Real life is lived in hardcopy—very few read quite like the remarkable journey of "Pelican King" Jim Bentley. It's rugged, colorful, and inspiring as any well-worn tome.Lighting the Passage brings Bentley's sharp and humorous reflections on the quirks of everyday living and the enduring strength of family, all delivered with his trademark acerbic wit.For the first time, Bentley opens the door to the stories he's long carried with him: his harrowing military...

In his follow-up to the best-selling Ultramarathon Man—which Sports Illustrated called "fascinating" and the New York Times said was "full of euphoric highs"—world-renowned ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes chronicles his unbelievable exploits and explorations in gripping detail. Karnazes runs for days on end without rest, across some of the most exotic and inhospitable places on earth, including the Australian outback, Antarctica, and the Tenderloin District of San ...

Capturing the essence of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Gonzo” style, short story Mescalito details his dark and miserably comic first mescaline drug trip. First published in Songs of the Doomed, Mescalito suggests the nascent ideas and energy of Thompson’s seminal work on the ‘60s experience, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas."We live in a jungle of pending disasters," the author warns. Alone in a hotel room in Los Angeles in February, 1969, Thompso...

-a Firehawks Lookouts romance story-Life’s deeper purpose eludes Tom Cunningham, and its lesser purpose too. Leaving behind Seattle, his job, and a near endless supply of easy women, he grabs adventure and spends a summer in the Montana wilderness —looking for wildfires and also for himself.Done with her military service, Patty Dale enters the wilderness to pursue her life’s dream—to hunt gray wolves with a camera and a notebook.They both find far more than they bar...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe beloved New York Times-bestselling guide to inspiring girls to pursue a life of adventure and excitement-updated and at last in paperback.Why should girls miss out on the joy of adventure? They can jump off rocks, swing on ropes, and climb trees just as well as boys can. But girls often allow fear to stand in their way.In The Gutsy Girl, author Caroline Paul emboldens girls to ...

Try new things, overcome your fears, and broaden your world. You’ll feel empowered and energized when you step outside your comfort zone!Whether it’s something little—like trying a new food—or something big—like flying to a faraway country—we feel empowered when we do something that challenges us. You can do it! John Shedd said, “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Set sail from your safe harbor. Feel the wind, see new sights, and m...

Brilliant, witty, perceptive essays about fly-fishing, the natural world, and life in general by the acknowledged master of fishing writers.Fly-fishing’s finest scribe, John Gierach, takes us from a nameless stream on a nameless ranch in Montana to a secret pool off a secret creek where he caught a catfish as a five-year-old, to a brook full of rattlesnakes and a private pond where the trout are all as long as your leg. As Gierach says, “The secret places are the s...

Life Is a Wheel chronicles the cross-country bicycle trip Bruce Weber made at the age of fifty-seven, an “entertaining travel story filled with insightful thoughts about life, family, and aging” (The Associated Press).During the summer and fall of 2011, Bruce Weber, an obituary writer for The New York Times, bicycled across the country, alone, and wrote about it as it unfolded. Life Is a Wheel is the witty, inspiring, and reflect...

Burnt is a captivating and “evocative” (Erin Brockovich) memoir of trailblazing and firefighting from California’s first—and only—female chief of fire protection, a pioneering woman in a male-dominated field.Burnt is a book about finding your calling, even if it’s an unexpected one. It’s about finding your home, even if you aren’t immediately welcomed. And it’s about reaching the top and making a difference, even if you don’t look like you fit in....

It's time for an antidote to all the negativity! You’ll find that in this collection of 101 inspiring stories about what makes America great. From apple pie and baseball to our military heroes and first responders, from our vast and varied country to our energy and spirit, these stories will make you proud to be an American!We live in a great country, but we can forget that sometimes amid all the negativity that surrounds us. Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spir...

It has been my good fortune to know and associate with a goodly number of goofballs. Enjoy a few laugh out loud moments by following the adventures of an ordinary man's encounters with some very unordinary people. The scene changes from New Orleans to Harvard to Ft. Polk to China and throughout America's heartland, but the theme remains constant, the pervasive ubiquity of peculiar people.

From a maximum-security prison to a cancer ward, from a mental institution to the World Trade Center, Laurence Gonzales's prose grips from the first sentence. Sometimes hair-raising, sometimes heart-wrenching, among these essays is "Marion Prison," a National Magazine Award finalist, with its intimate view inside the most maximum security prison in America. "House of Pain" takes the reader into the life of a brain surgeon at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, a grim world that few ever see. ...