Faery Tale: One Woman's Search for Enchantment in a Modern World

Into the Wild

Jon Krakauer · 207 pages

In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose

Driving Hungry: A Memoir

Layne Mosler · 313 pages

"A delicious memoir that takes us from Buenos Aires to New York to Berlin as the author, driven by wanderlust and an unrelenting appetite, finds purpose, passion, and unexpected flavor. Layne Mosler's search for her next meal based on a recommendation from a cab driver starts in Buenos Aires: After leaving a tango club following a terrible turn on the dance floor, she impulsively asks her taxista

Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America

Brian Benson · 277 pages

"Brian Benson has a million life plans but no sense of direction. So when he meets and falls for Rachel, he's ready to go wherever she'll take him. In a whirlwind of new love, they embark on a bicycle trip from northern Wisconsin to western Oregon. As the pair progress through stunning landscapes, they contend with merciless winds, vivid characters, broken bikes and bodies--and the looming questio

Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail

Suzanne Roberts · 262 pages

It was 1993, Suzanne Roberts had just finished college, and when her friend suggested they hike California’s John Muir Trail, the adventure sounded like the perfect distraction from a difficult home life and thoughts about the future. But she never imagined that the twenty-eight-day hike would change her life. Part memoir, part nature writing, part travelogue, Almost Somewhere is Roberts’s account

Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism

Daniel Pinchbeck · 336 pages

"While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon and the ayahuasca of the Secoya in Ecuador to the psilocybin mushrooms of the Mazatecs in Mexico, these plants are revered because of their potential to awaken the mind to other levels of awar

An Age of License: A Travelogue

Lucy Knisley · 189 pages

Cartoonist Lucy Knisley got an opportunity that most only dream of: a travel-expenses-paid trip to Europe and Scandinavia, thanks to a book tour. An Age of License is Knisley's comics travel memoir recounting her adventures. It's punctuated by whimsical visual devices; peppered with the cats she meets along the way; and, of course, features her hallmark -- drawings and descriptions of food that wi

All Over the Map

Laura Fraser · 279 pages

Celebrating her fortieth birthday, Laura Fraser confronts the trajectory of her life. Divorced and childless in her thirties, she found solace in the wanderlust that had always directed her heart, but now she wonders if her passion for travel (and for short-lived romantic rendezvous) has deprived her of what she secretly wants most: a husband, a family, a home. How to reconcile what seem to be two

A Million Steps

Kurt Koontz · 198 pages

Kurt Koontz thought he was well prepared for his 490-mile walking trip on the historic Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain. He was fit and strong. He had a good guidebook and all the right equipment. His pilgrim passport would grant him access to the shelter of hostels along the way. But all that, however helpful, did not begin to encompass the grandeur of his external or internal adventu

Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents

Elisabeth Eaves

Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment

Suzanne Morrison · 339 pages

"When Suzanne Morrison decides to travel to Bali for a two-month yoga retreat, she wants nothing more than to be transformed from a twenty-five-year-old with a crippling fear of death into her enchanting yoga teacher, Indra--a woman who seems to have found it all: love, self, and God. But things don't go quite as expected."--Page 4 of cover.

Travels

Michael Crichton · 377 pages

Here is a record of Michael Crichton's astonishing adventures. It is a vision of travel not as escape but as exhilaration, as a testing of self, and as spiritual education. Crichton shows us travel as turmoil and as peace. All of this voyages, outward and inward, from his twenties to his mid-forties, have been journeys into awareness--leading him to the excitement and benison of direct expeirence

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

Alice Steinbach · 278 pages

"In the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea and Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, in Without Reservations we take time off with Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach as she explores the world and rediscovers what it means to be a woman on her own."--BOOK JACKET.

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

David Miller · 256 pages

My Life in France

Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun

Atlas of the Human Heart

Ariel Gore · 319 pages

memoir by young 21st century woman who was very daring.

The Horse Boy: A Father's Quest to Heal His Son

Rupert Isaacson

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Laurie Lee · 192 pages

It was 1934 and a young man walked to London from the security of the Cotswolds to make his fortune. He was to live by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site. Then, knowing one Spanish phrase, he decided to see Spain. For a year he tramped through a country in which the signs of impending civil war were clearly visible. Thirty years later Laurie Lee captured the atmosphere o

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Robert M. Pirsig · 418 pages

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

Susan Jane Gilman · 313 pages

They were young, brilliant, and bold. They set out to conquer the world. But the world had other plans for them. Bestselling author Susan Jane Gilman's new memoir is a hilarious and harrowing journey, a modern heart of darkness filled with Communist operatives, backpackers, and pancakes. In 1986, fresh out of college, Gilman and her friend Claire yearned to do something daring and original that d

The Road to Mecca

Muhammad Asad · 380 pages

This autobiographical work by one of Europe's best known convert to Islam gives us a rounded portrait of a man in search of adventure and truth. It is part spiritual autobiography, part summary of the author's intuitive insights into Islam and the Arabs, part an impressive travelogue. Punctuated with abundant adventure, moments of contemplation, colorful narrative, brilliant description and lively

Under the Tuscan Sun

Frances Mayes · 287 pages

Now in paperback, the #1 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller that is an enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's *A Year in Provence*. Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos b

Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World

Rita Golden Gelman · 320 pages

The true story of an ordinary woman living an extraordinary existence all over the world. “Gelman doesn’t just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the people’s lives. This is an amazing travelogue.” —Booklist At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita Golden Gelman left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of trav

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

John Steinbeck · 256 pages

A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the tress, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the

Life on Foot: A Walk Across America

Nate Damm · 284 pages