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  Take Off Your Shoes - One Man's...

  Ben Feder

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  A success-driven CEO goes on a year-long journey of self-discovery in Bali in this memoir about rediscovering what’s truly important.   A hard-charging CEO of a large enterprise, Ben Feder discovers that he is losing the very things that sustained him over his years of business success. Unsettled by his insight, he becomes determined to rebuild family relationships and rejuvenate his sense of purpose. Risking his career, Feder left New York with his wife and children and set off on a self-prescribed sabbatical year. That experience transforms them all.   As Feder navigates the thrills and pitfalls of his time away, he draws readers into remarkable examinations of modern values and modern life. Take Off Your Shoes is Feder’s candid and personable account of a journey across the world, and within himself.

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  Saudade - The Possibilities of...

  Anik See

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  Beside me, on the stone steps of this quiet courtyard, there is a lame man – the sweeper. He is so thin that the end of his belt comes back around to its buckle. He’s trying to feed a puppy the rest of his lunch. He reminds me that we all need something to need us, and that maybe that’s why we Westerners, who are so independent, mostly fail to understand family in this way, and need to come up with things like ‘quality time’ to justify such a base need. Everyone here asks if my family is in Sri Lanka, if that’s why I’ve come here. When I say no, they’re back in Canada, this confuses them. It’s a black mark against me. Why would I leave them? I am a selfish person. (I am.)
   
  The Portuguese word saudade has no direct English translation. In its simplest sense, it describes a feeling of longing for something that is now gone, and may yet return, but in all likelihood can never be recaptured. In Saudade, traveller Anik See traces her attempts to reclaim this loss in a series of informal essays that take us from the salt plains of Wood Buffalo National Park and the mountains of British Columbia to the fishing ports of Sri Lanka and the rough roads of Tbilisi, Georgia.
   
  Whether at a fishfry in the Northwest Territories, at the post-9/11 Canada-US border, on the ultimate road trip through Australia or at a summer carnival in Santiago de Cuba, See is on a continual quest for simplicity, interrogating the perceived distance between privilege and want. Quietly, insistently, these thoughtful essays ask what we might accomplish if we said no to entitlement; if, instead, we used our privilege to help us better understand human nature. Throughout this psychogeographic diary, crowded with rituals of faith, death and renewal, See asks, again and again, 'How much will be enough?'
   
  Praise for Saudade:
   
  'Anik See's Saudade is often disturbingly brilliant. It reassures me that much of our experience of the world is still undescribed. Saudade is fresh and utterly original.' – Jim Harrison
   
  'See's meditations on loss, technology, design, and borders are like long-exposure photographs: richly textured, dreamy, observant of even the slightest movement.'
   
  – GLOSS Magazine

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  The United States of Adventure -...

  Anna McNuff

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  Disillusioned with corporate London life and with no previous experience as a long-distance cyclist, Anna decides to clamber atop a beautiful pink bicycle (named Boudica) and set out on an 11,000-mile journey on her own, through each and every state of the USA. Dodging floods, blizzards and electrical storms, she pedals side by side with mustangs of the Wild West, through towering redwood forests, past the snow-capped peaks of the Rocky Mountains and on to the volcanos of Hawaii. 
  Along the way, she meets record-breaking grandmas, sings with Al Green at a gospel service and does her best to avoid becoming a grizzly bear's dinner. 
  The United States of Adventure is a down-to-earth, heartfelt and hilarious account of an adventure through a country well-known, but far less well-understood. It is a stunning tale of self-discovery told through the eyes of a woman who couldn’t help but wonder if there was more to life, and more to America too.

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  An Open Door - New Travel...

  Steven Lovatt

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  'If the mountains secluded Wales from England, the long coastline was like an open door to the world at large.' – Jan Morris
  The history of Wales as a destination and confection of English Romantic writers is well-known, but this book reverses the process, turning a Welsh gaze on the rest of the world.
  This shift is timely: the severing of Britain from the European Union asks questions of Wales about its relationship to its own past, to the British state, to Europe and beyond, while the present political, public health and environmental crises mean that travel writing can and should never again be the comfortably escapist genre that it was. Our modern anxieties over identity are registered here in writing that questions in a personal, visceral way the meaning of belonging and homecoming, and reflects a search for stability and solace as much as a desire for adventure. Here are lyrical stories refracted through kaleidoscopes of family and world history, alongside accounts of forced displacement and the tenacious love that exists between people and places. Yet these pieces also show the enduring value and joy of travel itself. As Eluned Gramich expresses it 'It's one of the pleasures of travel to submit yourself to other people, let yourself be guided and taught'.
  Taken together, the stories of An Open Door extend Jan Morris' legacy into a turbulent present and even more uncertain future. Whether seen from Llŷn or the Somali desert, we still take turns to look out at the same stars, and it might be this recognition, above all, that encourages us to hold the door open for as long as we can.
  Featuring contributions from Eluned Gramich, Grace Quantock, Faisal Ali, Sophie Buchaillard, Giancarlo Gemin, Siân Melangell Dafydd, Mary-Ann Constantine, Kandace Siobhan Walker, Neil Gower, Julie Brominicks and Electra Rhodes.

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  Footnotes - A Journey Round...

  Peter Fiennes

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  Peter Fiennes follows in the footsteps of twelve inspirational writers, bringing modern Britain into focus by peering through the lens of the past. The journey starts in Dorset, shaped by the childhood visions of Enid Blyton, and ends with Charles Dickens on the train that took him to his final resting place in Westminster Abbey. From the wilds of Skye and Snowdon, to a big night out in Birmingham with J. B. Priestley and Beryl Bainbridge, Footnotes is a series of evocative biographies, a lyrical foray into the past, and a quest to understand Britain through the books, journals and diaries of some of our greatest writers. And as Fiennes travels the country, and roams across the centuries, he wonders: ‘Who are we? What do we want? They seemed like good questions to ask, in the company of some of our greatest writers, given these restless times.’

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  Haunted Virginia City

  Janice Oberding

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  The author of Haunted Nevada explores the spooky goings-on in the city named one of the top-three most haunted towns in America.   Unlike any city in America, Virginia City epitomizes the notion of a western boom-and-bust ghost town. The Comstock Silver Rush lured wealth seekers from around the world, including a young Samuel Clemens. Despite the fortune some found, not all of the town’s earliest settlers rest easy. Shops, hotels, boardwalks, and cemeteries are said to be filled with the supernatural remnants of Virginia City’s hardscrabble characters and their violent propensities. The queen of haunted Nevada, Janice Oberding, mines Virginia City’s spectral history, from the ghost of Henry Comstock to the ghostly Rosie and William of the Gold Hill Hotel.   “Virginia City is known for its rich mining history that designated Nevada as the Silver State. But to local residents and paranormal investigators, it’s better known as a place to look for ghostly dwellers.” —Reno Gazette Journal

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