Exploration Historical Fiction

Based on a real-life event, an epic historical novel from the award-winning author of Things in Jars, The Night Ship illuminates the lives of two characters: a girl shipwrecked on an island off Western Australia and, 300 years later, a boy finding a home with his grandfather on the very same island.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

The blue box Elfangor used to create the Animorphs has been found by a kid named David. David has no idea what he has - or what it can do. But Marco does. And when he sees David with it, he knows the Animorphs have to get that box. At any cost. But what should have been a simple plan ends up going horribly wrong, leaving David is on the run with the Animorphs. Now they have only two choices: Turn David over to the Yeerks, or make him an Animorph.

In May 1845, Sir John Franklin, commander of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, departed England to seek a navigable route across the top of the Americas. He and his 128 men never returned. Four years later, Royal Navy Lieutenant Frederick Robinson and Assistant Surgeon Edward Adams are determined to find the men missing in the Arctic. While they are united in purpose, they are divided in ambition. The pious and idealistic Adams strives to save his boyhood hero. Robinson hungers for promotion through the Admiralty ranks.

When a spontaneous time leap sends Nickolas Flux back to Ernest Shackleton's ill-fated Endurance Expedition to Antarctica, what's a teenage history buff to do? Try to avoid becoming stranded at the bottom of the world, of course!

Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and a phantom. Destined to go down in Soviet history books as 'Ivan the Terrible', the most deadly fighter pilot of the Korean War, one moment of madness sees Yefgenii throwing his reputation to the wind. Exiled to a remote Arctic base, his name unknown and victories uncelebrated, he must endure a fate worse than death: anonymity. But when a man arrives from Moscow's Space Committee in search of a volunteer prepared to sacrifice himself for his country, Yefgenii seizes his one last chance of immortality.

Meet the Secret Explorers - a band of brainiac kids from all around the world. Everyone in this diverse group of young experts has a speciality, from outer space to dinosaurs, and each story follows a character who gets chosen for a "secret exploration". In this fun, fact-filled instalment, Leah the biology explorer and Connor the marine expert set off into the Mexican desert and have to rescue a pack of wolf cubs while avoiding dust storms!

Theodosia Throckmorton is in a fix. Allowed to attend a reception given by one of the directors of her parents museum, she stumbles across Mr. Tetley of the British Museum in most unusual circumstances! Since Theo has last seen him in a showdown in an ancient Egyptian tomb, his reappearance could mean only one thing: the Serpents of Chaos are back.

After China announced a space mission to place its own flag next to the one US astronauts planted during the Apollo 11 mission, few people bat an eyelid. Shortly after this statement, Charlie Stephens, an 81-year-old former filmmaker, is murdered. The incident is made to look like an accident, but why?

Isaac Stanfield leaves his home to become a sailor on a merchantman, the Sweet Rose, and through ingenuity and sheer luck, finds himself in the middle of the drama and explorations that precede the departure of the Mayflower for New England in 1620. Exploration is Isaac's coming-of-age story, capturing the turbulence of the times through his observations and experiences. Suspenseful, poignant, and expertly researched, David Tory's novel brings to life an engaging cultural history of English seafaring exploration and intrigue in the early 17th century.

After twelve years of marriage to English explorer James Cook, Elizabeth has yet to spend an entire year with her husband. In their house by the Thames, she moves to the rhythms of her life as a society wife, but there is so much more to her than meets the eye. She has the fortitude to manage the house and garden, raise their children, and face unbearable sorrow by herself - in fact, she is sometimes in thrall to her own independence.

Dive into the heart of Atlantis at the pinnacle of its glory, where intrigue and betrayal threaten to shatter a divine peace. Meet Serellia and Dilala, devoted cultists of the goddess of war, as they navigate a treacherous web of conspiracy and deceit in their quest to thwart a notorious Minoan spy. Follow Barekbaal, a Canaanite merchant, as he strives to carve out a simple existence for himself and his crew, only to find himself ensnared in the machinations of foreign powers and ancient deities.

A young sapling sprouts! It is excited about its new world. It yearns to connect with all things that pass by. Unfortunately, human beings are too busy. So, it patiently waits and watches for a thousand years. Follow its magical journey as humanity evolves and trees begin to slowly disappear. Until... a girl far in the future finds the seeking tree. With your help, she can change the course of history!

A charming rogue, Dan Courtney is learning fast that it takes more than a little charm to lay the groundwork for a railroad. Particularly when the plan is to build it across some of the roughest and most dangerous territory on earth. Courtney's been hired to survey the land that would link up the Uganda Railway to the Anglo-Egyptian railroad. Running through desert, jungle and mountains, this is one line—and story—with more twists and turns than the New York City subway system.

In this swashbuckling new adventure of the Curiosity Quest educational series for kids, listeners aged five and up will join Curio — short for Curious — on a daring time-travel journey to the high seas. When Curio activates his mysterious device, he’s transported to a pirate ship in the heart of the Caribbean, where treasure maps, sea battles, and salty legends come to life!

When thirteen-year-old Max Tilt happens upon his great-great-great-grandfather Jules Verne’s unfinished, unpublished manuscript, The Lost Treasures, he doesn’t realize that he’s found the answers to all his problems. And Max has a lot of problems—his mother is sick, his father is out of work, and his home is about to be foreclosed on. But when Max and his cousin Alex discover that Verne’s last work reveals everything he wrote was fact, not fiction, they realize that the book holds the key to something incredibly valuable. A treasure that can save his house—and maybe his entire family.

In this last book in the trilogy about Gabrielle Allan, the listener finds Gay and her great-aunt, Belle, about to start a new life in a setting far different from their much-loved Drovers Road. The sheep station of Cape Lost is now Gay’s responsibility, and regardless of her three years’ study at the Massey Agricultural College, both the isolation and tasks ahead seem alarming. Despite its remote and nearly inaccessible location, a surprising cast of new and old characters converge on the station’s windswept, sea-edged expanse.

This story follows a young Spanish Jew, Maximo ha-Levi Constanego, in the land of Mesoamerica. He left his homeland of Spain as the Islamic caliphate gasped its last collective breath of occupation. The Reconquista, the reconquering of Spain, was well underway. Even as newfound freedom blossomed for some, it was not so for the Jews. Maximo was spirited out of the country by his anxious mother, on a ship captained by his Catholic uncle, Rodrigo Constanego.

Josh, the young pirate Guardian, finds himself in danger again when pirates flock under the command of a man calling himself "The Rebel Prince". When they try to seize his Stone of Truth, Josh learns that his stone, which keeps his epilepsy at bay and gives him special powers, is just one of three stones that once belonged to the Guardian's necklace, broken by the Rebel Prince hundreds of years ago. The necklace was forged by the Guardian as a symbol of peace. But the prince didn’t want peace; he wanted to drive the colonists out. And now his descendent has the same mad plan.

A 10-year-old's new home on an exotic Caribbean island proves so fascinating she quickly forgets she didn't want to leave Texas. After all, where better than a jungle world teeming with voodoo, mystery, and a really pesky zombie, to indulge her favorite pastime: snooping. In this humorous mystery, award-winning author Jinx Schwartz transports the listener to another time and place where rivers, and little girls, ran wild and free.