Showing results for "Hearts" in Adventurers, Explorers & Survival

Carrot Quinn fears that she's become addicted to the Internet. The city makes her numb, and she's having trouble connecting with others. In a desperate move, she breaks away from everything to walk 2,660 miles from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. It will be her first long-distance hike.

In her midfifties, Dr. Stacey Kerr was diagnosed with osteoporosis and told to play it safe. Instead, she bought her first Harley. Over the next fourteen years, Stacey and her two best friends decided to give the finger to aging gracefully, ultimately embarking on seven epic motorcycle tours throughout the western United States filled with drama, introspection, and pure joy. Using her motorcycle adventures to guide her memories, Stacey travels the twisting road of her own past, in which the only constant is defying expectations.

When Hamed Amiri was 10 years old, he watched his mother give a speech in his home town of Herat, Afghanistan, speaking out for women’s rights and education and against the ruling Taliban. That night, an order was given for her execution. The family packed up their most precious belongings and escaped in darkness, starting what would be a long and dangerous journey. But his mother's was not the only life in danger. Hamed’s older brother suffered from a rare heart condition, and this escape offered a chance of life-saving treatment in the West.

When foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to foster Darcy-May, a two-day-old baby, she is very concerned. The baby is coming to her straight from the hospital and will have no contact with her teenage mother, Haylea. Even more worrying, she will be brought to Cathy with a police escort, as it’s vital her extended family don't know where she is.

There are many reasons why it might seem unwise to walk, mostly alone, through the Middle East. That, in part, is exactly why Leon McCarron did it. From Jerusalem, McCarron followed a series of wild hiking trails that trace ancient trading and pilgrimage routes and traverse some of the most contested landscapes in the world. In the West Bank, he met families struggling to lead normal lives amidst political turmoil and had a surreal encounter with the world's oldest and smallest religious sect.

When Jade Kelly met her new foster mother, she thought her prayers had been answered. Kindly Carol Docherty was everything her violent, drug-addicted mother was not. Loving and nurturing, she fed and clothed 10-year-old Jade and offered a life free of fear from near constant abuse. Or so Jade thought. As soon as social workers in Lancashire stopped their regular checks on Jade’s progress, Carol turned. Over the next six years Jade and three other girls were effectively kept prisoner in a bedroom she called the ‘bad room’ and subjected to unrelenting physical and mental abuse.

Kate wasn't expecting to be divorced after less than a year of marriage. She wasn't expecting to be remaking a life that had, for the last 12 years with her partner, seemed so stable. Luckily, her job as a travel journalist offered her the perfect opportunity to escape from it all. But this time, her restless jet-setting felt different. She felt more alone than ever before, particularly against a backdrop of never-ending hen dos, weddings and baby showers.

Lynn Schooler had recently lost a dear friend and was feeling his marriage slipping away from him when he set out on a daring journey - first by boat, then on foot - into the Alaskan wilderness to clear his head. His solo expedition, recounted in Walking Home, is filled with the awe and danger of being on one's own in the wild, being battered by the elements and even, for two harrowing days, becoming the terrified quarry of a grizzly bear. But the formidable, lonely landscape is also rich with human stories....

Does journeying to the historic centers of imperialism and colonial oppression as a LatinX writer and school counselor from Brooklyn amount to a form of cultural treason? Embark on a captivating ten-day European odyssey that transcends mere travel. From the bustling streets of London to the enchanting canals of Ghent and the romantic allure of Paris, this memoir weaves together historical, cultural, and sporting experiences. But it's more than a geographical journey—it's an exploration of the human heart.

As one of the UK's leading journalists, Dan has made it his life work to focus on people who often act as the catalysts for change: the unheralded champions who frequently go without getting the recognition they deserve. The new audiobook from the author of the best-selling Remarkable People contains a totally fresh batch of humble heroes whose actions, bravery and determination have helped shape their communities.

In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. All that changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and his eyes were opened to the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months Kennan traveled eight thousand miles, mostly in horse-drawn carriages, sleighs, or on horseback. He endured suffocating sandstorms in the summer and blizzards in the winter. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on the fuel of inflicted pain and fear.

Making giant lifestyle changes is difficult. Author Kristine Hudson has more than a fleeting knowledge of this truth, having left her stable, comfortable nine-five suburban life behind to live in a van as a freelance writer. In fact, as she demonstrates in her books, the next worst thing to being completely unprepared is being partially prepared! Combining Ms. Hudson’s works, You Can Absolutely Do This ties together her narrative of a first time van lifer, a first time side hustler, and a first time work-from-home entrepreneur, all rolled into one.

On a cold and cozy December night in 2018, Jim Kaveney thinks he is dying. He is a husband, a father, a business owner, an athlete, and innovator. He is also an Afib patient facing massive cardiac trauma. In this breakout memoir, Jim Kaveney recounts his dance with death and the events of his life leading up to this fateful, health-defining moment and the shifts in business perspective and priorities that followed.

Polish Catholics believed she was one of them. A devoted Nazi family took her in as if she was their own daughter. She fell in love with a German engineer who built aeroplanes for the Luftwaffe. What none of these people knew was that Mala Rivka Kizel had been born into a large Orthodox Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland, in 1926. By using her charm, intelligence, blonde hair, and blue eyes to assume different identities, she was the only member of her family to survive World War II.

Leslie White knew she wanted more out of life - She found it in an unlikely place. Devastated from the loss of both parents to cancer nine months apart, Leslie vowed to change her life. She bought the neighbor’s old motorhome, found a job as a traveling histologist, and hit the road. But she found she could not trust the one person she was still holding onto.

Whispers, Sinners, and Saints is a multigenerational story of heartbreak, horror, trauma, abuse—and perseverance. At the center are Anna, born in New York in 1959, and her mother, Ann, a Hungarian woman who immigrated to the US in 1957. Ann was twelve when the Nazis ordered the slum where she’d grown up to be the designated ghetto for all Jews. During that year, most of Ann’s family would disappear or be killed.

Within the chapters of System Exposed: Heartbeat of My Life, Julie shares her horrific childhood story; complete with child abuse, homelessness, juvenile jails, institutional care, lies and cover ups from trusted officials. The government just closed their eyes and allowed everything told within to happen to many children.

All he wanted was to fly. A shy, socially awkward teenage pilot with an itchy throttle hand, a Da Vinci-esque knack for sketching, and four generations of aeronautical heritage can’t wait to manifest his passionate aversion to the ground. He sees every hard earned dollar as a tick on the Hobbs meter. Every unencumbered swath of dirt is a potential landing strip, legal or not.

For the first twenty-seven years of his life, Ben McKelvey didn't spend too much time thinking about his brain, nor much about trauma. He was fit, carefree and happy working as a magazine journalist, writing listicles and doing celebrity junket interviews. Then one day, while boxing, he suffered a stroke. In the time it took for a left hook to be thrown, Ben disconnected from language and therefore the world. He wanted nothing more than to go back to normal life and, after a time, it looked like he had. Only normal life no longer felt normal. Ben's brain had changed, and so had he.

A true story of courage and survival, South to Alaska carries listeners from the heartland of America to the last frontier... the hard way. Born in the dusty heart of Oklahoma in 1916, 10-year-old Melvin sees a photograph of a cabin in the Alaska wilderness in his fourth-grade geography book and dreams of living there. Nearly 50 years later he builds a 47-foot boat in his Arkansas backyard, launches it on the Arkansas River, and cruises 10,000 miles to Alaska by way of the Panama Canal. Melvin has never been south of the United States/Mexico border.