurant for the following day. But then something went horribly wrong. Just before midnight, someone muscled into the place, robbed the store of $581 and kidnapped the four employees. Over the next two days, investigators searched in vain for the missing crewmembers before their bodies were discovered more than twenty miles away. The killer or killers were never caught. Join Julie Young on an exploration of one of the most baffling cold cases in Indiana history.

    But, after a broken engagement and a broken heart, he desperately needed a change of scenery. The ambitious plan he cooked up went a bit overboard in that department; Knighton set out to visit every single one of America's National Parks, from Acadia to Zion. Leave Only Footprints is the memoir of his year spent traveling across the United States, a journey that yielded his "On the Trail" series, which quickly became one of CBS Sunday Morning's most beloved segments. In this smart, informative, and often hilarious book, he'll share how his journey through these natural wonders, unchanged by man, ended up changing his worldview on everything from God to politics to love and technology. Whether it's waking up early for a naked scrub in an Arkansas bathhouse or staying up late to stargaze along our loneliest highway, Knighton goes behind the scenery to provide an unfiltered look at America. In the tradition of books like A Walk in the Woods or Turn Right at Machu Picchu, this is an irresistible mix of personal narrative and travelogue-some well-placed pop culture references, too-and a must-read for any of the 331 million yearly National Parks visitors.

    The Jim Corbett Omnibus includes three enduring tales of Corbett's encounters with man-eaters.Man-eaters of Kumaon contains fascinating stories of tracking and shooting of man-eaters in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of the last century. The stories in The Temple Tiger display Corbett's acute awareness of sights, sounds, and life in the Indian forests, as well as his love for the human beings living in the hunting terrain. Finally, perhaps the most exciting of all of Corbett's jungle tales, The Man-eating Leopard of Rudraprayag is a gripping narrative of a notorious leopard which spread terror in the hills of the colonial United Provinces.Dramatic yet reflective, Corbett's writings are coloured by his deep concern and sympathy for the natural world as well as the local people and their traditions and customs. This vividly illustrated collection will appeal equally to Corbett lovers and to those concerned with the environment and wildlife.Table Of ContentsMan-eaters of KumaonAuthor's NoteThe Champawat Man-eatersRobinThe Chowgarh TigersThe Bachelor of PowalgarhThe Mohan Man-eaterThe Fish of My DreamThe Kanda Man-eaterThe Pipal Pani TigerThe Thak Man-eaterJust TigersThe Temple Tiger and More Man-eaters of KumaonThe Temple TigerThe Muktesar Man-eaterThe Panar Man-eaterThe Chuka Man-eaterThe Talla Des Man-eaterEpilogueThe Man-eating Leopard of RudraprayagThe Pilgrim RoadThe Man-eaterTerrorArrivalInvestigationThe First KillLocating the LeopardThe Second KillPreparationsMagicA Near EscapeThe Gin-trapThe Hunters HuntedRetreatFishing InterludeDeath of a GoatCyanide PoisoningTouch and GoA Lesson in CautionA Wild Boar HuntVigil on a Pine-treeMy Night of TerrorLeopard Fights LeopardA Shot in the DarkEpilogue

    More than 75 years after his vanishing, Ruess stirs the kinds of passion and speculation accorded such legendary doomed American adventurers as Into the Wild’s Chris McCandless and Amelia Earhart. “I have not tired of the wilderness; rather I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time. I prefer the saddle to the street car and the star sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.”  So Everett Ruess wrote in his last letter to his brother. And earlier, in a valedictory poem, ”Say that I starved; that I was lost and weary; That I was burned and blinded by the desert sun; Footsore, thirsty, sick with strange diseases; Lonely and wet and cold . . . but that I kept my dream!"                                              Wandering alone with burros and pack horses through California and the Southwest for five years in the early 1930s, on voyages lasting as long as ten months, Ruess also became friends with photographers Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange, swapped prints with Ansel Adams, took part in a Hopi ceremony, learned to speak Navajo, and was among the first "outsiders" to venture deeply into what was then (and to some extent still is) largely a little-known wilderness.  When he vanished without a trace in November 1934, Ruess left behind thousands of pages of journals, letters, and poems, as well as more than a hundred watercolor paintings and blockprint engravings. A Ruess mystique, initiated by his parents but soon enlarged by readers and critics who, struck by his remarkable connection to the wild, likened him to a fledgling John Muir. Today, the Ruess cult has more adherents—and more passionate ones—than at any time in the seven-plus decades since his disappearance. By now, Everett Ruess is hailed as a paragon of solo exploration, while the mystery of his death remains one of the greatest riddles in the annals of American adventure. David Roberts began probing the life and death of Everett Ruess for National Geographic Adventure magazine in 1998. Finding Everett Ruess is the result of his personal journeys into the remote areas explored by Ruess, his interviews with oldtimers who encountered the young vagabond and with Ruess’s closest living relatives, and his deep immersion in Ruess’s writings and artwork.  It is an epic narrative of a driven and acutely perceptive young adventurer’s expeditions into the wildernesses of landscape and self-discovery, as well as an absorbing investigation of the continuing mystery of his disappearance.  In this definitive account of Ruess's extraordinary life and the enigma of his vanishing, David Roberts eloquently captures Ruess's tragic genius and ongoing fascination.

    Seven months later, after joining a party of emigrants led by George Donner, they reached the Sierra Nevada Mountains as the first heavy snows of the season closed the pass ahead of them. In early December, starving and desperate, Sarah and fourteen others set out for California on snowshoes and, over the next thirty-two days, endured almost unfathomable hardships and horrors. In this gripping narrative, Daniel James Brown sheds new light on one of the most infamous events in American history. Following every painful footstep of Sarah's journey with the Donner Party, Brown produces a tale both spellbinding and richly informative.

    After twenty-three years and three combat tours with the 75th Ranger Regiment, he’s got a Silver Star, a titanium knee and a plan to see America on his Road King motorcycle. No more patrols, no more firefights. Nothing more dangerous than passing the old work van rumbling along in front of him as he rides toward Hunter-Stewart and the sunset of his career in the Army. But just as he twists the throttle to pass, a woman’s bare foot smears a bloody print on the van’s back window. Roman turns back to help, triggering a chain of events that puts his brother Virgil and two old friends in the crosshairs of a murderer. Saving them sends Roman on a desperate ride from Savannah to DC, where he discovers that the past he has been trying to forget has not forgotten him. It’s been waiting patiently, holding his secret like a time bomb.

    A young man is murdered for his prized pet fish. An Asian tycoon buys a single specimen for $150,000. Meanwhile, a pet detective chases smugglers through the streets of New York. Delving into an outlandish world of obsession, paranoia, and criminality, The Dragon Behind the Glass tells the story of a fish like none other. Treasured as a status symbol believed to bring good luck, the Asian arowana, or “dragon fish,” is a dramatic example of a modern paradox: the mass-produced endangered species. While hundreds of thousands are bred in captivity, the wild fish has become a near-mythical creature. From the South Bronx to Borneo and beyond, journalist Emily Voigt follows the trail of the arowana to learn its fate in nature. With a captivating blend of personal reporting, history, and science, Voigt traces our fascination with aquarium fish back to the era of exploration when intrepid naturalists stood on the cutting edge of modern science, discovering new species around the globe. In an age when freshwater fish now comprise one of the most rapidly vanishing groups of animals, she unearths a surprising truth behind the arowana’s rise to fame—one that calls into question how we protect the world’s rarest species. An elegant examination of the human conquest of nature, The Dragon Behind the Glass revels in the sheer wonder of life’s diversity and lays bare our deepest desire—to hold on to what is wild.

    He's like Huckleberry Finn Sort of. He's a twenty-two-year-old housepainter living at his parents' house in Southern California, across a four-lane street from a gated subdivision. Now this suburban innocent is striking out on the only type of adventure he can afford: he's getting into his station wagon and going camping in the desert. Join Mark Sundeen on his rumble-tumble journey across the Southwest, and find that the mystical home of Butch Cassidy, Chief Cochise, and Major John Wesley Powell has been transformed into something entirely strange yet unexpectedly familiar. It's a new West of low-rent trailer parks and high-dollar houseboats, of hot-springs singles scenes and homeless river guides and hapless soul-searchers, for sun-beat old-timers chewing the cud of the land and survivalist teenagers hiding out form the Man. It's a place far from the America you thought you lived in, but close enough to drive to in your car. Car Camping is a modern-day western adventure in the spirit of Mark Twain and Jack London, and you're invited to come along.

    The tent had been waterproofed with a mixture of paraffin and gasoline; in seconds it was burning out of control, and more than 8,000 people were trapped inside. Drawing on interviews with hundreds of survivors, O'Nan skillfully re-creates the horrific events and illuminates the psychological oddities of human behavior under stress: the mad scramble for the exits; the hero who tossed dozens of children to safety before being trampled to death. Brilliantly constructed and exceptionally moving, The Circus Fire is history at its most compelling.

    A detour from U.S. 66 to visit the Grand Canyon on a June morning in 1963 inspired Fletcher to walk the length of the Canyon below the rim. It is also a record of the Grand Canyon as it was before the massive influx of tourism. Fletcher's descriptions of the spectacular geography, the wildlife, and the remnants of much older cultures serve to remind us that the Grand Canyon has been around longer than humankind and may well outlast us.

    But in eagerly pursuing what would a century later become known as the "American dream," this optimistic-yet-motley crew of emigrants was met with a chilling nightmare; in the following months, their jingoistic excitement would be replaced by desperate cries for help that would fall silent in the deadly snow-covered mountains of the Sierra Nevada.We know these early pioneers as the Donner Party, a name that has elicited horror since the late 1840s. Now, celebrated historian Michael Wallis—beloved for his myth-busting portraits of legendary American figures—continues his life’s work of parsing fact from fiction to tell the true story of one of the most embroidered sagas in Western history.Wallis begins the story in 1846, a momentous "year of decision" for the nation, when incredible territorial strides were being made in Texas, New Mexico, and California. Against this dramatic backdrop, an unlikely band of travelers appeared, stratified in age, wealth, education and ethnicity. At the forefront were the Donners: brothers George and Jacob, true sons of the soil determined to tame the wild land of California; and the Reeds, headed by adventurous, business-savvy patriarch James. In total, the Donner-Reed group would reach eighty-seven men, women, and children, and though personal motives varied—bachelors thirsting for adventure, parents wanting greater futures for their children—everyone was linked by the same unwavering belief that California was theirs for the taking.Skeptical of previous accounts of how the group ended up in peril, Wallis has spent years retracing its ill-fated journey, uncovering hundreds of new documents that illuminate how a combination of greed, backbiting, and recklessness led the group to become hopelessly snowbound at the infamous Donner Pass in present-day California. Climaxing with the grim stories of how the party’s paltry rations soon gave way to unimaginable hunger, Wallis not only details the cannibalism that has in perpetuity haunted their legacy but also the heroic rescue parties that managed to reach the stranded, only to discover that just forty-eight had survived the ordeal.An unflinching and historically invaluable account of the darkest side of Manifest Destiny, The Best Land Under Heaven offers a brilliant, revisionist examination of one of America's most calamitous and sensationalized catastrophes.

    

    It was the worst bloodbath to take place in more than a century in the heart of the supreme authority of the world's one billion Roman Catholics. Four hours later, the Vatican announced that the lance corporal, twenty-three-year-old Cédric Tornay, had shot the couple, then committed suicide in "a fit of madness" brought on by frutstration with the unit's discipline - a conclusion it reaffirmed after a nine-month internal inquiry.But as John Follain's hard-hitting exposé shows, the official report was a travesty, a tissue of suppositions, contradictions, and omissions. Based on an exhaustive three-year investigation - the first independent attempt to establish the truth - 'City of Secrets' reveals how the Vatican, the oldest and most secretive autocracy in the world, staged an elaborate plot to obstruct justice and hide the scandals it dares not confess. Echoing the pace and plotting of a highstakes thriller, Follain's true-life tale of intrigue moves from the guards' barracks and the pope's palace in Vatican City to Paris, Berlin, and the Swiss Alps, and features a fascinating cast: an old, suffering John Paul II; his chief bodyguard, formerly accused of spying for the Soviet bloc; a mysterious priest punished by the Vatican; and the powerful Opus Dei sect.Timely and explosive, 'City of Secrets' is the story of a still-unsolved crime committed on holy territory, and of a systematic attempt to hide the fatal failings of a security force charged with protecting one of the world's most influential leaders.

    While millions gaze at its cliffs each year, only 15,000 float through the canyon on the Colorado River. A landmark portrait of the Grand Canyon, this is the only photography book to document this amazing journey from river level. Now this classic is back in print, with an updated preface and introduction and a dozen new photographs. A journal in photos and words, The Hidden Canyon captures the desert landscape and the thrill of the rapids. Edward Abbey's journalfilled with wry humor and respect for the canyondescribes the journey as the dories (small wooden boats) alternately float and charge through the breathtaking landscapes and some of the roughest white water in North America.