Other books that might interest you

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  Travels with Bertha - Two Years...

  Paul Martin

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  The Queensland drug dealer-turned-miner who had blown off all his fingers in repeated work accidents; the Adelaide Aborigine whose Irish uncle, in revenge for Captain Cook, claimed the territory of Britain for Australia from the top of Big Ben; the ex-alcoholic in Tasmania relieved that his bi-polar condition could be traced back to his direct ancestor, King George III; the dying man in the Kimberleys who had witnessed a haunting aboriginal dance gathering in 1925.... Paul Martin arrived in Sydney on a one-year working holiday visa with a backpack and a hefty bank loan. Over the next two and a half years, he shared four flats in Sydney and travelled 30,000kms through both territories and all five states of Australia. In Bertha, his trusty 1978 Ford Falcon station wagon, he picked up over a dozen nationalities and encountered many funny and intriguing individuals along the way. Travels with Bertha is for anyone whose friends, loved ones, or who themselves have travelled to Australia, and for those interested in the dark history, the colourful characters or the startling beauty of this most fascinating of continents.

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  Happísland - The Short but not...

  Cédric H. Roserens

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  A first shot of Iceland with an aftertaste of rotten shark. A small unpretentious introduction to Iceland's way of life, focused on Reykjavík. Swiss superspy Hans-Ueli Stauffacher is sent one full calendar year to Iceland to understand why Icelandic people are happier than Swiss people...

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  The Outermost House - A Year of...

  Henry Beston

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  The Outermost House is a classic of American nature literature. 
  In 1926, Henry Beston spent two weeks in a two-room cottage on the sand dunes of Cape Cod. He had not intended to stay longer, but, as he later wrote, "I lingered on, and as the year lengthened into autumn, the beauty and mystery of this earth and outer sea so possessed and held me that I could not go." 
  Beston stayed for a year, meditating on humanity and the natural world. In The Outermost House, originally published in 1928, he poetically chronicled the four seasons at the beach; the ebb and flow of the tides, the migration of birds, storms, stars, and solitude. The landscape was his major character, and his writing provides a snapshot of the Cape, a place physically changed yet as soulful a century later.  
  Like Henry D. Thoreau before him, and Rachel Carson after him, Beston was a writer of stunning beauty, importance and vision. Robert Finch once wrote of him, “His are burnished, polished sentences, richly metaphoric and musical, that beg to be read aloud.”  
  Henry Beston lived from 1888 to 1968. His Cape Cod house was declared a National Literary Landmark in 1964, but was destroyed by a winter storm in 1978.

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  Sir Where's 'Toilet?

  John Meadows

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  A further collection of entertaining short stories to complete the author’s trilogy of world-wide adventures. His intriguing tales are spiced with lively encounters and astute observations, full of humor and wit. His fascinating historical facts are particularly enlightening, and will have you saying, "Really? I didn’t know that." Each story will leave you wanting more: Teachers' ghostly prank with a bizarre twist. Sampling local whiskey at a village distillery on the fabled Mekong river in Laos. Two cultures collide when Russian rugby league players invade Wigan, and to complete his experiences, he was proclaimed Emperor of China.

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  North Wall - The gripping story...

  Roger Hubank

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  'Far off on the horizon the snowfields sparkled, and across the meadow the Piz Molino towered formidably above the glacier, its snow cone glittering in the pale blue sky.'
  North Wall is award-winning writer Roger Hubank's first novel. The premise is one familiar to those with a thirst for adventure at high altitude: two men attempting to climb one of the world's most challenging peaks; yet at its core this is a story that examines the nature of climbing itself: trading familiar earthbound comforts for the allure of the mountains and risking it all to achieve the extraordinary.
  Following a first ascent that ended in tragedy, the Alps' most demanding mountain – the staggering 3,753-metre Piz Molino – awaits a second ascent. Two very different climbers step up. Raymond, an experienced  mountain guide, is struggling with demons after being left the sole survivor of a previous expedition. Daniel is an amateur torn between his need to climb and his responsibilities as a husband and father. Together they attempt the treacherous 1,200-metre North Face.
  'Perhaps that is why we have been reduced like this … deprived of those we love – stripped of all certainty – so that we may learn what it is to be ourselves.'
  North Wall takes the reader on a gripping journey. We follow Raymond and Daniel through tragedy and triumph as they face both the physical challenges of the dangerous ascent and the  psychological turmoil of finding themselves along the way.
  A must-read for anyone interested in the quest to complete life's more extreme feats.

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  The Colossus of New York

  Colson Whitehead

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  In a dazzlingly original work of nonfiction, the award-winning novelist Colson Whitehead re-creates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York. Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in-or spent time-in the greatest of American cities. A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps, The Colossus of New York captures the city's inner and outer landscapes in a series of vignettes, meditations, and personal memories. Colson Whitehead conveys with almost uncanny immediacy the feelings and thoughts of longtime residents and of newcomers who dream of making it their home; of those who have conquered its challenges; and of those who struggle against its cruelties. Whitehead's style is as multilayered and multifarious as New York itself: Switching from third person, to first person, to second person, he weaves individual voices into a jazzy musical composition that perfectly reflects the way we experience the city. There is a funny, knowing riff on what it feels like to arrive in New York for the first time; a lyrical meditation on how the city is transformed by an unexpected rain shower; and a wry look at the ferocious battle that is commuting. The plaintive notes of the lonely and dispossessed resound in one passage, while another captures those magical moments when the city seems to be talking directly to you, inviting you to become one with its rhythms.

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