NCW Libraries

A trek through Central America from the author of Walking the Himalayas, "just the kind of guy you want with you on an adventure" (The Washington Post).
Beginning in the Yucatán—and moving south through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama—Wood's journey takes him from sleepy barrios to glamorous cities to Mayan ruins lying unexcavated in the wilderness. Wood encounters indigenous tribes in Mexico,...

"The incredible true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion. In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years...

"A memoir of one young man's coming of age on a cross-country trek, told through the stories of the people of all ages, races, and inclinations he meets along the highways of America"--Amazon.com.

This is Charles Darwin's chronicle of his five-year journey, beginning in 1831, around the world as a naturalist on the H.M.S. Beagle.

"It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser's Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell's teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won't...

The great American novelist Edith Wharton (1862-1937) here gives us her colorful and textured travel memoir "In Morroco" (1920). Still a deeply energized work, Wharton imbues the reader with a sense of wonder that served as the impetus for her travels into this exotic Northern African land. Edith Wharton made her name as a novelist closely associated with the prolific Henry James. Their personal and literary kinship may be seen in much of her long...

Mark Twain's semi-autobiographical travel memoir, "Roughing It" was written between 1870-1871 and subsequently published in 1872. Billed as a prequel to "Innocents Abroad", in which Twain details his travels aboard a pleasure cruise through Europe and the Holy Land in 1867, "Roughing It" conversely documents Twain's early days in the old wild west between the years 1861-1867. Employing his characteristically humoristic wit and flare for regional dialect,...

When he was just a fledgling birdwatcher, Jonathan C. Slaght had a chance encounter with one of the most mysterious birds on Earth. Bigger than any owl he knew, it looked like a small bear with decorative feathers. He snapped a quick photo and shared it with experts. Soon he was on a five-year journey, searching for this enormous, enigmatic creature in the lush, remote forests of eastern Russia. That first sighting set his calling as a scientist....

"A beautiful, evocative, and sometimes provocative memoir of Australia's unique landscape, and how that singular place has shaped Tim Winton and his writing. From boyhood, Winton's relationship with the world around him-rock pools, sea caves, scrub, and swamp-has been as vital as any other connection. Camping in hidden inlets, walking in high rocky desert, diving in reefs, bobbing in the sea between surfing sets, Winton has felt the place seep into...

What started as a scientific expedition turned into a harrowing adventure through some of the roughest and most beautiful country in America. It was May of 1869 when a Civil War veteran and nine other men descended with four boats into a branch of the Colorado River for what they believed would be a ten-month excursion through the last unmapped territory of the continental United States. Three months and one thousand miles later, six emaciated men...