The true story of a young couple who quit their jobs and set sail for a year on the ocean with no boating experienceAmy and Jimmie were not sailors and their experience on the seas included reading a few books, watching a couple of instructional videos, and boating once a week each year. They were middle-class land-lubbers, audacious and in love, and all they wanted was to be together and do something extraordinary. The Box Wine Sailors tells the true story of a couple's ramshackle trip down the coast with all the exulting highs and terrifying lows of sailing a small boat on the Pacific. From sailing on Thanksgiving morning under spectacular bright blue Californian skies just off the Channel Islands as dolphins raced alongside their boat to the terrifying experience of rounding Punta Gorda and hanging on to the mast for dear life. It also tells the story of two very normal people doing what most people only dream of and settling the argument that if you want something bad enough you can make it happen.

The Sea Is Not Full is an eclectic personal sailing narrative that mixes accounts of two dramatic boat abandonments and a cruise up a West African river with practical advice on learning to sail, navigation, heavy weather tactics, and other topics. Also included are philosophical essays on ocean sailing and human evolution and theology, plus profiles of individuals the author has sailed with, including notable sailing personalities like Don Street and Jimmy Cornell.

Surfing's Greatest Misadventures contains thirty of themost engaging, humorous and unbelievable stories ofsurfing life from the past fifty years. Culled fromhundreds of submissions, the non-fiction stories selectedfor this one-of-a-kind collection run the gamut from theterrifying to the comical to the downright bizarre. Thestories ......

The Sunday Times Children's Book of the Year. Children's Book of the Week in both the Times and Guardian. The Misadventures of Frederick is a funny, joyful story about friendship and the delights of outdoor adventures (even for the accident-prone) – wonderfully written by the talented Ben Manley and beautifully illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark, creator of Plumdog and Blue Kangaroo. In a mansion surrounded by lakes and forests, Frederick is bored. He leads a very sheltered life: and when Emily invites him to play outside he has no choice but to refuse – what if he hurts himself? Much better to stay safely indoors. But Emily is not one to take no for an answer . . . A series of brilliantly funny and evocative letters between Frederick and Emily tell this unique story which weaves together the colourful, adventurous world of Emily with Frederick's drab life of boredom and safety.

Shipwrecks and the Bounty of the Sea is a work of social history examining community relationships, law, and seafaring over the long early modern period. It explores the politics of the coastline, the economy of scavenging, and the law of 'wreck of the sea' from the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth I to the end of the reign of George II. England's coastlines were heavily trafficked by naval and commercial shipping, but an unfortunate percentage was cast away or lost. Shipwrecks were disasters for merchants and mariners, but opportunities for shore dwellers. As the proverb said, it was an ill wind that blew nobody any good. Lords of manors, local officials, officers of the Admiralty, and coastal commoners competed for maritime cargoes and the windfall of wreckage, which they regarded as providential godsends or entitlements by right. A varied haul of commodities, wines, furnishings, and bullion came ashore, much of it claimed by the crown. The people engaged in salvaging these wrecks came to be called 'wreckers', and gained a reputation as violent and barbarous plunderers. Close attention to statements of witnesses and reports of survivors shows this image to be largely undeserved. Dramatic evidence from previously unexplored manuscript sources reveals coastal communities in action, collaborating as well as competing, as they harvested the bounty of the sea.

The Russian Empire once extended deep into America: in 1818 Russia's furthest outposts were in California and Hawaii. The dreamer behind this great Imperial vision was Nikolai Rezanov ? diplomat, adventurer, courtier, millionaire and gambler. His quest to plant Russian colonies from Siberia to California led him to San Francisco, where he was captivated by Conchita, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Spanish Governor, who embodied his dreams of both love and empire. From the glittering court of Catherine the Great to the wilds of the New World, Matthews conjures a brilliantly original portrait of one of Russia's most eccentric Empire-builders.

Cundill History Prize Finalist Longman–History Today Prize Finalist Winner of the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize “Meticulous environmental-historical detective work.” —Times Literary Supplement When Europeans first arrived in North America, they faced a cold new world. The average global temperature had dropped to lows unseen in millennia. The effects of this climactic upheaval were stark and unpredictable: blizzards and deep freezes, droughts and famines, winters in which everything froze, even the Rio Grande. A Cold Welcome tells the story of this crucial period, taking us from Europe’s earliest expeditions in unfamiliar landscapes to the perilous first winters in Quebec and Jamestown. As we confront our own uncertain future, it offers a powerful reminder of the unexpected risks of an unpredictable climate. “A remarkable journey through the complex impacts of the Little Ice Age on Colonial North America...This beautifully written, important book leaves us in no doubt that we ignore the chronicle of past climate change at our peril. I found it hard to put down.” —Brian Fagan, author of The Little Ice Age “Deeply researched and exciting...His fresh account of the climatic forces shaping the colonization of North America differs significantly from long-standing interpretations of those early calamities.” —New York Review of Books

What would you do if your ex got abducted?Remember, they're an ex for a reason. So let's assume you hate them from the depths of your soul. Line up the tequila shots, right? Not your problem? Now stay with me for a second. What if you were the ONLY person who could save their life? Then would you save them? We are talking about another human being's life, after all. Now, imagine you have seven million dollars in your bank account. Sweet, right? It's seven million dollars or your ex's life. This is a judgment-free zone. Be honest. You'd keep the seven million dollars. Am I right? Yeah, me too. So, I'm Drunk. I hate my ex. And I have seven million dollars in my bank account. You do the math. My buddy Al and I are back once again for another Caribbean flavored misadventure. There's more action, more adventure, more profanity, and more ass-kicking. Rated R for language, crude humor, and sexual innuendos. Rated A+ for entertainment value. **Word to the wise...while this story can stand on its own two feet, it'll make more sense if you start with my first story, Drunk on a Plane.

In the tradition of Eiger Dreams, In the Zone: Epic Survival Stories from the Mountaineering World, and Not Without Peril, comes a new book that examines the thrills and perils of outdoor adventure in the “East’s greatest wilderness,” the Adirondacks.

After years on the outside, Bulgaria has finally made it into the EU club, but beyond the clichés about undrinkable plonk, cheap property, and assassins with poison-tipped umbrellas, the country remains a largely unknown quantity. Born on the muddy outskirts of Sofia, Kapka Kassabova grew up under Communism, got away just as soon as she could, and has loved and hated her homeland in equal measure ever since. In this illuminating and entertaining memoir, Kapka revisits Bulgaria and her own muddled relationship to it, travelling back to the scenes of her childhood, sampling its bizarre tourist sites, uncovering its centuries' old history of bloodshed and blurred borders, and capturing the absurdities and idiosyncrasies of her own and her country's past. Also available as an eBook