Women Explorers

Alison Wright covered human conflict with her camera until her own life was nearly cut short during a horrific bus accident with a logging truck on a remote jungle road in Laos. Suffering from excruciating life-threatening injuries, she drew upon her years of meditation practice, concentrating upon each breath, believing it to be her last.

In Toad-ally Toxic: A Ribbiting Religion, we follow the adventurous Fatima Fletcher, a herpetology enthusiast with a fiery mane of hair and a penchant for exploring the Amazon jungle. Imagine Indiana Jones if he had a serious obsession with reptiles! Equipped with her trusty nets and a backpack full of snacks, Fatima braves the wild to find the legendary giant Amazon Incilius alvarius toad, known for its mind-bending psychedelic powers, sapphic sexual ecstasy and spiritual revelations. As she paddles through the dense jungle, battling humidity that feels like a warm hug from a sweaty giant,...

In 2008, Lynn Barber's passion for birding led her to drive, fly, sail, walk, stalk, and sit in search of birds in 25 states and three provinces. Traveling more than 175,000 miles, she set a 21st century record at the time, second to only one other person in history. Over 272 days, Barber observed 723 species of birds in North America north of Mexico.

The New York Times best-selling author of Jumanji and The Polar Express, Chris Van Allsburg has garnered the National Book Award, multiple Caldecott Medals, and the Regina Medal for lifetime achievement in children’s literature. Queen of the Falls highlights the death-defying attempt of 62-year-old former charm school teacher Annie Edson Taylor to be the first woman to survive the perilous plunge over Niagara Falls.

Though Reema and Suman were not shifting across the ocean every calendar year, yet they were drifting from a city to another almost every quarter of a year. Will their life become harder with time? On a stormy night Reema and Suman arrived at a new city. They were not sure how long they could stay there yet with each passing moment they found calmness in each other, bonding them stronger than ever before. Every good thing comes to an end. One evening some of Suman’s colleagues found Reema working. The wheels of jealousy and conspiracy started rolling and Reema’s aloofness from the ...

Reema has no clue if she could ever become strong enough to protect Suman from all the harm. Suman is clueless if he can keep his promises to Reema. Where would the couple end up? Reema and Suman went back home. Over the following month they sensed that the homecoming was temporary and they would be uprooted any moment to fly to a new location where they must start afresh. The new location was not at all welcoming. Reema and Suman saw worse and they tolerated the burnt. Arrangements of abrupt travel without the idea how long one has to stay in the new location hits on the money one has. Can...

Amelia Earhart captured the hearts and imaginations of people around the world when she became the first woman to cross the Atlantic by airplane. This audiobook, her personal account of the historic flight, sparkles with her high-spirited charm and adventurous determination.

Shaken by the loss of her father, drained by her job at the United Nations, and conflicted over failed relationships, Natasha Scripture asked herself the question at the heart of her anxiety: What is my purpose? The answer was not about finding love; it was about recognizing its source. The result is Man Fast, a true and intimate spiritual detective story. With courage, honesty, and wit, Natasha shares the story of her awakening.

Reema and Suman became a drifting couple for sometime. Can they ever be able not only to perch but to roost? Reema and Suman, both are in their early thirties, with a full decade of work experience. When Reema quit her job to cling to Suman, Reema’s mother was upset, so was Suman. Suman was wary that he became the monster who took away Reema’s freedom. Reema tried hard to make Suman feel her love. The effort made her realize that freeing Suman from his household duties so that his sole attention goes to his job while Reema hops from gig to gig was not losing independence. Did she think ...

From licking a Monet in Paris, to pushing an abusive macho honeymooner off his sailboat in the shark-infested Galapagos, to saving her toddler son from a charging bull elephant in Africa, these 14 delightful, award-winning true tales will inspire listeners to follow the call of a wild life and leave home with their doors unlocked.

On a quest to find answers to what matters most in life, Paula Francis walked 10,000 miles around the country interviewing people she met along the way. Unavoidably, the Happiness Walk was as much a personal pilgrimage as a professional one. Walking through the loss of family members, her home, and her marriage, she learned to find meaning in new and surprising ways. This is the story of her two parallel journeys, both for the sake of happiness.

From surf-lifesaving to a hungover Army deployment, being broke with a gum infection in Europe, spooning Richie McCaw on a mountain, improvising make-up for Paul Holmes, running my first ultra-marathon and reinventing myself after redundancy: every wild, brilliant and hilarious experience has taught me something new. Whether it's how not to care about being judged, how to fake it till you make it, how to throw yourself into the unknown or how to push through the pit of despair, I've come to love that we are all works in progress. If I fail from time to time, that's okay too.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, based on her own childhood and later life, are still beloved classics almost a century after she began writing them. Now young listeners will see just how similar Laura's true-life story was to her books. Born in 1867 in the "Big Woods" in Wisconsin, Laura experienced both the hardship and the adventure of living on the frontier.

In Rising, Wood reflects on the 70 days she spent on Everest and on the pivotal experiences and influences that brought her to that staggeringly beautiful and austere corner of the world. Beyond the physical hardships, she faced personal challenges as an outlier in the male bastion of Himalayan climbing. These were compounded by the vexing presence of her past mentor and lover with his new girlfriend on the American team climbing on the same side of the mountain.

If you have ever questioned the meaning of your life, longed to break free, and discover its real secrets, this book is a must-read true-life story! Beginning in the very early years of her life in New Zealand, Lyse had a number of quite different but very formative experiences. These propelled her on a journey of 'self-discovery' that was to take her away from her home at the age of sixteen. Many adventures were to follow. Eventually, she traveled to Tibet, Nepal, and India where she met the remarkable beings who were to become her teachers during the next three decades of her life. In the...

When we remember the Second World War in the air, we think of fighter pilots and bomber crews. But what was it like for the men and women working as ground crew and in the aircraft factories who also played a crucial role in defeating Hitler? What was it like making history? What sense did these individuals have of what they were doing, either at the time or later? Did they feel they were caught up in the tide of great events? Or were they simply doing their demanding and often dangerous duty?

Amelia Earhart flew solo over the Atlantic, afterward receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross, and began championing the efforts of women to explore careers traditionally held by men. Tragically, just days before her 40th birthday, her plane vanished en route to a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean as she neared the end of her round-the-world journey. After an exhaustive search, no trace of the plane or Amelia was ever found.

When Kathy decides to leave her abusive marriage, she is 59 years old. She’s unprepared to live on a reduced income when her estranged husband hides his assets from the court. She’s shocked by the cost of rentals in Southern California. She didn’t realize how impossible it would be to land a job at her age and after being out of the market for two decades while she raised her kids. She hasn’t anticipated that her nearly grown children would be mad at her for finally standing up for herself.

Robert Falcon Scott and the men of his polar expedition were heroes of their age, enduring tremendous hardships to further the reputation of the empire they served. But they were also husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. Now for the first time, and with unprecedented access to family archives, Katherine MacInnes retells the story of the race for the South Pole from the perspective of the women whose lives would be forever changed by it, five women who offer a window into a lost age.

In Unsinkable, you will follow Abby into the depths through a gripping and evocative firsthand account that starts prior to her departure, travels through her daring (and sometimes near-death) encounters on the open sea, to her dramatic rescue in the remotest part of the Indian Ocean. Today, when the most productive thing a teenager may do is play videogames, Abby's courage and tenacity shows us all what can happen when we choose to challenge our own limits, embrace faith, and aim for what our critics say is impossible.