Category Archives: Travel Guides
Silk Dreams, Troubled Road
While in Islamabad investigating the possibilities of setting up an adventure travel company, Jonny Bealby met the woman of his dreams. Not only that, but Rachel was the person with whom he could live out his dream — to travel the Old Silk Road on horseback. On his return to Pakistan that Christmas, however, Jonny
Birders
Since 1972 Mark Cocker has been a member of a community of obsessional people, almost all male, who sacrifice most of their spare time, a good deal of money, sometimes their chances of a partner or family, even occasionally their lives, to watch birds. Birders is the story of this community, of its characters, its
At The Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay
Paraguay – the name conjures up everything most exotic and extreme in South America. It`s a place of hellish jungles, dictators, fraudsters and Nazis, utopian experiments, missionaries and lurid coups. It`s not a place for the timid tourist. It doesn`t even have its own guidebook. But Paraguay, as revealed in this outstanding new travel book,
In Ruins
Why are we so fascinated by ruins? Do we see them as jig-saws and riddles or romantic evocations of the damage of Time, complete with crumbling stone and ivy? Do they stir us to remember past glory or warn against future arrogance? In this elegant, provocative book , the brilliant young art-historian Christopher Woodward looks
Orchid Thief
Susan Orlean first met John Laroche when visiting Florida to write for the New Yorker about his arrest for stealing rare ghost orchids from a nature reserve. Fascinated both by Laroche and the world she uncovered of orchid collectors and growers, she stayed on, to write this magical exploration of obsession and the strange world
More Far Eastern Tales
From the love affair between a missionary and a drunkard to the mystery surrounding a death at sea, this collection gives a warm and humourous insight into life and history of life in the colonies and stands as a superbly entertaining and compelling testament to Maugham`s skill and power as a short story writer.
Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin`s death from AIDS in 1989 brought a meteoric career to an abrupt end, since he burst onto the literary scene in 1977 with his first book, In Patagonia. Chatwin himself was different things to different people: a journalist, a photographer, an art collector, a restless traveller and a best-selling author; he was also
The Sound of Waves
Set in a remote fishing village in Japan, The Sound of Waves is a timeless story of first love. It tells of Shinji, a young fisherman and Hatsue, the beautiful daughter of the wealthiest man in the village. Shinji is entranced at the sight of Hatsue in the twilight on the beach and they fall
Voss
Set in nineteenth-century Australia, Voss is the story of the secret passion between an explorer and a naive young woman. Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent, and as hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away
The First Forty Nine Stories
From Ernest Hemingway`s Preface: `There are many kinds of stories in this book. I hope you will find some that you like- In going where you have to go, and doing what you have to do, and seeing what you have to see, you dull and blunt the instrument you write with. But I would
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Manuel Puig’s ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman” is a gutwrenching tale of love, passion, politics and betrayal. Sometimes they talk all night long. In the still darkness of their cell, Molina re-weaves the glittering and fragile stories of the film he loves, and the cynical Valentin listens. Valentin believes in the just cause which makes
In Search of Lost Time: v.2: Within a Budding Grove
Within a Budding Grove describes the first shoots of an astonishing love affair. When Proust`s adolescent narrator travels from Paris to the sunny seaside town of Balbec he meets an intriguing set of new acquaintances who provide him with both friendship and entertainment. Most significantly of all he meets a dark-haired girl with sparkling eyes
This Game of Ghosts
Touching the Void was Joe Simpson`s account of his near fatal accident on Peru`s Siula Grande. He never expected to be in the same situation again. However fate had other ideas and later in the Himalayas another near fatal fall forced him to again examine why he should be so lucky when so many of
Distant Voices
Throughout his distinguished career as a journalist and film-maker, John Pilger has looked behind the `official` versions of events to report the real stories of our time. The centrepiece of this new, expanded edition of his bestselling Distant Voices is Pilger`s reporting from East Timor, which he entered secretly in 1993 and where a third
Charlotte Gray
In 1942, Charlotte Gray, a young scottish woman, goes to Occupied France on a dual mission – officially, to run an apparently simple errand for a British special operations group and unofficially, to search for her lover, an English airman who has gone missing in action. In the small town of Lavaurette, Sebastian Faulks presents
The Lawless Roads
Graham Greene was commissioned to visit Mexico in 1938 in order to discover the state of the country and its people following the brutal anti-catholic, clerical purges of President Calles and his attempts at enforced secularisation; the result of his journey of discovery was his travel biography ‘The Lawless Roads’.
Geisha
Liza Dalby, author of The Tale of Murasaki, is the only non-Japanese woman ever to have become a geisha. This is her unique insight into the extraordinary, closed world of the geisha, a world of grace, beauty and tradition that has long fascinated and enthralled the West. Taking us to the heart of a way
The Way of a Ship
Benjamin Lundy crossed oceans under sail in the late nineteenth century and over one hundred years later Derek Lundy, his great-great nephew, has re-created that journey. In The Way of a Ship he places Benjamin on board the Beara Head with a community of fellow seamen as they perform the exhausting and dangerous work of
The Gentleman In The Parlour
This book includes an introduction by Paul Theroux. Somerset Maugham`s success as a writer enabled him to indulge his adventurous love of travel, and he recorded the sights and sounds of his wide-ranging journeys with an urbane, wry style all his own. “The Gentleman in the Parlour” is an account of the author`s trip through
Catalina
Crippled sixteen-year-old Catalina is the one person unable to join in the festivities of the Feast of the Assumption. But then she has a vision of the Virgin, and is miraculously cured. In the dark days of the Spanish Inquisition, such a claim to blessedness has serious consequences, especially when Catalina seems more inclined to
