Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

This is a new reading of the thrilling account of one of the most astonishing feats of exploration and human courage ever recorded. In August of 1914, the British ship Endurance set sail for the South Atlantic. In October, 1915, still half a continent away from its intended base, the ship was...

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...

When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were...

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND #1 NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025ALSO NAMED ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025 AND A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MORE “This is nonfiction that reads like fiction...

Ultrarunner Andy Glaze has spent years moving through landscapes that test the limits of the human body—hundred-mile races, multi-day marathons, mountains and deserts that demanded everything.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Band of Brothers and D-Day, the definitive book on Lewis and Clark’s exploration of the Louisiana Purchase, the most momentous expedition in American history and one of the great adventure stories of all time. In 1803 President Thomas Jefferson...

The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. Named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic. An acclaimed journalist takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost...

* Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award in Outdoor Literature * Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, Air Mail, Smithsonian Magazine, and Financial Times “A triumph. Fedarko doesn’t describe awe; he induces...

Acclaimed actor Jeremy Renner narrates his gripping and inspiring story of a near-fatal accident and what he learned about inner strength, endurance and hope as he overcame insurmountable odds to recover, one breath at a time. This program includes a note written and read by his daughter, Ava...

Even among iconic frontiersmen like John C. Fremont, Kit Carson, and Jedediah Smith, Jim Bridger stands out. A mountain man of the American West, straddling the fur trade era and the age of exploration, he lived the life legends are made of. Here, in a biography that finally gives this outsize...

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows. The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since...

From the creators of the New York Times bestselling audio series Campfire Stories and MeatEater’s American History comes a new audiobook original that plunges listeners into the untamed world of a celebrated and misunderstood group of nineteenth-century outdoorsmen: the Mountain Men. Steven...

From the #1 bestselling author of The Boys in the Boat and Facing the Mountain comes an unforgettable epic of family, tragedy, and survival on the American frontier “An ideal pairing of talent and material.… Engrossing.… A deft and ambitious storyteller.” — Mary Roach, New York Times...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A “thrilling and superbly crafted” (The Wall Street Journal) account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. One of...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Most people assume that the world has been explored and true adventure is dead: This book is one man’s rebuttal. Explorer and conservationist Paul Rosolie shares his incredible life in the Amazon rainforest—and what we can learn from the people fighting to...

The pivotal true story of the first fifty-three days of the standoff between Imperial Japanese and a handful of Marine aviators defending the Americans dug in at Guadalcanal, from the New York Times bestselling author of Indestructible and Race of Aces. "Intricate and loaded with lush detail...

From the creators of the New York Times bestselling series Campfire Stories: Close Calls comes a new original audiobook that brings to life the bold, hair-raising, and often tragic adventures of a generation of eighteenth-century frontiersmen: the Long Hunters. Steven Rinella (The MeatEater...

A Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela’s Ashes is Frank McCourt’s masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland—now with a new introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe. “When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a...

A transformational journey through Italy, India, and Bali searching for pleasure and devotion—the massive bestseller from the author of The Signature of All Things This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made...

As thrilling as any novel, as taut and exciting as any adventure story, Peter Hathaway Capstick’s Death in the Long Grass takes us deep into the heart of darkness to view Africa through the eyes of one of the most renowned professional hunters.

Ten harrowing firsthand tales of survival from the creators of the New York Times bestselling audio collection MeatEater's Campfire Stories: Close Calls. In Campfire Stories: Narrow Escapes & More Close Calls, storytellers take us from Florida to the Northern Rockies to the Arctic Ocean with...

Many people dream of escaping modern life, but most will never act on it. This is the remarkable true story of a man who lived alone in the woods of Maine for 27 years, making this dream a reality—not out of anger at the world, but simply because he preferred to live on his own. A New York...

Declared “the best survival book in a decade” by Outside Magazine, 438 Days is the true story of the man who survived fourteen months in a small boat drifting seven thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean. On November 17, 2012, two men left the coast of Mexico for a weekend fishing trip in...

The riveting story of the last survivor pulled from the 9/11 Ground Zero debris after twenty-seven hours and her journey from desperation to a miraculous salvation. In this moving true story, Genelle Guzman-McMillan reveals her harrowing experience trapped inside the collapsed Tower One on 9/11...

When the wild strips everything away, what’s left is who you are. In the raw, untamed wilds of Alaska—where the wind howls, predators hunt, and the sun disappears for months—only a rare few figure out how to survive. Sue Aikens, the breakout star of National Geographic’s long-running TV...

A deeply moving and intimate story that reveals how the ravages of history that tore one family apart echo across continents nearly a century later. "A memoir which ranks alongside The Hare with Amber Eyes."—The Times (London) "Brilliant."—The Economist Sorting through papers and photographs...

The unsolved mysteries of George Mallory, Sandy Irvine, and their legendary 1924 Everest expedition. This program includes an audio-exclusive bonus conversation between the authors. There is no mystery more compelling in the history of mountaineering than the disappearance of George Mallory and...

From the bestselling author of Thirst and Mud, Rocks, Blazes, this compelling memoir chronicles Heather Anderson's ambitious journey to thru-hike America’s Triple Crown—the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, and Continental Divide Trails—in a single calendar year. Between 2003 and 2017, Anderson...

I grew up in a big polygamist family, the 23rd of 46 children. My father had six wives and our very existence was a secret. We lived in the middle of Salt Lake City in a big white house on Fifth East, with neighbors to the north and south of us and yet we remained utterly hidden. Homeschooled and cut off rom the world, that secrecy was a breeding ground for abuse. While my father was gone to work during the day, his third wife, Mother Kay, sat at the head of the family, controlling the other mothers and abusing the children.

Debbie Chinn begins this colorful memoir by tracing her roots back to China. In the 19th Century a Southern Baptist missionary by happenstance started her family. Horrors of war, the Japanese occupation of China, the brutalities of starvation and poverty, and the Communist takeover of China in 1949 forced her family to flee their homeland, becoming immigrants in the United States.

Driven by rage, Claire flees into the dark night, barefoot and trapped in a maze of identical townhomes. The humid darkness closes in. Run. Footsteps echo, coming closer. She slips into a tiny patio, crouching in the shadows, praying to go unseen. Through the slats of the fence, a silhouette approaches—slow, steady, deliberate. The footsteps stop. He knows she is there. She is caught. In the agonizing silence, the voice of terror whispers that she will never escape. And when he reaches for her, she retreats to the only place she can—her mind. With no fight left, she lets him carry her ...

Unforgettable in Uniform is a compelling collection of personal experiences from the remarkable military career of Wing Commander M. K. Devidasan, who joined the Indian Air Force as a young man in 1959 and went on to serve the nation for more than three decades., From his early days as a trainee at Jalahalli to his transformation into an engineer, technical officer, and leader, Devidasan takes readers behind the scenes of life in the Indian Air Force. His memories span training establishments, Srinagar, the Himalayas, Chushul, missile squadrons, operational stations, and challenging ...

From heartbreaking moments to gut-busting humor, Fish on Fridays is the story of a life lived fully—through good times, hard times, unexpected turns, and everything in between. From growing up in a military family to more than twenty years in the U.S. Army, from leadership and travel to family, faith, illness, recovery, and some of life's unexpected detours, Greg P. Smith has collected a lifetime of stories—and the lessons that came with them. Some will make you laugh. Some may bring a tear. And some may make you stop and think. Fish on Fridays is not simply a story about cancer or ...

“What influenced you most in life?” he asked. While I hesitated, he grinned, “Women?” “No, sir. There was only one.” But it wasn’t a hard question, after all, though I hated to admit the truth. “Gold comes first,” said I. “But not the love of it.” I think I meant gold in the way it affects most men’s lives; always an invisible finger guiding them this way and that as they hunt it, fear it, lust for it, yearn for it, suffer for its lack. “Then men—” “Naturally,” he said. “And dogs.” Gold Men and Dogs is the true adventures of one of Alaska's great people...

At the start of the hellish, fiery Australian summer of 2019/20, Walkley Award-winning journalist and suburban dad Anthony Sharwood set off on a journey. Abandoning his post on a busy news website to clear his mind, he solo-trekked the Australian Alps Walking Track, Australia's most gruelling...

Reclaim your faith from the grip of fear, control, and legalism. Stepping away from a high-control spiritual environment is rarely just an administrative transition—it is a profound disruption of your shared reality. Recovery from Religious Trauma offers a validating, step-by-step framework to process institutional wounding, deconstruct legalistic performance metrics, and transition into authentic spiritual liberty. This is not a text promoting cynicism; it is a tactical manual for individuals ready to separate the voice of an abusive control system from the authentic grace of God. ...

"I felt like killing myself." That's the sentence Paula Axelrod couldn't say out loud, until a poster taped to a dormitory wall gave her somewhere to go. What followed was twenty years of therapy spent unpacking a childhood ruled by an alcoholic father, a mother's own eating disorder, and a family that made love feel dangerous. It's the story of a miscarriage, a lost sense of self, and the slow, unglamorous work of finding her way back, through psychoanalysis, through painting, and eventually into a forty-year marriage and a son adopted from Romania. This isn't a polished self help book.

What would you do if leaving meant saving your own life—but staying meant fulfilling your life's calling? Faced with an impossible choice, Blessed Stanley Rother chose faith over fear, service over safety, and love over self-preservation. His extraordinary decision would forever change the lives of those he served and secure his place in history as the first U.S.-born Catholic priest to be beatified by the Catholic Church. American Martyr is the inspiring true story of a humble Oklahoma farm boy whose unwavering devotion to God led him to a remote village in Guatemala, where he became far...

A riveting journey down Theodore Roosevelt's "river of doubt" with a diverse crew of adventurers, scientists, and Indigenous leaders who shine light on the past, present, and future of a natural wonder. Sam Moses took part in the adventure of a lifetime when he, along with seventeen men and two...

The surgeon left a 3mm needle tip inside him. Under oath, he called it "nothing but a "blur" on an MRI" You've trusted a doctor before. You'll trust one again. Andy Hageman did too right up until an operating table at the University of New Mexico Hospital changed his life forever.

Claire wasn’t looking for a different life. She already had one. Then a ticket showed up in her inbox. What followed wasn’t a plan. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was movement. Fast. Reckless. Undeniable. Las Vegas. Europe. A connection she couldn’t explain and couldn’t control. A life waiting back home. A choice she didn’t plan to make. This is not a story about what it all meant. It’s about what it felt like to live it. Just the moments as they happened,before the meaning settled. Based on a true story too wild to be fiction. The gamble wasn’t Vegas. It was him.

18 Tons, 92 Hours and 160 Other Clouds of DustWhat happens when a young man comes of age during the Vietnam era, narrowly avoids the draft, serves in the Air Force Reserve, and spends the rest of his life chasing adventure? In this unforgettable Vietnam draft memoir, Fredric W. Altman shares a lifetime of remarkable experiences, from Air Force Reserve stories and outrageous military moments to dangerous jobs, fast cars, and unbelievable close calls. Told with honesty, wit, and humility, this funny military memoir proves that real life is often stranger than fiction.

Forget “How much money do you have?” Ask “What kind of life are you living?” You want more. You dream of accomplishments that mean far more to you than mere money in the bank—but aren’t sure where to start. Start here. Instead of chasing wealth as a measurement of success, Mike...

In July of 1993 a particularly heavy monsoon drenched the foothills of the Himalayas, and extended even into the ‘rainshadow’ – the area beyond the lush hills and into the drier mountains. Roads collapsed into rivers, new lakes formed behind landslides, and people generally got wet! A little band of motor-bikers rode up into that weather and that wild country, and met with delays, discomforts, and… well... relationship troubles! This is the diary of the girlfriend of the ‘leader of the pack’, as she suffers, and bounces on the bike, and gasps for air at high altitudes...

In Everyone Has a Story: The Inheritance, this powerful and deeply personal memoir takes listeners on an unforgettable journey through identity, resilience, and truth. From the discipline and structure of military life to the devastating reality of medical trauma, this story reveals what happens when trust is shattered and how strength is rebuilt in the aftermath. Through moments of pain, reflection, and courage, the author confronts not only personal battles but larger truths that affect countless others. This is more than a memoir. It’s a voice for the unheard. A stand against injustice.

This gripping narrative history chronicles the doomed polar expeditions where human obsession clashed with extreme cold. Perfect for a thrilling commute or a chilling armchair travel experience, this atmospheric true adventure plunges you straight into an unforgiving frozen wilderness. Feel the...

Brook Bello’s Shame Undone is a deeply moving journey of healing, faith, and restoration. With raw honesty and powerful insight, Brook Bello shares how shame, trauma, and brokenness can be transformed into freedom, identity, and purpose. This inspiring audiobook invites listeners to break free from the weight of the past and step fully into healing and hope.

How do you start over when your body tells you it's time to slow down? After decades of chronic knee pain, multiple surgeries, and believing her biggest adventures were behind her, Anita Elder took a chance on something she'd never imagined—an electric bicycle. What began as cautious rides close to home soon became an extraordinary journey of healing, friendship, and discovery.

When you are successful, it is easy to take your health for granted—until life suddenly changes direction and everything you once depended on begins to disappear. Broken in London is the true story of one man's journey from financial success to financial breakdown as chronic pain, depression and anxiety slowly change every part of his life.

What if the biggest risk in life isn’t taking chances–but letting fear stop you from taking them at all? At twenty-one, Dean Klinkenberg was accepted into a study-abroad program in Grenoble, France—and backed out. The fear won. He spent one more winter in Wisconsin instead of a semester at the foot of the Alps, and he never forgot which one he'd chosen. Better Safe Than Sorry? is the story of the years since then when he's spent choosing differently.