Driven by a desire to break free from his mediocre, middle-class existence and escape the Belfast (IRA) “Troubles” of the 70’s, Chris Donaldson strikes out on his café racing Moto Guzzi on a cross-country roadtrip of self-discovery. But when the Iranian revolution stops the planned motorcycle trip to Australia, he switches gears and begins a 33-country, 50,000-mile odyssey across Europe, Asia, and the Americas including 10,000 miles on an ocean-going racing yacht.

In this follow-up to Clanlands Sam & Graham document their journey across New Zealand, a country Graham calls home and that Sam has longed to visit since learning it was a popular destination for Scottish immigrants to settle back in the 19th century. Follow the 'outlandish' pair as they explore the Scottish influence of New Zealand: connecting with the rich culture and Scottish heritage, sampling world-class food & drink, and being humbled by incredible landscapes and pulse-raising activities.

It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson, a schoolteacher and spinster, is trying to get through life, surviving on scraps. One day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and small existence to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of her childhood obsession: an insect that may or may not exist - the golden beetle of New Caledonia. When she advertises for an assistant to accompany her, the woman she ends up with is the last person she had in mind.

On the eve of turning 30, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent 16 months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living? In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure - the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world - as well as the internal journey that started it all.

Have you ever wanted to kayak down a gorge in New Zealand? Or run night-time marathons through the Californian desert? How about rollerblading 100 miles around Amsterdam? You have? Then pour yourself a cup of cocoa, get those jim-jams on, and prepare to escape into a world of adventure with this collection of life-affirming short stories from award-winning adventurer Anna McNuff.

The two-and-a-half-year journey spanned the mountains and deserts of former Soviet Republics, Afghanistan on the fearful brink of foreign withdrawal, and remote corners of the Congolese jungle. From hiking through sandstorms in the Gobi desert to barreling down rapids in a dugout canoe, this perilous adventure, and Charlie’s many encounters along the way, gives insight into the past, present, and future of often-overlooked places during periods of great change.

After the success of his first book In Search of Greener Grass, Graham Field hits the road again with his bargain-basement KLR650, recording his experiences in his inimitable and revealingly honest diary style. The Caucasus region is often overlooked by travelers, but Graham may inadvertently be about to change all that.

At age 22, Charlie Walker left home in search of adventure. Fleeing the boredom that comes with comfort, he set off on a secondhand bicycle. The aim was simple: to pedal to the furthest point in each of Europe, Asia, and Africa. He didn’t train or plan. He just started. The journey was an escape from an unremarkable existence, a pursuit of hardship, and a chance to shed the complacency of middle England. From the brutality of winter on the Tibetan plateau, to the claustrophobia of the Southeast Asian jungle, the quest provided Charlie with ample opportunity to test his mettle.

Knee-deep in a swamp in the depths of the Bolivian jungle, hunting for anacondas in a pair of sandals, it occurred to George that perhaps he should have booked that all-inclusive honeymoon to the Maldives after all. Join George and Rachel on their hilarious journey through the wilds of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, as they climb volcanoes, fish for piranhas, trek through the Amazon rainforest, take death-defying bus rides, sample some of the continent’s strangest delicacies, and try to get to Machu Picchu.

When Ted Simon rode 64,000 miles round the world on his 500c Triumph Tiger, he inspired thousands of motorcyclists to begin their own adventures, including Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, who chronicled their travels in Long Way Round. Nearly 30 years later, Ted Simon took to the road again to retrace the epic journey he made in his 40s. He meets up with old friends and acquaintances, revisits old landmarks and locations, and rediscovers himself, as well as the world, along the way.

In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas. Nearly a century later, the book Laurie Lee wrote - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain - the landscapes and the spirit - and with Laurie's style of travel. Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway.

From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society's expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. Whether set in North Africa, Paris, or Brazil, the stories in Exile and the Kingdom are probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man's perpetual search for an inner kingdom.

Christopher Schacht was only 19 years old and had just finished school when he put a dream into motion. With only 50 euros in savings, he traveled around the world, relying only on his friendliness, flexibility, charm, and willingness to work for his shelter and food. Christopher traveled for four years, visiting 45 countries and traversing 100,000 kilometers on foot, hitchhiking, and on sailboats.

In the autumn of 1988, Michael Palin set out from the Reform Club with an ambitious plan: to circumnavigate the world, following the route taken by Jules Verne's fictional hero Phileas Fogg 115 years earlier. The rules were simple. He had to make the journey in 80 days using only forms of transport that would have been available to Fogg.

Part travelogue, part memoir, part novel, The Songlines is one of Bruce Chatwin's final - and most ambitious - works. From the author of the bestselling In Patagonia and On the Black Hill, a sweeping exploration of a landscape, a people, and one man's history, it is the sort of book that changes the listener forever.

Michael Palin is off again, this time to the seemingly desolate Sahara Desert. There's no easy way across, as he and his team discover on their most challenging expedition yet.

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...

When Ted Simon rode 64,000 miles round the world on his 500c Triumph Tiger, he inspired thousands of motorcyclists to begin their own adventures, including Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, who chronicled their travels in Long Way Round. Nearly 30 years later, Ted Simon took to the road again to retrace the epic journey he made in his 40s. He meets up with old friends and acquaintances, revisits old landmarks and locations, and rediscovers himself, as well as the world, along the way.

In 1935 a young Englishman named Laurie Lee arrived in Spain. He had never been overseas. His idea was to walk through the country, earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas. Nearly a century later, the book Laurie Lee wrote - As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning - inspired Alastair Humphreys. It made him fall in love with Spain - the landscapes and the spirit - and with Laurie's style of travel. Alastair dreamed of retracing Laurie Lee’s footsteps but could never get past the hurdle of being distinctly unmusical. This year, he decided to go anyway.

The prolific drummer for the rock band Rush travels through African villages, both large and small, and relates his story through journal entries and tales of adventure, while simultaneously addressing issues such as differences in culture, psychology, and labels. Literary and artistic sidekicks such as Aristotle, Dante, and Van Gogh join Peart and his cycling companions, reminding the listener that this is not just another travel book - it is a story of both external and introspective discovery and adventure.

"Where you staying?" the Bedouin asked. "Why you not stay with me tonight - in my cave?" Thus begins Marguerite van Geldermalsen's story of how a New Zealand-born nurse came to be married to Mohammad Abdallah Othman, a Bedouin souvenir-seller from the ancient city of Petra in Jordan. It was 1978, and she and a friend were travelling through the Middle East when Marguerite met the charismatic Mohammad who convinced her that he was the man for her.

On the eve of turning 30, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent 16 months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living? In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure - the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world - as well as the internal journey that started it all.

Following the hugely popular and successful Around the World in 80 Days and Pole to Pole, Michael Palin set off to meet another challenge: an anti-clockwise circumnavigation of the world's largest ocean, the Pacific.

In 2001, martial arts-trained biker Glen Heggstad began a journey from California to the tip of South America on his motorcycle and made it as far as Colombia, where he was kidnapped by local rebels and held captive. Undeterred by more than a month of traumatic incarceration, the 'Striking Viking' finished his trip after being released. Three years later he set out into the world on his bike again, this time searching for truth on his own terms in a world that had become strangled by a climate of fear.

From the novelist the New York Times compares to Paul Bowles, Evelyn Waugh, and Ian McEwan, an evocative new work of literary suspense. Adrift in Cambodia, Robert Grieve - pushing 30 and eager to sidestep a life of quiet desperation as a small-town teacher - decides to go AWOL. As he crosses the border from Thailand, he tests the threshold of a new future.

The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales - both never-before-published in print or audio - that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.

Why was the redoubtable King Henry, an aborigine from Western Australia, killed during a thunderstorm in New South Wales? What was the feud that led to murder after nineteen long years had passed? And who was the woman who saw the murder and kept silent? This first story of Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the half-aborigine detective, takes him to a sheep station in the Darling River bush country where he encounters those problems he understands so well... mixed blood and divided loyalties.

When Stanton Laird, American geologist, goes prospecting for the Topeka Exploration Company in the savage Australian outback, he finds something a good deal more precious than oil.

In unforgettable tales of innocence lost under African skies, we follow Godwin's awakening to the often savage struggle between Whites and Blacks, his horror when he is forced to fight in a civil war he detests, and his experiences as a journalist covering the country's violent transition to Black rule as Rhodesia's colonial era comes to an end and the new state of Zimbabwe is born from its bloody ashes. Mukiwa is a poignant, compelling memoir and an invaluable addition to the literature of southern Africa.

In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley is animated by Steinbeck’s attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature—to weather, geography, the cycles of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way.