'A soaring gift of a book' Owen Sheers 'Remarkable' Mark Vanhoenacker, author of Skyfaring 'Stunning . . . a love letter to nature' Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of The Last Act of Love The day she flew in a glider for the first time, Rebecca Loncraine fell in love. Months of gruelling treatment for breast cancer meant she had lost touch with the world around her, but in that engineless plane, soaring 3,000 feet over the landscape of her childhood, with only the rising thermals to take her higher and the birds to lead the way, she felt ready to face life again. And so Rebecca flew, travelling from her home in the Black Mountains of Wales to New Zealand's Southern Alps and the Nepalese Himalayas as she chased her new-found passion: her need to soar with the birds, to push herself to the boundary of her own fear. Taking in the history of unpowered flight, and with extraordinary descriptions of flying in some of the world's most dangerous and dramatic locations, Skybound is a nature memoir with a unique perspective; it is about the land we know and the sky we know so little of, it is about memory and self-discovery. Rebecca became ill again just as she was finishing Skybound, and she died in September 2016. Though her death is tragic, it does not change what Skybound is: a book full of hope. Deeply moving, thrilling and euphoric, Skybound is for anyone who has ever looked up and longed to take flight. Shortlisted for the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Award 2018.

In December 1965, in a smoke-filled hotel room in Morocco, South African journalist Terry Bell accepted a challenge: to paddle a kayak from London to Tangier.

At the time, Terry and his wife Barbara were living as political exiles in London. By August 1967, they agreed it was time to get back to Africa. But they decided to up the ante. Their plan: paddle 11 000 kilometres from England to Dar es Salaam in a 5-metre glass fibre kayak.

The book includes a section on culinary kayaking – the recipes that Barbara cooked along the way.

John Betjeman (1906-1984) was not only one of the best-loved Englishmen of the twentieth century, he was also the people's favourite poet and champion of many causes linked to the preservation of Britain's heritage. Whether those causes concerned buildings, bridges or railway branch lines, Betjeman was a feared adversary of bureaucratic excesses. This delightful little book is a celebration of his love of railways and rail travel. Ten letters selected by his daughter, Candida Lycett Green, each describe a journey that he made or that he planned to make or that he planned for a friend or relative. Jonathan Glancey has added his own words to each letter; words that set the scene, bring the letters to life, that describe Betjeman's moods - humorous, mischievous, brisk for business - and above all, remind us of the age of the steam locomotive in Britain and the many stations closed and track miles lost during the sixties and seventies.

The Pony Express has a hold on the American imagination wildly out of proportion to its actual contribution to the history and development of the West. It lasted less than eighteen months—about the amount of time it took author Scott Alumbaugh to plan and ride the route—and utterly failed by every measure of success attributed to it. The only reason it did not fade out of public consciousness, as did the far more successful Butterfield mail, is publicity. In the Pony’s case, a thirty-year campaign of publicity mounted by Buffalo Bill Cody, who mislead the public by claiming to have been a Pony Express rider, and lied outright by claiming to have made the longest Pony Express run. More than anyone, Buffalo Bill kept the legend alive by including a Pony Express segment throughout the run of his Wild West show. But while the Pony Express may be among the least significant developments of its era, it is the most iconic. One can’t really understand the Pony Express—what it stood for, what it accomplished, why it came about at all—without understanding the far more interesting historical milieu from which it grew: Three wars (Mexican, Utah, and Paiute); two gold rushes (California and Pike’s Peak); the overland emigration of hundreds of thousands to Oregon and California; the exodus of tens of thousands of Mormons to Utah. On the Pony Express Trail: One Man's Bikepacking Journey to Discover History from a Different Kind of Saddle recounts the author’s experience bikepacking the Pony Express Trail over five weeks during June and July 2021, and uses the trail as a prism through which to survey a wide spectrum of mid-1800s historical events. Sixty-two-year-old Alumbaugh rode the Pony Express Bikepacking Route from St. Joseph, MO to Salt Lake City, UT, over 1,400 miles, mostly off-road, sometimes through very remote territory. The narrative follows his day-to-day experiences and impressions: the challenges, the sites he visited, the country he rode through, and interactions with the people he met.

In sy nuutste boek het Dana van sy ware ontmoetings geboekstaaf – ontmoetings met mense, maar soms ook met dinge – die vleispastei, of tuisgemaakte braai-apparate. Die stories het hy aanvanklik op Facebook gepos. Die wat die grootste reaksie gekry het is hierin verwerk. 'n Ware interaktiewe Suid-Afrikaanse boek.

In this thoughtful, informative account of a journey from Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta to Hanoi and Halong Bay, Zoe Schramm-Evans delves behind the cliche-ridden images of Vietnam to discover a country poised on the brink of remarkable social and economic change.