Adventure Writing

Gemma loves the quiet life of her bookshop, the Bookworm—a haven for book lovers in a quaint town in the heart of Derbyshire. But everything changes when Gemma discovers the body of local author Dominic Westley during the shop’s latest book signing event. When the police rule the death as an accidental overdose, Dominic’s estranged widow points the finger at one of his past lovers. Gemma and her trusty assistant, Mavis, won’t rest until they uncover the truth. Was it an accidental overdose or something more sinister?

This gripping story of courage and achievement is the account of Robert Falcon Scott's last fateful expedition to the Antarctic, as told by surviving expedition member Apsley Cherry-Garrard. Cherry-Garrard, whom Scott lauded as a tough, efficient member of the team, tells of the journey from England to South Africa and southward to the ice floes. From there began the unforgettable polar journey across a forbidding and inhospitable region.

Starting in November 2013 in a forest in Rwanda, where a modest spring spouts a trickle of clear, cold water, Levison Wood set forth on foot, aiming to become the first person to walk the entire length of the Nile. He followed the river for nine months, over 4,000 miles, through six nations - Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, the Republic of Sudan, and Egypt - to the Mediterranean coast.

The Great Railway Bazaar is Paul Theroux's account of his epic journey by rail through Asia. Filled with evocative names of legendary train routes - the Direct-Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Delhi Mail from Jaipur, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Hikari Super Express to Kyoto, and the Trans-Siberian Express - it describes the many places, cultures, sights and sounds he experienced and the fascinating people he met.

On a beautiful summer afternoon in 1998, Dan Stephens, a 22-year-old canoeist, was leading a trip deep into Ontario's Quetico Provincial Park. He stepped into a gap among cedar trees to look for the next portage - and did not return. More than four hours later, Dan awakened from a fall with a lump on his head and stumbled deeper into the woods, confused. Three years later, Jason Rasmussen, a third-year medical student who loved the forest's solitude, walked alone into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on a crisp fall day.

They shouldn't have tear gassed best-selling (bald) author Adam Fletcher. It ruined his supposedly normal holiday in Istanbul, made him curious, and began a quest to visit places everyone else is trying to escape from, and tourists don't normally go to. In this hilarious travel memoir, he'll enter a blizzard in China armed with only biscuits; pose as a scientist to sneak into Chernobyl; be chased by Croatian police boats en route to Liberland (the world's newest country); become a reluctant diving board star in a North Korean water park, and much more.

Delhi exists in a kind of quantum state: In Delhi, all things are true at once. When the Big Apple no longer felt big enough, Dave and Jenny moved to a city of 16 million people and, seemingly, twice that many horns honking at once. Delirious Delhi depicts India's capital as the two experienced it, from office life in the rising tech hubs to the traffic jam philosophy that keeps people sane in the gridlock leading to them. With only their sense of humour as their guide, Dave and Jenny set out to explore a city in which ancient stone monuments compete with glass-clad shopping malls to define the landscape.

Named one of Time Magazine International's 30 most important people of 2005, Maud Fontenoy presents us with a terrific, entertaining adventure story on the high seas as she challenges the Pacific Ocean - a feat no woman before her ever accomplished. Already the first woman to row alone across the North Atlantic, Maud raised the bar to defy the elements, the daunting solitude, and the circling sharks of the South Pacific on her second solo voyage.

The “mountain men” were the hunters and trappers who fiercely strode the Rocky Mountains in the early to mid-1800s. They braved the elements in search of the skins of beavers and other wild animals, to sell or barter for goods. The lifestyle of the mountain men could be harsh, existing as they did among animals, and spending most of their days and nights living and camping out in the great unexplored wilds of the Rockies.

Over the years, authors, artists and amblers aplenty have felt the pull of the Thames, and now travel writer Tom Chesshyre is following in their footsteps. He's walking the length of the river from the Cotswolds to the North Sea - a winding journey of over 200 miles. Join him for an illuminating stroll past meadows, churches, palaces, country (and council) estates, factories and dockyards.

After accelerating their studies and graduating high school early, two teenagers set off from their hometown in Minnesota to embark on a 2,200-mile canoe journey up the heart of North America. Their destination: the permafrost shores of Hudson Bay. Inspired by a passion for the simple life, where gadgets and schedules are replaced by nature and its harsh beauty, the duo found something that many believe is lost: a true adventure.

Taking 36 songs from his back catalogue, folk-punk icon Frank Turner explores his songwriting process. Find out the stories behind the songs forged in the hedonistic years of the mid-2000s North London scene, the ones perfected in Nashville studios and everything in between. Some of these songs arrive fully formed, as if they've always been there; some take graft and endless reworking to find 'the one'. In exploring them all, Turner reflects with eloquence, insight and self-deprecating wit on exactly what it is to be a songwriter.

During his remarkable lifetime, Harold Gatty became one of the world's great navigators (in 1931, he and Wiley Post flew around the world in a record-breaking eight days) and, to the benefit of posterity, recorded in this book much of his accumulated knowledge about pathfinding both on land and at sea. Applying methods used by primitive peoples and early explorers, the author reveals how to determine location, study wind directions and reflections in the sky, even how to use the senses of smell and hearing to find your way in the wilderness, in a desert, in snow-covered areas, and on the ocean.

In this thrilling road trip from "Peking to Paris", a woman tries to save her car, her marriage, and her confidence from breaking down. In May 2007, leaving China’s Great Wall is Car 84, one of 128 antique autos racing in the Peking to Paris Motor Challenge. It’s guided by one Dina Bennett, the world’s least likely navigator: a daydreamer prone to carsickness, riddled with self-doubt, and married to a thrill-seeking perfectionist who is half-human, half-racecar. What could possibly go wrong?

In 2018, amateur cyclist Jenny Graham left family and friends behind in Scotland to become the fastest woman to cycle around the world. Alone and unsupported, she crossed the finish line at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin four months later, smashing the female record by nearly three weeks. With infectious wit and honesty, Jenny brings listeners into her remarkable Round the World adventure, as she takes on four continents, 16 countries – and countless cups of coffee.

Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East and the Antipodes, this is no ordinary travel guide. From profane pilgrim badges and Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with mysterious medieval witches, this book mixes fact and folklore to offer an entertaining encyclopaedia of wondrous stories and peoples. Offering a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages blurs the distinction between real and imagined places.

Lost on Purpose is the nonfiction adventure narrative of a former technology executive who took leave of the real world to reinvent himself as a 21st-century mountain man. In October-November 2013, Patrick Taylor crossed the Rocky Mountains alone on foot. He passed through one of the largest wilderness areas in the lower 48 to reach and retrace the route of Lewis and Clark in the winter. The sacrifices - vocationally, financially, emotionally - are measured against the benefits by the author in a refreshingly honest, humorous, and inspirational fashion.

By the best-selling author of Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock ‘n’ Roll and Last Train the Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley, this dazzling new book of profiles is a culmination of Peter Guralnick’s remarkable work, which from the start has encompassed the full sweep of blues, gospel, country, and rock 'n' roll.

When Michael Palin was researching his novel Hemingway's Chair, his interest was stimulated by Hemingway's appetite for travel and "Papa's" evocations of the places he knew. In pursuit of Hemmingway, Palin begins at the beginning, in Oak Park, Idaho, then travels to Italy where Hemingway served in the Ambulance Brigade in the First World War. Then on to Paris in the "Roaring Twenties", bull-running at Pamplona and Hemingway's love affair with Spain.

Join Michael Wigge as he immerses himself into fascinating subcultures, rides with Amish farmers in old-fashioned buggies, sleeps on the street with the homeless, and, with the help from alternative lifestylers, learns to nourish himself with flowers. Wigge had only three concerns during his travels: How do I get some food? How will I get to my next destination? Where can I sleep? …all without money! This unusual travel diary combines adventure with humor and contains surprising revelations about when money is really needed - and when it's not.