Set against a spontaneous cross-country road trip following the migrating birds, this passionate, lyrical memoir is one woman's reflections on midlife, her important personal relationships, her kaleidoscopic past, and her uncertain future.To fifty-six-year-old Anne Batterson, a woman whose life has been filled with adventure -- as a commercial pilot, an international skydiving champion, a trekking guide in Nepal -- her husband's decision to retire felt like a death sentence. Yearnin...

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...

• Winner of the BC National Award for Non-Fiction• Nominated for the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2011 Hilary Weston Writer's Trust Award.During Charlotte Gill’s 20 years working as a tree planter she encountered hundreds of clear-cuts, each one a collision site between human civilization and the natural world, a complicated landscape presenting geographic evidence of our appetites. Charged with sowing the new forest...

The “perilously beautiful” (The Boston Globe) first story collection by Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author Anthony Doerr, acclaimed writer of All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land.The exquisitely crafted stories in Anthony Doerr’s debut collection, The Shell Collector, takes readers from the African Coast to the pine forests of Montana to the damp moors of Lapland, charting a vast...

What do you do when your world ends?At twenty-eight years old, Krista Schlyer sold almost everything she owned and packed the rest of it in a station wagon bound for the American wild. Her two best friends joined her-one a grumpy, grieving introvert, the other a feisty dog-and together they sought out every national park, historic site, forest, and wilderness they could get to before their money ran out or their minds gave in.The journey began as a desperate...

Part adventure story, part love story, part homecoming, Still Points North is a page-turning memoir that explores the extremes of belonging and exile, and the difference between how to survive and knowing how to truly live.Growing up in the wilds of Alaska, seven-year-old Leigh Newman spent her time landing silver salmon, hiking glaciers, and flying in a single-prop plane. But her life split in two when her parents unexpectedly divorced, requiring her to spend summers on t...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe beloved New York Times-bestselling guide to inspiring girls to pursue a life of adventure and excitement-updated and at last in paperback.Why should girls miss out on the joy of adventure? They can jump off rocks, swing on ropes, and climb trees just as well as boys can. But girls often allow fear to stand in their way.In The Gutsy Girl, author Caroline Paul emboldens girls to ...

The second volume of collected short fiction from the New York Times bestselling author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring fifty-eight short stories that “mix brilliance with high-concept pyrotechnics” (Los Angeles Times), including fourteen never-before-published tales“Whether he’s writing about survival in a wasted environment or people and animals coming unhinged, Boyle never fails to captivate, to deliver his ideas within the ...

A hilarious collection of essays dedicated to life in the great outdoors from Field & Stream's acclaimed Sportsman's Life columnist.For nearly a decade, Bill Heavey, an outdoorsman marooned in suburbia, has written the Sportsman's Life column on the back page of Field & Stream, where he does for hunting and fishing what David Feherty does for golf and Lewis Grizzard did for the South. If You Didn't Bring Jerky, What Did I Just Eat? is the...

In an effort to make sense of the deaths in quick succession of several loved ones, Kathleen Dean Moore turned to the comfort of the wild, making a series of solitary excursions into ancient forests, wild rivers, remote deserts, and windswept islands to learn what the environment could teach her in her time of pain. This book is the record of her experiences. It’s a stunning collection of carefully observed accounts of her life—tracking otters on the beach, cooking breakfast in the desert,...

“After five decades, twenty books, and countless columns, [John Gierach] is still a master,” (Forbes) and his newest book only confirms this assessment, along with his recent induction into the Flyfishing Hall of Fame. In A Fly Rod of Your Own, Gierach brings his ever-sharp sense of humor and keen eye for observation to the fishing life and, for that matter, life in general.Known for his witty, trenchant observations about fly-fishing, Gierach’s “...

Ten essays on nature, ritual, and philosophy "that are so point-blank vital you nearly need to put the book down to settle yourself" ( San Francisco Chronicle).Gretel Ehrlich's world is one of solitude and wonder, pain and beauty, and these elements give life to her stunning prose. Ever since her acclaimed debut, The Solace of Open Spaces, she has illuminated the particular qualities of nature and the self with graceful precision.In Isl...