ParisDear Alice,Each morning I am awakened by the sound of a tinkling bell. A cheerful sound, it reminds me of the bells that shopkeepers attach to their doors at Christmastime. In this case, the bell marks the opening of the hotel door. From my room, which is just off the winding staircase, I can hear it clearly. It reminds me of the bell that calls to worship the novice embarking on a new life. In a way I too am a novice, leaving, temporarily, one life for another.

Eight years ago, Alice Steinbach, a Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun, decided to take a break from her life. She took a leave from job, friends, and family for a European journey of self-discovery, and her first book, Without Reservations, was the exquisite result.But once Steinbach had opened the door to a new way of living, she found herself unwilling to return to the old routine. She quit her job and left home again, only this time...

The first book by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach is an intimate, personal collection of essays, remembrances, and columns that follows in the creative nonfiction tradition of Anna Quindlen and May Sarton. While it recounts the experience and observations of a divorced, working mother, it expresses hopes and fears universal to all women. Steinbach focuses on the big and small things of life: the bond between lifelong friends; coming to grips with loss; the quiet, everyday moments betwee...

Fat, 59, fortified daily by red wine and challenged by my husband, I start a mildly epic adventure. This book is part autobiography, part travel guide, an honest but tongue in cheek record of my Camino. It lists distances, places to stay and to avoid, what to take, degree of difficulty and ultimately proves anybody can do it.I want to inspire you to take the first step on your own adventure.

“Written with a gentle, wry humor that recalls Bill Bryson,” (The New York Times), this international bestseller about a modern pilgrimage by one of Germany’s most popular comedic entertainers has struck a nerve.Overweight, overworked, and physically unfit, Kerkeling was an unlikely candidate to make the arduous hike across the French Alps to the Spanish Shrine of St. James, a 1,200-year-old journey undertaken by nearly 100,000 Christians every year. But t...

The true story of an ordinary woman living an extraordinary existence all over the world.“Gelman doesn’t just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the people’s lives. This is an amazing travelogue.” —BooklistAt the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita Golden Gelman left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of travelling the world, connecting with people in...

A “truly hilarious” (Glamour), sexy, and ultimately poignant memoir about mastering the art of the “vacationship” from a writer and co-executive producer of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building—now with a new afterword“What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding is kind of like if Eat, Pray, Love were written by your funniest friend.”—Rachel DratchKristin Newman spent much of her twenties and thirties buying ...

TWO PLANE TICKETS, NO PLAN, ONE DREAM Happier Than A Billionaire shares one couple's celebration of risking it all for the dream of living a happier life. In this humorous and witty account, Nadine Pisani shares what it is like to follow her dream of quitting her job and starting a new life under the sunny skies of Costa Rica. Along the way, she finds reliable utilities are not that reliable, quirky neighbors are unavoidable, and tackling red tape takes the ...

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF UNDER MAGNOLIAThe author who unforgettably captured the experience of starting a new life in Tuscany in bestselling travel memoirs expands her horizons to immerse herself—and her readers—in the sights, aromas, and treasures of twelve new special places.A Year in the World is vintage Frances Mayes—a celebration of the allure of travel, of serendipitous pleasures found in unlik...

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis's exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada—a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed. Dealing with a problem that has sadly become all too common on college campuses around the country, she stumbled th...

Rachel Friedman has always been the consummate good girl who does well in school and plays it safe, so the college grad surprises no one more than herself when, on a whim (and in an effort to escape impending life decisions), she buys a ticket to Ireland, a place she has never visited. There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, an...

In Grandmas On the Camino, author Mary OHara Wyman, a 72 year old grandmother from San Francisco, relates her 2010 adventures walking 500 miles alone as a pilgrim on the Camino Frances. Her journey takes her from St. Jean Pied de Port in France, across the Pyrenees to Spain, then westward to the ancient spiritual destination of Santiago de Compostela. Through back-home reflections based on journal entries and postcards sent to her grand daughter, Mary describes engaging encounters with pil...