Travel Biography

Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances, from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life and his restless and ever-curious mind.

Dr. Philip Eyster has been in Christian ministry since 1976. He made his first international trip in 1981, and since then, has ministered in over 40 countries around the world. In addition to bringing humanitarian aid and disaster relief to many places around the globe, he has brought the gospel to jungle villages, desert tribes, schools, factories, hospitals, AIDS clinics, leper colonies, open-air markets, and countless transportation hubs.

On October 6, 1973, Ted Simon knew there was no going back. He loaded up his 500cc Triumph Tiger in the pouring rain and said good-bye to London. Over four years he rode 64,000 miles round the world. Breakdowns, revolutions, war, a spell in prison, and a Californian commune were all part of his experience, which was colored variously by utter despair and unimaginable joy. He was treated as a spy, a god, a welcome stranger and a curiosity

Bored and fed up with life, staring down a 50th birthday, Mike Tyler was looking for a change. Life had become routinized and unexciting. Maybe it was a mid-life crisis, or maybe just a yearning for one last big adventure. Mike decides to try hiking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, just to see what happens. Mike convinces his wife, Margo, to join him. Together, they embark on a five-month hike full of anticipation. They hike through some of the most stunning and remote places in the country on a trail full of unique, offbeat characters.

Fueled by a powerful curiosity - and by a need to see, feel, and hear, firsthand and close-up - Michael Crichton's journeys have carried him into worlds diverse and compelling - swimming with mud sharks in Tahiti, tracking wild animals through the jungle of Rwanda. This is a record of those travels - an exhilarating quest across the familiar and exotic frontiers of the outer world, a determined odyssey into the unfathomable, spiritual depths of the inner world.

Anthony Bourdain saw more of the world than nearly anyone. His travels took him from his hometown of New York to a tribal longhouse in Borneo, from cosmopolitan Buenos Aires, Paris and Shanghai to the stunning desert solitude of Oman’s Empty Quarter - and many places beyond. In World Travel, a life of experience is collected into an entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide that gives listeners an introduction to some of his favourite places. Featuring essential advice on how to get there, what to eat, where to stay and, in some cases, what to avoid.

A husband dead in a fiery crash. A son claimed by a killer’s hand. Tammy Horvath doesn’t think she’ll ever smile again. Strengthened by her faith, she bravely heads solo to Iceland to see the northern lights, where she climbs glaciers and ventures into caves before seizing the opportunity to travel more often. Tammy will take you on a journey of love, laughter, and inspirational life lessons as she swims in the crystal-clear Caribbean Sea, gets stuck atop one of Mexico’s pyramids, endures a tropical storm in the Bahamas, and hikes amid Yellowstone National Park’s spectacular scenery.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of The Penguin Lessons by Tom Michell, read by Bill Nighy. 'I was hoping against hope that the penguin would survive because as of that instant he had a name, and with his name came the beginning of a bond which would last a life-time.' Tom Michell is in his roaring 20's: single, free-spirited and seeking adventure.

When Dr. Sanjay Gupta travels the world for CNN to report on natural disasters, conflicts, and catastrophes, he illuminates the stories of the affected and the afflicted. But a few times in his career, while reporting abroad, he’s been asked to don his surgeon’s cap and gloves to intervene in high-stakes medical emergencies. Far from his controlled and highly regulated operating rooms, Gupta found himself trying to save lives in the most makeshift and trying conditions.

Stephen Alter was raised by American missionary parents in the hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he and his wife Ameeta, now live. Their idyllic existence was brutally interrupted when four armed intruders invaded their house and viciously attacked them, leaving them for dead. The violent assault and the trauma of almost dying left him questioning assumptions he had lived by since childhood. For the first time, he encountered the face of evil and the terror of the unknown.

Christopher Columbus needed a sponsor for a dangerous expedition, but the King of Portugal wasn't interested. He repackaged his proposal for the Queen of Spain. She put Columbus on retainer and the rest is history. Columbus may not have been the first to discover America, but he had a great publicist. That's where Jeff Blumenfeld comes in. For many years, using a PR specialty called adventure marketing, Jeff has connected explorers and their projects with corporate sponsors looking to demonstrate product performance in extreme conditions.

As Tammy explores mountains and beaches in paradise, she’s fueled by the allure of new cultures, creating memories that have made her who she is today. Throughout her island adventures to the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Curacao, as well as hikes through national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, surprises lurk at every turn—from navigating floods to fending off avian ambushes. Embracing the chaos, Tammy turns each misadventure into a story worth telling.

In Pole to Pole we join Michael Palin on the second of his epic challenges. Travelling from the North Pole to the South Pole, he experiences every extreme the globe has to offer. As he crosses 16 countries by train, truck, raft, Ski-Doo, barge, balloon and bicycle, he meets a diverse range of fascinating characters and landscapes while his own endurance is tested to the limit. With his customary aplomb, he plunges himself into the local cultures, starring in a crayfish documentary in Novgorod, attending a baby-rolling ceremony at a Cypriot wedding, and consulting an Mpulugu witch-doctor.

Carrot Quinn fears that she's become addicted to the Internet. The city makes her numb, and she's having trouble connecting with others. In a desperate move, she breaks away from everything to walk 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. It will be her first long-distance hike.

'We can give you a start. You will need a six foot by four foot piece of canvas and blanket. If you stay for three months we will refund your fare. You will need to fly TAA out of Cloncurry and advise me your date of arrival.' And so began the adventures and misadventures of young Roland Breckwoldt. It was 1960. He was not yet sixteen, and the unworldly Roland was leaving his home on the semi-agricultural fringes of Sydney to work as a stockman on the vast cattle stations of the Gulf Country of North Queensland.

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way. The route takes her through the valleys and snowy mountain passes of Europe and India to the scorching deserts of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the metal of her bicycle, Rozinante (named after Don Quixote's steed), becomes too hot to touch.

After years of watching Kenyan athletes win the world's biggest races, Adharanand Finn set out to discover just what it was that made them so fast - and to see if he could keep up. Packing up his life he moved from Devon to Iten, in Kenya, to eat with, interview, sleep beside and - most importantly – run with, some of the greatest runners in the world. In the distance rests his dream, to join the best of the Kenyan athletes in an epic first marathon across the Kenyan plains.

The third and most ambitious of Michael Palin's adventures is a voyage of epic proportions - the circumnavigation of the Pacific Rim. He travels for almost a year through the 18 countries that border the world's largest ocean, and is forced to negotiate mountains, plunging gorges, cross glaciers and dodge icebergs. Volcanoes also mark Palin's journey. He climbs one which has freshly erupted and follows great rivers like the Yangtze and the Amazon to some of the most remote places on earth.

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell’s account of his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and a portrait of disillusionment with his early politics. Orwell’s experiences include being shot in the neck by a sniper, and being forced into hiding as factions of the Left battled on the streets of Barcelona. Orwell entered Spain intending to gather an experience worth writing as well as to fight Fascism, and wrote Homage to Catalonia within months of his return.

This true-life wilderness survival epic recounts 17-year-old Alex Messenger's near-lethal encounter with a grizzly bear during a canoe trip in the Canadian tundra. The story follows Alex and his five companions as they paddle north through harrowing rapids and stunning terrain. Twenty-nine days into the trip, while out hiking alone, Alex is attacked by a barren-ground grizzly. Left for dead, he wakes to find that his summer adventure has become a struggle to stay alive.