Showing titles in Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

King Louis Philippe II created the Foreign Legion in 1831 as a way to rid France of penniless immigrants and others considered a liability to the French establishment. The Foreign Legion still exists today as an elite army of modern mercenaries from around the world, in the service of la France. Considered a haven for the dregs of society, joining the Foreign Legion was rumored to be simple, but it wasn't.

Keith Foskett refused to let his dark mood define his limitations. Unknowingly suffering with depression, he took to hiking the wilds of Scotland to face the inner demons that threatened to gnaw him to the bone. From the craggy Highlands of the Cape Wrath Trail and West Highland Way to the canals crisscrossing the low country, 600 miles of unforgiving hiking terrain called his name.

For decades, Demi Moore has been synonymous with celebrity. From iconic film roles to high-profile relationships, Moore has never been far from the spotlight - or the headlines. Even as Demi was becoming the highest paid actress in Hollywood, however, she was always outrunning her past, just one step ahead of the doubts and insecurities that defined her childhood. Inside Out is a story of survival, success, and surrender - a wrenchingly honest portrayal of one woman’s at once ordinary and iconic life.

Canoeing the Congo narrates the journey of Phil Harwood, who undertook an epic five-month solo attempt to canoe the Congo River in war-torn Central Africa. It was a historic 'first descent' from the true source in the highlands of Zambia. Just short of 3,000 miles long, the Congo River is the eighth longest in the world and the deepest river in the world, with a flow rate second only to the Amazon. Along the way, Phil encountered numerous waterfalls, huge rapids, man-eating crocodiles, hippos, aggressive snakes...

Rejected by her mother and excluded by her school, Flip is a little girl desperate to be loved. ‘Am I ugly, Mummy?’ are the first words that little Phillipa says to Mike and Casey as she stomps into their lives on a hot August afternoon. She has a Barbie doll in one hand and a pink vanity...

'A wonderful book, I don't expect to read a better memoir for a very long time.' ROBERT WEBB, author of How Not To Be A Boy 'Funny and heart breaking in equal measure' FERN BRADY, author of Strong Female Character 'The guiltiest of literary pleasures: a memoir that you open with trepidation and...

Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don’t coexist easily: we value individuality and self-reliance, yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this intricately crafted and thought-provoking book, Sebastian Junger examines this tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human. 

Ryan and Phil had always been inseparable. Twins born 35 minutes apart, Ryan was the protective one, constantly looking out for his younger brother. They can't remember how old they were when the abuse started, but they can remember their uncle very clearly. A frequent visitor to their home in Lincoln, he lavished their family with expensive treats. School holidays and weekends were spent visiting him, when he would often take the two little boys aside to play the games he liked. Trapped with him, day after day, year after year, the abuse continued until Ryan and Phil turned 16.

The incredible true story of Louis Zamperini, now a major motion picture directed by Angelina Jolie. THE INTERNATIONAL NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER In 1943 a bomber crashes into the Pacific Ocean. Against all odds, one young lieutenant survives. Louise Zamperini had already transformed himself from...

When her father died, singer songwriter Roxanne de Bastion inherited a piano she knew had been in her family for over a hundred years. But it is only when she finds a cassette recording of her grandfather, Stephen, playing one of his compositions, the true and almost unbelievable history of the piano, this man and her family begins to unravel.

By 1930, no place in the world was less well explored than Greenland. The native Inuit had occupied the relatively accessible west coast for centuries. The east coast, however, was another story. In August 1930, Henry George Watkins (nicknamed “Gino”), a twenty-three-year-old British explorer, led thirteen scientists and explorers on an ambitious expedition to the east coast of Greenland and into its vast and forbidding interior to set up a permanent meteorological base on the icecap, 8,200 feet above sea level.

From world-renowned scientist Jane Goodall, as seen in the National Geographic documentary Jane, comes a poignant memoir about her spiritual epiphany and an appeal for why everyone can find a reason for hope. Dr. Jane Goodall's revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe preserve...

Edmund Hillary - A Biography is the story of the New Zealand beekeeper who climbed Mount Everest. A man, who against expedition orders, drove his tractor to the South Pole; a man honored 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.

Four years after Therese Greenwood and her husband moved to Fort McMurray, Alberta, their new community was shattered by one of the worst wildfires in Canadian history. As the flames approached, they had only minutes to pack, narrowly escaping a fire that would rage for weeks, burn more than 85,000 hectares and force 80,000 people to flee. In this book, she tells her dramatic story, and contemplates mourning, memory, and rebuilding.

Interweaving memoir and good old fashioned ice adventure, Kim Stanley Robinson takes readers along on the journeys that have happened before and the journeys that may never happen again. In May of 1911, Robert Scott and the twenty-four men under his command said good-bye to the sun and settled...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER ONE OF CBC'S BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION BOOKS OF 2022 For fans of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild, the riveting story of the unsolved disappearance of an American backpacker in India—one of at least two dozen tourists who have met a similar fate in the remote and storied Parvati...

Here is the astonishing true story of Ruth Harkness, the Manhattan bohemian socialite who, against all but impossible odds, trekked to Tibet in 1936 to capture the most mysterious animal of the day: a bear that had for countless centuries lived in secret in the labyrinth of lonely cold mountains...

“In Fernanda Santos’ expert hands, the story of 19 men and a raging wildfire unfolds as a riveting, pulse-pounding account of an American tragedy; and also as a meditation on manhood, brotherhood and family love. The Fire Line is a great and deeply moving book about courageous men and women...

"...Damron's able narration carries listeners through this arduous journey with a steady tone that lightens at moments of joy and becomes grave at times of deep sadness and loss. While the tale has all of the trappings of a great adventure novel, neither the author nor Damron let listeners...