British Explorers

The History of Australia: From Indigenous Origins to a Modern Nation Australia is called the “land down under,” but how much do you really know about its past? Did you know that modern Australia started as a British prison colony? Or that for tens of thousands of years before that, Indigenous peoples lived there, building rich cultures and traditions? This book takes you through Australia’s history, from its first inhabitants to the arrival of European settlers to its fight for independence to its current role in world events. Learn about the convicts who built early settlements, the ...

Into Africa: The Extraordinary Journeys of Frederick Courteney Selous – Volumes 1 & 2 Two volumes. One extraordinary life. The complete story of one of Africa's greatest explorers. Before he became a legend, Frederick Courteney Selous was simply a young man determined to explore Africa. In an age when vast regions of the continent remained unknown to Europeans, Selous ventured deep into the African interior with little more than a rifle, a few supplies and an extraordinary appetite for adventure. He crossed raging rivers, travelled through country inhabited by lions, elephants, buffalo, ...

In the late 1890s, Edmund Dene Morel, a young British shipping company agent, noticed something strange about the cargoes of his company’s ships as they arrived from and departed for the Congo, Leopold II’s vast new African colony. Incoming ships were crammed with valuable ivory and rubber...

David Livingstone became one of the most famous explorers of the Victorian age, but the man behind the legend was far more complicated than the heroic image preserved in schoolbooks and memorials. Born into a working-class Scottish family, Livingstone rose from the cotton mills of Blantyre to become a doctor, missionary, explorer, abolitionist and international celebrity. His journeys across southern and central Africa transformed European geographical knowledge, drew attention to the horrors of the slave trade and made his name synonymous with Victorian exploration. Yet Livingstone never ...

In 1982, at the age of just 23 and halfway through her architecture studies, Elspeth Beard left her family and friends in London and set off on a 35,000-mile solo adventure around the world on her 1974 BMW R60/6. Reeling from a recent breakup and with only limited savings from her pub job, a tent, a few clothes, and some tools, all packed on the back of her bike, she was determined to prove herself. She had ridden bikes since her teens and was well-traveled. But nothing could prepare her for what lay ahead.

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an...

On a chance visit to Plymouth Rock, Tony Horwitz makes an unsettling discovery. A history buff since early childhood, expensively educated at university—a history major, no less!—he’s reached middle age with a third-grader’s grasp of early America. In fact, he’s mislaid more than a...

From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Larry McMurtry comes the first in a four-volume epic journey through the early American frontier, featuring the Berrybender family, English nobility adrift in the American West in the 1830s. It is 1830, and the Berrybender family—rich, aristocratic, English...

The enthralling and often harrowing history of the adventurers who searched for the Northwest Passage, the holy grail of nineteenth-century British exploration. After the triumphant end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the British took it upon themselves to complete something they had been trying...

International bestselling author Jeffrey Archer returns with a triumphant historical novel, Paths of Glory. Paths of Glory, is the story of such a man—George Mallory. Born in 1886, he was a brilliant student who became part of the Bloomsbury Group at Cambridge in the early twentieth century...

INTO AFRICA The Extraordinary Journey of Thomas Baines From Walvis Bay to Victoria Falls In 1861, Thomas Baines set out on an extraordinary journey across southern Africa. His destination was Victoria Falls. Between him and the Zambezi lay hundreds of miles of some of the wildest and most unforgiving country on the continent. Artist, explorer, cartographer and adventurer, Baines sailed from Cape Town to the desolate Atlantic settlement of Walvis Bay before turning inland with ox wagons, supplies, scientific instruments, sketchbooks and paints. What followed was an epic journey across the ...

From NY Times and International bestselling author Geoffrey Jenkins comes a thrill-packed adventure novel that takes readers to the bottom of the world. Orbit Travel's newest cruise was a sell-out. Thrill-seekers wanting a voyage with a difference had rushed to book for the ultimate in high adventure and excitement: a journey through the roaring South Atlantic and sub-Antarctic regions aboard the 'Quest', a converted factory whaling ship, following the path of Admiral Sir James Clark Ross's 1840 voyage of exploration in HMS 'Erebus' and 'Terror'. Then, on the eve of the 'Quest's' departure,...

Read by the author. Historian and bestselling author of Eleanor, Alice Loxton, presents a scintillating history of Britain, told through portraits of eighteen figures in British history at the age of eighteen. 'The star of her generation' – Dan Snow, host of History Hit 'Utterly, utterly...

From the award-winning author of Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line comes a “splendid” (The New York Times) novel set in nineteenth-century Tibet that follows two outsiders—an Indian schoolteacher spying for the British Empire and an English “lady” explorer—as they venture into a...

**NOW A MAJOR FILM STARRING ROBERT PATTINSON, CHARLIE HUNNAM AND SIENNA MILLER** The story of Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett, the inspiration behind Conan Doyle's The Lost World Fawcett was among the last of a legendary breed of British explorers. For years he explored the Amazon and came to...

Into Africa: The Extraordinary Journeys of Frederick Courteney Selous – Volume 2 The young adventurer has become one of Africa's greatest explorers. But Frederick Courteney Selous's most extraordinary journeys still lie ahead. In Volume One of Into Africa, Selous ventured into the African interior as an unknown young hunter, driven by an almost obsessive desire to discover what lay beyond the next river, mountain and distant horizon. Now the world around him is changing. The great elephant country is disappearing. European influence is pushing ever deeper into the interior. Old kingdoms ...

As adventurers from around the world raced to reach the South Pole and achieve other polar firsts in the early 1900s, outsider Ernest Shackleton and his motley expeditions would outshine even the British navy, becoming icons of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Known for prizing loyalty...

The icy Arctic cold stabbed at Wilfred's fingers and toes. A howling wind was pushing the ice pan he was stranded on out to sea -- and with it hope of rescue. His clothes, soaked when his dogsled fell through the ice, were now frozen. Lying near his sled dog for warmth, Wilfred fought off sleep...

A historical exploration book set in Mashonaland during the late 19th century. Join an unforgettable journey into the heart of Africa's ancient realms with "Whispers From Ruins." This gripping expedition narrative transports you to the rugged landscapes and intricate cultures of late 19th century Mashonaland. Guided by the eyewitness accounts of an intrepid trio – the narrator, his resilient wife, and their steadfast cartographer, Robert McNair Wilson Swan – this tale unfolds with vivid descriptions of the African terrain, teeming with ancient ruins and the mystique of Zimbabwe's lost ...

Gertrude Bell crossed deserts, climbed mountains, learned languages, studied ancient ruins, and entered political worlds from which women of her generation were almost entirely excluded. Born into a wealthy industrial family in Victorian England, she could have lived a comfortable and predictable life. Instead, she chose movement. Persia, Syria, Arabia, Mesopotamia: each journey took her farther from the expectations of her time and deeper into a region undergoing enormous change. Explorer, archaeologist, writer, photographer, intelligence officer, and political adviser, Bell became one of ...