With generous splashes of popular culture and human interest, the NPR Road Trips series introduces you not only to far-off locations and unusual destinations, but to the people who inhabit them - and seek them out. Each story focuses on real locations, real people, and real history in the thought-provoking, imaginative and entertaining way you’ve come to expect from NPR. Grand Canyon National Park is one of the planet’s Seven Natural Wonders, with 4.4 million visitors each year. Who keeps them safe, fed, and happy?

With generous splashes of popular culture and human interest, the NPR Road Trips series introduces you not only to far-off locations and unusual destinations, but to the people who inhabit themand seek them out. Each story focuses on real locations, real people, and real history in the thought-provoking, imaginative and entertaining way you've come to expect from NPR. Meet Colin Angus and Julie Wafael, who spent two years circumnavigating the globe using their hands and feet. Turn on the radio in Katmandu and hear music from the 70s. Learn how robot jockeys are solving a human rights problem in Dubai.

With generous splashes of popular culture and human interest, the NPR Road Trips series introduces you not only to far-off locations and unusual destinations, but to the people who inhabit them - and seek them out. Each story focuses on real locations, real people, and real history in the thought-provoking, imaginative and entertaining way you've come to expect from NPR. Prairie Dog Town in western Kansas. The Elvis Is Alive Museum in Wright City, Missouri. The Velvet Museum ("Velveteria") in Portland, Oregon. A 13-foot Styrofoam scale model of Stonehenge....

David Sedaris' collection of essays - including live recordings! - tells a most unconventional life story. With every clever turn of a phrase, Sedaris brings a view and a voice like no other to every unforgettable encounter. You can also listen to Sedaris in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.”

For more than 25 years, David Sedaris has been carving out a unique literary space, virtually creating his own genre. A Sedaris story may seem confessional, but is also highly attuned to the world outside. It opens our eyes to what is at absurd and moving about our daily existence. And it is almost impossible to listen without laughing.

Like a car alarm, bagpipe music, or a doorbell ringing in the middle of the night, hearing this all-new audio edition of The Bad Beginning will only upset you. This unique multi-voice recording brings the first book in Lemony Snicket's alarming A Series of Unfortunate Events to such terrible life that no one should really have to experience it.

Ever since Colin Firth's Mr Darcy emerged from the lake in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, the novels of Jane Austen have become more popular than ever, delighting millions of fans all over the world. Now, Alison Larkin's critically acclaimed narrations of Austen's six completed novels are brought together in this very special 200th anniversary audio edition. "Alison Larkin's narration will captivate listeners from the first sentence" raves AudioFile magazine about the Earphones Award-winning recording of Sense and Sensibility, which starts the collection.

Anthony Peardew is the keeper of lost things. Forty years ago he carelessly lost a keepsake from his beloved fiancée, Therese. That very same day, she died unexpectedly. Brokenhearted, Anthony sought consolation in rescuing lost objects - the things others have dropped, misplaced, or accidently left behind - and writing stories about them. Now, in the twilight of his life, Anthony worries that he has not fully discharged his duty to reconcile all the lost things with their owners.

The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America - majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes. If you’re going to take a hike, it’s probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaing guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way - and a couple of bears. Already a classic, A Walk in the Woods will make you long for the great outdoors (or at least a comfortable chair to sit and read in).

After the loss of her mother and her own battle with breast cancer, Joanna Teale returns to her graduate research on nesting birds in rural Illinois, determined to prove that her recent hardships have not broken her. She throws herself into her work from dusk to dawn, until her solitary routine is disrupted by the appearance of a mysterious child who shows up at her cabin barefoot and covered in bruises. The girl calls herself Ursa, and she claims to have been sent from the stars to witness five miracles.

Recruited by the US Army and Navy from small towns and elite colleges, more than 10,000 women served as codebreakers during World War II. While their brothers and boyfriends took up arms, these women moved to Washington and learned the meticulous work of codebreaking. Their efforts shortened the war, saved countless lives, and gave them access to careers previously denied to them.

The beloved actor shares fascinating and powerful lessons from the science of communication and teaches listeners to improve the way they relate to others using improv games, storytelling, and their own innate mind-reading abilities. With his trademark humor and frankness, Alan Alda explains what makes the out-of-the-box techniques he developed after his years as the host of Scientific American Frontiers so effective.

In his articles and in best-selling books such as The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan has established himself as one of our most important and beloved writers on modern man's place in the natural world. A new literary classic, Second Nature has become a manifesto not just for gardeners but for environmentalists everywhere.

In one day four lives weave together in unexpected ways. Virgil Salinas is shy and kindhearted and feels out of place in his crazy-about-sports family. Valencia Somerset, who is deaf, is smart, brave, and secretly lonely, and she loves everything about nature. Kaori Tanaka is a self-proclaimed psychic whose little sister, Gen, is always following her around. And Chet Bullens wishes the weird kids would just stop being so different so that he can concentrate on basketball.

Emmy-award winning gadfly Mike Rowe presents a ridiculously entertaining, seriously fascinating collection of his favorite episodes from America’s number-one short-form podcast, The Way I Heard It, along with a host of memories, ruminations, and insights. It’s a delightful collection of mysteries. A mosaic. A memoir. A charming, surprising must-have. Mike Rowe’s The Way I Heard It collects 35 fascinating stories “for the curious mind with a short attention span”.

Four years ago, Dylan and Addie fell in love under the Provence sun. Wealthy Oxford student Dylan was staying at his friend Cherry’s enormous French villa; wild child Addie was spending her summer as the on-site caretaker. Two years ago, their relationship officially ended. They haven’t spoken since. Today, Dylan’s and Addie’s lives collide again. It’s the day before Cherry’s wedding, and Addie and Dylan crash cars at the start of the journey there.

With generous splashes of popular culture and human interest, the NPR Road Trips series introduces you not only to far-off locations and unusual destinations, but to the people who inhabit them - and seek them out. Each story focuses on real locations, real people, and real history in the thought-provoking, imaginative and entertaining way you’ve come to expect from NPR. Grand Canyon National Park is one of the planet’s Seven Natural Wonders, with 4.4 million visitors each year. Who keeps them safe, fed, and happy?

With generous splashes of popular culture and human interest, the NPR Road Trips series introduces you not only to far-off locations and unusual destinations, but to the people who inhabit them - and seek them out. Each story focuses on real locations, real people, and real history in the thought-provoking, imaginative and entertaining way you've come to expect from NPR. Prairie Dog Town in western Kansas. The Elvis Is Alive Museum in Wright City, Missouri. The Velvet Museum ("Velveteria") in Portland, Oregon. A 13-foot Styrofoam scale model of Stonehenge....

In the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues. There were no witnesses, no one with a motive. But the police soon came to suspect Quincy Miller, a young Black man who was once a client of Russo’s.

Lina Meisel, a retired librarian in Florida, is reading the newspaper one morning when she freezes. Her eyes lock on a photograph of a book she hasn’t seen in 65 years - a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II - an experience Lina remembers well - and the search to reunite people with the texts stolen from them so long ago. The book in the photograph is one of the most fascinating cases.

With generous splashes of popular culture and human interest, the NPR Road Trips series introduces you not only to far-off locations and unusual destinations, but to the people who inhabit themand seek them out. Each story focuses on real locations, real people, and real history in the thought-provoking, imaginative and entertaining way you've come to expect from NPR. Meet Colin Angus and Julie Wafael, who spent two years circumnavigating the globe using their hands and feet. Turn on the radio in Katmandu and hear music from the 70s. Learn how robot jockeys are solving a human rights problem in Dubai.

Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave. It’s 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to become Southern California’s first giraffes. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow.

It happens more than you might think. One second someone’s life is totally typical, the next it’s terribly tragic. Everything they had, everything they planned, everything they were, all of it vanishes in a flash. Shock and sorrow leave the victim staring into tomorrow’s void, wondering: How did it happen? Who did it? And why?

The number one New York Times best seller by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough rediscovers an important chapter in the American story that's "as resonant today as ever" (The Wall Street Journal) - the settling of the Northwest Territory by courageous pioneers who overcame incredible hardships to build a community based on ideals that would define our country.

True crime writer Wylie Lark doesn’t mind being snowed in at the isolated farmhouse where she’s retreated to write her new book. A cozy fire, complete silence. It would be perfect, if not for the fact that decades earlier, at this very house, two people were murdered in cold blood and a girl disappeared without a trace.

It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures, and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the 20th century - this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.

Now packaged together in an exclusive audio bundle, discover the first two books in the riveting Murphy Shepherd series from New York Times bestselling author Charles Martin. Combining the heart-wrenching emotion of Nicholas Sparks with the edge-of-your-seat tension of John Grisham, The Water Keeper and The Letter Keeper explore the true power of sacrificial love to heal all wounds.

Dannie Kohan lives her life by the numbers. She is nothing like her lifelong best friend - the wild, whimsical, believes-in-fate Bella. Her meticulous planning seems to have paid off after she nails the most important job interview of her career and accepts her boyfriend’s marriage proposal in one fell swoop, falling asleep completely content. But when she awakens, she’s suddenly in a different apartment, with a different ring on her finger, and beside a very different man.

1941, Poland. Though war rages around her and occupying German forces march steadily onward, 16-year-old Aleksandra has lived her life sheltered from danger. Until one day, she goes to school—never to return. Pushed roughly into a truck with other schoolgirls like her, a single ominous word tells her all she needs to know about her fate: Lebensborn.