Rachel Linden

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

Washington

Rachel Linden's newest contemporary women's fiction story speaks to the universal struggle of what it means to live a meaningful life where the passions we have meet the needs of the world.

The Enlightenment of Bees

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Jay Griffiths

An Elemental Journey

Jay Griffiths describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous, to wildernesses of earth and ice, water and fire. It is also a journey into that greatest of uncharted lands - wild mind - as she explores the words and meanings which shape our ideas and our experience of our own wildness.

Wild

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Tim O'Brien

Paperback (1 to 2 lbs)

John and Kathy Wade, whose marriage has been built on mutual deception, visit a Minnesota lake to try to sort things out, a difficult process made more so by Kathy's sudden disappearence

In the Lake of the Woods

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Alexandra Fuller

An African Childhood

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

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Piers Paul Read

Sixteen Men, Seventy-Two Days, and Insurmountable Odds--the Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes

#1 New York Times Bestseller

"No one will come away unmoved by the book, and no one will be able to put it down.... There is no way of reading Alive without a heightened sense of one's own life and its value." -- New Republic

Sixteen Men, Seventy-Two Days, and Insurmountable Odds--the Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes

On October 12, 1972, an Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying a team of rugby players crashed in the remote snowy peaks of the Andes. Ten weeks later, only sixteen of the forty-five passengers were found alive. This is the story of those ten weeks spent in the shelter of the plane's fuselage without food and with scarcely any hope of a rescue. The survivors protected and helped one another, and came to the difficult conclusion that to live meant doing the unimaginable. Confronting nature at its most furious, two brave young men risked their lives to hike through the mountains looking for help. A tale of astonishing bravery and adventure, Alive is much more than a survival story, it is a breathtaking saga of human courage

The P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including interviews, recommended reading, and more.

Alive

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John Vaillant

Hardcover (1 to 2 lbs)

A True Story of Vengeance and Survival

It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.

Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

The Tiger

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Levison Wood

Levison Wood's journey was 4,250 miles long, and he walked every step of the way, camping in the wild, foraging for food, and fending for himself against multiple dangers. He passed through rainforest, savannah, swamp, desert, and lush delta oases and crossed seven very different countries. No one had ever made this journey on foot. In this detailed, thoughtful, inspiring and dramatic book is recounted Levison Wood's walk the length of the Nile, during which he uncovered the history of the Nile. Through the people he met and who helped him with his journey, he came face to face with the great story of a modern Africa emerging out of the past. Exploration and Africa are two of Wood's great passions -- they drove him on and motivated his inquisitiveness and resolution not to fail. Yet the challenges that the terrain, the climate, the animals, the people and his own psychological resolution threw at him were immense. The dangers were very real, but so was the motivation for this ex-army officer.

Walking the Nile

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Elizabeth B. Jenkins

A Woman's Spiritual Adventure in the Heart of the Andes

Initiation

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Michael Perry

Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin (population: 485), where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Michael Perry loves this place. He grew up here, and now -- after a decade away -- he has returned. Unable to polka or repair his own pickup, his farm-boy hands gone soft after years of writing, Mike figures the best way to regain his credibility is to join the volunteer fire department. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, he tells a frequently comic tale leavened with moments of heartbreaking delicacy and searing tragedy. Tracing his calls on a map in the little firehouse, he sees "a dense, benevolent web, spun one frantic zigzag at a time" from which the story of a tiny town emerges, building to a final chapter that is at once devastating and transcendent.

Population 485

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Sara Dykman

My 10,201-Mile Journey Following the Monarch Migration

Winner of the 2021 National Outdoor Book Award



Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle alongside monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration--a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets.



In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the dramatic ups and downs of the nearly nine-month odyssey. We're beside her as she navigates unmapped roads in foreign countries, checks roadside milkweed for monarch eggs, and shares her passion with eager schoolchildren, skeptical bar patrons, and unimpressed border officials. We also meet some of the ardent monarch stewards who supported her efforts, from citizen scientists and researchers to farmers and high-rise city dwellers.



With both humor and humility, Dykman offers a compelling story, confirming the urgency of saving the threatened monarch migration--and the other threatened systems of nature that affect the survival of us all.

Bicycling with Butterflies

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Hannah Kirshner

Learning Craft and Cultivation in a Japanese Mountain Town

One night, food writer Hannah Kirshner received an invitation to apprentice with a 'sake evangelist' in a misty Japanese mountain village. While there, she met a community of craftspeople, farmers, and foragers and learned their centuries-old traditions. This book invites readers to see what goes into making a fine bowl, a cup of tea, or a harvest of rice and introduces the masters who dedicate their lives to this work. Part travelogue, part meditation on the meaning of work, this is an ode to a place and its people, and a profound examination of what it means to sustain traditions.

Water, Wood, and Wild Things

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Porter Fox

A 4,000 Mile Journey along America's Forgotten Border

A quest to rediscover America's other border--the fascinating but little-known northern one.

Northland

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Peter M. Leschak

Minnesota author Peter Leschak presents his second book of Northwoods tales (following Letters from Side Lake, published in 1987). With stories about fighting fires for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR), white-water canoeing on the Little Fork River, and skiing across a frozen lake in a blizzard, Leschak captures the drama and unique majesty of Minnesotas Northwoods.

The Bear Guardian

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Timothy Egan

Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest

A fantastic book! Timothy Egan describes his journeys in the Pacific Northwest through visits to salmon fisheries, redwood forests and the manicured English gardens of Vancouver. Here is a blend of history, anthropology and politics.

The Good Rain

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Annie Dillard

"For nonwriters, it is a glimpse into the trials and satisfactions of a life spent with words. For writers, it is a warm, rambling, conversation with a stimulating and extraordinarily talented colleague." -- Chicago Tribune

From Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Dillard, a collection that illuminates the dedication and daring that characterizes a writer's life.

In these short essays, Annie Dillard--the author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood--illuminates the dedication, absurdity, and daring that characterize the existence of a writer. A moving account of Dillard's own experiences while writing her works, The Writing Life offers deep insight into one of the most mysterious professions.

The Writing Life

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James Aldred

Light Hardcover (1 lb or less)

The Lofty Adventures of a Wildlife Cameraman

"A vertiginous, white-knuckled adventure through some of the most spectacular forests in the world." ?--Washington Post



Meet the man who climbs trees for a living.? In this adventure memoir, Aldred carries us with him across the globe and up to the top of these towering forest titans as he recalls his most memorable encounters with trees and their inhabitants.?



Every child knows the allure of climbing trees. But how many of us get to make a living at it, spending days observing nature from the canopies of stunning forests all around the world?



As a wildlife cameraman for the BBC and National Geographic, James Aldred spends his working life high up in trees, poised to capture key moments in the lives of wild animals and birds. Aldred's climbs take him to the most incredible and majestic trees in existence. In Borneo, home to the tallest tropical rain forest on the planet, just getting a rope up into the 250-foot-tall trees is a challenge. In Venezuela, even body armor isn't guaranteed protection against the razor-sharp talons of a nesting Harpy Eagle. In Australia, the peace of being lulled to sleep in a hammock twenty-five stories above the ground-- after a grueling day of climbing and filming--is broken by a midnight storm that threatens to topple the tree.

 

In this vivid account of memorable trees he has climbed ("Goliath," "Apollo," "Roaring Meg"), Aldred blends incredible stories of his adventures in the branches with a fascination for the majesty of trees to show us the joy of rising--literally--above the daily grind, up into the canopy of the forest.

The Man Who Climbs Trees

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Dian Fossey

Describes Fossey's thirteen years with the mountain gorillas of the remote central African rain forests, which later became the subject of a major motion picture.

Gorillas in the Mist

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Hope Jahren

National Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, TIME.com, NPR, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life--but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father's college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work "with both the heart and the hands." She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

Lab Girl

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Richard Grant

Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre

A narrative portrait of the Sierra Madre describes the author's numerous journeys into its ungoverned regions, where he consulted with a folk healer and witnessed local violence and lawlessness that eventually threatened his own survival. Original. 75,000 first printing.

God's Middle Finger

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Kate Harris

A Journey on the Silk Road

"Lands of Lost Borders is illuminating, heart-warming, and hopeful in its suggestion that we will explore not to conquer but to connect."—Booklist (starred review) "Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven’t felt for years. It’s a modern classic."—Pico Iyer A brilliant, fierce writer makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world. As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved—to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician—had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars. In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. The farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within. Lands of Lost Borders, winner of the 2018 Banff Adventure Travel Award, is the chronicle of Harris’s odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set ourselves; an examination of the stories borders tell, and the restrictions they place on nature and humanity; and a meditation on the existential need to explore—the essential longing to discover what in the universe we are doing here. Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and reflective, wry and rapturous. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that can never fully be mapped. Weaving adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other—a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us.

Lands of Lost Borders

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Ana Reyes

A Novel

Armed with only hazy memories, a woman who long ago witnessed her friend's sudden, mysterious death, and has since spent her life trying to forget, sets out to track down answers. What she uncovers, deep in the woods, is hardly to be believed....

Maya was a high school senior when her best friend, Aubrey, mysteriously dropped dead in front of the enigmatic man named Frank whom they'd been spending time with all summer.
 
Seven years later, Maya lives in Boston with a loving boyfriend and is kicking the secret addiction that has allowed her to cope with what happened years ago, the gaps in her memories, and the lost time that she can't account for. But her past comes rushing back when she comes across a recent YouTube video in which a young woman suddenly keels over and dies in a diner while sitting across from none other than Frank. Plunged into the trauma that has defined her life, Maya heads to her Berkshires hometown to relive that fateful summer--the influence Frank once had on her and the obsessive jealousy that nearly destroyed her friendship with Aubrey.
 
At her mother's house, she excavates fragments of her past and notices hidden messages in her deceased Guatemalan father's book that didn't stand out to her earlier. To save herself, she must understand a story written before she was born, but time keeps running out, and soon, all roads are leading back to Frank's cabin....
 
Utterly unique and captivating, The House in the Pines keeps you guessing about whether we can ever fully confront the past and return home.

The House in the Pines

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Barney Mann

The Pacific Crest Trail

"Three couples, their stories unfolding, weaving and intertwining over the long-distance trail until the dramatic conclusion traversing snow-covered peaks." -Mark Larabee, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist In Journeys North, legendary trail angel, thru hiker, and former PCTA board member Barney Scout Mann spins a compelling tale of six hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2007 as they walk from Mexico to Canada. This ensemble story unfolds as these half-dozen hikers - including Barney and his wife, Sandy - trod north, slowly forming relationships and revealing their deepest secrets and aspirations. They face a once-in-a-generation drought and early severe winter storms that test their will in this bare-knuckledadventure. In fact, only a third of all the hikers who set out on the trail that year would finish.

As the group approaches Canada, a storm rages. How will these very different hikers, ranging in age, gender, and background, respond to the hardship and suffering ahead of them? Can they all make the final 60-mile push through freezing temperatures, sleet, and snow, or will some reach their breaking point?

Journeys North is a story of grit, compassion, and the relationships people forge when they strive toward a common goal.

Journeys North

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Ingrid Betancourt

Heavy Hardcover (2 to 4 lbs)

My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle

The Colombian presidential candidate and long-time hostage of the FARC terrorist guerrilla organization shares the story of her captivity in the jungle, describing the conditions of her imprisonment, her near-escapes before her 2008 rescue and her views on resilience, resistance and faith.

Even Silence Has an End

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Lynn V. Andrews

The Teaching of the Shields

Describes how the medicine woman, Agnes Whistling Elk, instructed the author in the mystical religious beliefs and practices of the American Indian

Flight of the Seventh Moon

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The Wandering Reader

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