[WT Sharpe]

Wondering if a particular book is available in your country? The following spoiler contains a list of bookstores outside the United States you can search. If you don't see a bookstore on this list for your country, find one that is, send me the link via PM, and I'll add it to the list. In addition, if members let me know that an ebook is unavailable in a particular geographic location, I'll note it in this post, right beside the Inkmesh search for that particular book.

Spoiler:

Australian
Angus Robertson
Booktopia
Borders
Dymocks
FishpondGoogle

Canada
Amazon. Make sure you are logged out. Then go to the Kindle Store. Search for a book. After the search results come up, in the upper right corner of the screen, change the country to Canada and search away.
Google
Sony eBookstore (Upper right corner switch to/from US/CA)

UK
BooksOnBoard (In the upper right corner is a way to switch to the UK store)
Amazon
Foyle's
Google
Penguin
Random House
Waterstones
WH Smith

* Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places by Andrew Blackwell [HomeInMyShoes]
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:
For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth—Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.Bookworm_Girl

From the hidden bars and convenience stores of a radioactive wilderness to the sacred but reeking waters of India, Visit Sunny Chernobyl fuses immersive first-person reporting with satire and analysis, making the case that it’s time to start appreciating our planet as it is—not as we wish it would be. Irreverent and reflective, the book is a love letter to our biosphere’s most tainted, most degraded ecosystems, and a measured consideration of what they mean for us. Equal parts travelogue, expose, environmental memoir, and faux guidebook, Blackwell careens through a rogue’s gallery of environmental disaster areas in search of the worst the world has to offer—and approaches a deeper understanding of what’s really happening to our planet in the process.

*** Timeline by Michael Crichton [treadlightly, JSWolf, Luffy]
Goodreads | Amazon US / Google Play / Kobo CA / Overdrive US / Overdrive

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:In an Arizona desert, a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world, archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened up to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival -- six hundred years ago.

*** West with the Night by Beryl Markham [CRussel, Luffy, BelleZora]
Amazon US / Audible / Kobo

Spoiler:

[I]From Amazon:

Beryl Markham’s classic, engrossing memoir—a triumph of the pioneer spirit and an adventure-charged chronicle of a life lived to the fullest

Beryl Markham’s life was a true epic, complete with shattered societal expectations, torrid love affairs, and desperate crash landings. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She learned to be a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Her successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all chronicled here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed by National Geographic as one of the greatest adventure books of all time, West with the Night is the sweeping account of a fearless and dedicated woman.

*** The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby [issybird, BelleZora, sun surfer]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

In 1938 an eighteen-year-old boy signed on for the round trip from Europe to Australia in the last commercial sailing fleet to make that formidable journey. The four-masted barque Moshulu ended up as a dockside restaurant in Philadelphia; the young apprentice went on to become one of the greatest travel writers of this century. The Last Grain Race is Eric Newby's spell-binding account of his time spent on the Moshulu's last voyage in the Australian grain trade.

As always, Eric Newby's sharp eye for detail captures the hardships, danger, squabbles, companionship and sheer joy of shipboard life - bedbugs, ferocious storms, eccentric Finnish crew and all. By pure chance, Eric witnessed the passing of the era of sail, and his tale is all the more significant for being the last of its kind.

From reviews cited at Amazon:

'Enthralling - I know of no other book about square-riggers that gives such a lively account of the daily round of men in the fo'c'sle' Sunday Times 'Indescribably pungent ... impossible to read without laughing' Observer 'Mr Newby proves himself to be a first-rate writer ... Years have dulled nothing of the spirit of his first voyage; he gives exactly the feel of working a tall ship in hard conditions; he did not just see these things; he felt and can convey them; the crew of "Moshulu" live, move and are real human beings - and go on living when the book is closed' Times Literary Supplement

* The Blood Cell by James Gross [JSWolf]
Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / eBooks / Foyles / Google Play / Kobo / Overdrive / Waterstones

Spoiler:

"Release the Doctor - or the killing will start."

An asteroid in the furthest reaches of space - the most secure prison for the most dangerous of criminals. The Governor is responsible for the worst fraudsters and the cruellest murderers. So he's certainly not impressed by the arrival of the man they're calling the most dangerous criminal in the quadrant. Or, as he prefers to be known, the Doctor.

What does impress the Governor is the way the new prisoner immediately sets about trying to escape. And keeps trying. Finally, he sends for the Doctor and asks him why? But the answer surprises even the Governor. And then there's the threat - unless the Governor listens to the Doctor, a lot of people will die.

Who is the Doctor and what's he really doing here? Why does he want to help the Governor? And who is the young woman who comes every day to visit him, only to be turned away by the guards?

When the killing finally starts, the Governor begins...

*** Lost Horizon by James Hilton [sun surfer, crich70, Bookworm_Girl]
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

While attempting to escape a civil war, four people are kidnapped and transported to the Tibetan mountains. After their plane crashes, they are found by a mysterious Chinese man. He leads them to a monastery hidden in "the valley of the blue moon" -- a land of mystery and matchless beauty where life is lived in tranquil wonder, beyond the grasp of a doomed world.

It is here, in Shangri-La, where destinies will be discovered and the meaning of paradise will be unveiled.

*** A Lady Cyclist's Guide To Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson [obs20, treadlightly, ccowie]
Amazon US

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided

* Rowed Trip by Colin and Julie Angus [ccowie]
No links provided.

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

Two bestselling authors combine their strengths in a travelogue, a search for roots, a romance — and a seat-of-your-pants adventure.

One sunny day in 2006, Julie and Colin Angus were talking about the future, as newly engaged couples do. More unusually, they were at the time travelling together from Moscow to Vancouver by human power — boat, bike, and foot.

That day, they were examining a road atlas and in particular the labyrinth of European inland waterways it revealed. Julie traced a route of interconnected canals, rivers, and coastlines that led from Colin’s parents’ homeland of Scotland past her mother’s homeland, Germany, and on to her father’s, Syria. She said, half-seriously: We could row (yes, row, as in propelling a tippy little boat on a pond) all the way from Scotland to Syria to visit our relatives. It was a reckless sort of joke to make, given the couple’s addiction to adventure. The result is Rowed Trip, an odyssey by oar (and bike) from Caithness, Scotland, across the English Channel, through France, across the Rhine, the Main-Donau Canal to the Danube, the Black Sea, the Bosphorous Straits, and the Mediterranean. Julie and Colin each describe how the trip allowed them to test their relationship, to explore their roots, and to indulge to the max their shared taste for adventure.

* The Longest Way Home by Andrew McCarthy [Alsicole]
Goodreads | Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided.

*** South by Ernest Shackleton [crich70, CRussel, Dazrin]
Goodreads | Amazon US (Illustrated) / Amazon US (Free) / Kobo US

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided.

* The Beach by Alex Garland [caleb72]
Amazon (UK) / Amazon (US) / Google (AU) / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Spoiler:

The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach."

The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden.

Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents.

Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an un-ruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.

*** Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Albert Lansing [CRussel, Dazrin, HomeInMyShoes]
Amazon US / Kobo

Spoiler:

No synopsis provided.

* I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban by Malala Yousafzai with Christina Lamb [WT Sharpe]
Goodreads | Amazon Au / Amazon Ca / Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Spoiler:

From Goodreads:

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education.

On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.

Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she has become a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

I Am Malala is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons.

I Am Malala will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.

*** The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain [issybird, HomeInMyShoes, WT Sharpe]
[I]The Patricia Clark Memorial Library: ePub / Kindle

Spoiler:

From Wikipedia:

The Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrims' Progress is a travel book by American author Mark Twain published in 1869 which humorously chronicles what Twain called his "Great Pleasure Excursion" on board the chartered vessel Quaker City (formerly USS Quaker City) through Europe and the Holy Land with a group of American travelers in 1867. It was the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime, as well as being one of the best-selling travel books of all time.

The nominations for March are now closed.