Non Fiction - Adventure

In his second collection of hunting adventures, Greig Caigou unpacks the classic and memorable elements of New Zealand hunts, blending his own inspiring stories with those of other keen hunters. These adventures span both gender and a range of ages and capture the essence of special regions and memorable hunts throughout New Zealand. Wild Fiordland, the intimidating landscape of South Westland, the stark Canterbury Alps and the beautiful high basins at the top of the South Island all have hunting stories to share. From the... read more

This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history.

Colin Monteath is a Canterbury author with several previous books to his credit - Hall and Ball, Antarctica - Beyond the Southern Ocean. This new book documents 12 of Colin's most recent journeys to polar and mountain heartlands in Tibet, Bhutan, Alaska, Mongolia, Nepal, Greenland, Patagonia, NZ, The Chinese Karakoram and Antarctica.

A collection combining two of Bear Grylls' most exciting adventures - 'Facing Up' and 'Facing the Frozen Ocean'. At extreme altitude youth holds no advantage over experience, and it is generally acknowledged that younger climbers have more difficulty coping with the adverse effects of mountaineering. Nevertheless, only two years after breaking his back in a free-fall parachuting accident, Bear Grylls overcame severe weather conditions, fatigue, dehydration and a last minute illness to stand on top of the world's highest mountai... read more

Heinrich Harrer, already a famous mountaineer and Olympic ski champion, was caught by the outbreak of the Second World War while climbing in the Himalayas. An Austrian national, he was imprisoned by the British in India. By an almost super-human effort, on his third attempt he succeeded in escaping from the internment camp and fled into Tibet. After a series of remarkable experiences in a country never crossed before by a Westerner, Harrer reached the forbidden city of Lhasa. He stayed there for seven years, learned the language a... read more

A ripping good adventure tale set on the high seas, Plastiki captures the inventing, building, and sailing of the Plastiki boat across the Pacific by explorer, green leader, and eco-TV-host David de Rothschild. The Plastiki is a one-of-a-kind 60-foot catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and using many renewable energy systems. In March 2010, the sailing vessel set off from San Francisco with a six-person crew to survey the Eastern Garbage Patch, soon-to-be-flooded island nations, damaged and bleached coral reefs, ... read more

Reprinted on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the conquering of Everest, this is the authoritative first-person account of Hillary and Tenzing's conquest. "High Adventure" is regarded as a mountaineering classic, but it is also a thrilling and inspiring story of courage and endurance. First published 1955.

For over three decades Pat Deavoll has been climbing at the elite level of her sport, in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, in the Canadian Rockies and Alaska, and undertaken extreme, world-class expeditions to the great mountain ranges of Central Asia, including the Himalayas and the Karakorum. In Wind from a Distant Summit she tells of her beginnings in the mountains of New Zealand, and of how far a singular level of drive, determination and talent has taken her - there are few mountaineers in New Zealand, women or men, who have ... read more

"Strong and Braden's tale of an imperfect storm, three ships, and a daring rescue comes to vivid life in this gem of a book." -Publishers Weekly "A marvelous yarn about an incredible rescue." -The Bangor (ME) Daily News When Skip Strong, a thirty-two-year-old captain of the 688-foot oil tanker Cherry Valley received the call, all he knew was that an oceangoing tug with five men aboard was in distress off Florida's east coast. Caught in an unusually powerful storm, the tug's engines failed, and as the winds gusted to more than six... read more

A moving account of the author's maverick life as a mountaineer. Behind these tales of adventure lies a brooding disquiet as he struggles to come to terms with the grinding poverty and violence lurking so close to the surface of life everywhere that he travels. In Storms of Silence Joe Simpson recalls the severe snowstorm which put an end to an attempt with four others on Gangchempo and the infection which forced him to abandon the climb on Cho Oyu in tibet. During that expedition he has a disturbing encounter with a party of po... read more

The epic of the Apollo missions told in the astronauts' own words and gorgeously illustrated with their photographs Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon" is considered the definitive history of the Apollo moon missionsaarguably the pinnacle of human experience. Now, using never-before-published quotes taken from his in-depth interviews with twenty-three of the twenty-four Apollo lunar astronauts, Chaikin and his collaborator, Victoria Kohl, have created an extraordinary account of the lunar missions. In "Voices from the Moon" the a... read more

Everest was, to George Mallory, 'the wildest dream'. This gentleman adventurer was obsessed with taming the unconquered peak. But in 1924 he and climbing partner Sandy Irvine disappeared forever into the clouds encircling the peak. Might they have reached the summit before their tragedy? It is mountaineering's greatest mystery. Seventy-five years later, Conrad Anker made an extraordinary discovery. He spotted 'a patch of white' on Everest's North Face. It was Mallory's frozen body. Artefacts found on Mallory's body implied that he ... read more

A previously overshadowed maritime mission, this is the extraordinary story of Shackleton's forgotten support party from the Aurora, who desperately continued laying supplies across the Antarctic, unaware that Shackleton had aborted his journey.In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set forth to make history with the first-ever crossing of the Antarctic continent. He could not undertake this epic journey, some seventeen hundred miles, without support. On the eve of the Great War, Shackleton disappeared into the Weddell Sea aboard the Endur... read more

In June 1994 Alvah Simon and his wife, Diana, set off in their 36-foot sailboat to explore the hauntingly beautiful world of icebergs, tundra, and fjords lying high above the Arctic Circle. Four months later, unexpected events would trap Simon alone on his boat, frozen in ice 100 miles from the nearest settlement, with the long polar night stretching into darkness for months to come. With his world circumscribed by screaming blizzards and marauding polar bears and his only companion a kitten named Halifax, Simon withstands months o... read more

In Claire Brownsworth’s experience, coming down is as good as getting high! The down-under physiotherapist is an extreme athlete, which means she’s up for almost anything - be it racing down three vertical kilometres of the world’s most dangerous road or accidentally setting a world record in rock climbing. An extraordinary autobiography about living without limits.

Clemens Forell, a German soldier, was sentenced to 25 years of forced labour in a Siberian lead mine after World War II. Rebelling against the brutality of the camp, Forell staged a daring escape enduring an 8000-mile journey across the trackless wastes of Siberia, in some of the most treacherous and inhospitable conditions on earth. Bauer's writing evokes Forell's desperation in the prison camp, and his struggle for survival and terror of recapture as he makes his way towards the Persian frontier and freedom.

Hardberger recounts his adventures repossessing ships and sneaking them out of lawless, third-world countries, often under threat of death or imprisonment. His journeys lead him from corrupt ports in the Caribbean to the ice-bound docks of Vladivostok. His adventures in rescuing ships pit him against a rogue's gallery of antagonists, including Haitian rebels, modern-day Caribbean pirates, and Russian mobsters. Capt. Max Hardberger uses every trick, tool and tactic at his disposal to right wrongs and out-pirate pirates in this actio... read more

From Sir Ernest Shackleton on South Georgia Island to currency trader Ron DiFrancesco in the South Tower of the World Trade Center, hundreds of people in life-threatening situations have shared an experience that an unseen being - known as the Third Man - helped them survive apparently insurmountable odds. So who is the Third Man?