The Well at the World's End by A. J. Mackinnon

$12.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

When A.J. Mackinnon quits his job in Australia, he knows only that he longs to travel to the Well at the World's End, a mysterious pool on a remote Scottish island whose waters, legend has it, hold the secret to eternal youth. Determined not to fly ('It would feel like cheating'), he sets out with a ru cksack, some fireworks and a map of the world and trusts chance to take care of the rest. By land and by sea, by train, truck, horse and yacht, he makes his way across the globe - and through a series of hilarious adventures. He survives a bus crash in Australia, marries a princess in Laos, is attacked by Komodo dragons and does time in a Chinese jail. The next lift - or the next near-miss - is always just a happy accident away. This is the astonishing true story of a remarkable voyage, an old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. ...Show more

To a Mountain in Tibet by Colin Thubron

$14.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

Mount Kailas is the most sacred of the world's mountains - holy to one fifth of humanity. Isolated beyond the central Himalayas, it is claimed by myth to be the source of the universe created from cosmic waters and the mind of Brahma. This book tells the stories of exiles and of eccentric explorers from the West. ...Show more

The Japanese by Jack Seward

$14.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

An Italian in Italy by Beppe Severgnini

$10.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

La mente degli italiani è l'ultima regione inesplorata del paese, e vale un viaggio. Ma è un viaggio insidioso, e non tutti hanno il coraggio d'intraprenderlo per il timore di scoprire verità scomode. Beppe Severgnini, dopo aver indagato su inglesi e americani, non ha paura di giocare in casa e affronta re la sfida. E così percorre sistematicamente l'Italia: trenta luoghi in dieci giorni, dall'aeroporto alla spiaggia, dal condominio allo stadio, da nord a sud, dall'alimentazione alla politica, dai recinti della morale allo zoo della televisione. Un'esplorazione metodica, ironica e sentimentale per aiutare il lettore straniero a mettere da parte le sue convinzioni e a capire davvero "un paese che ci manda in bestia e in estasi nel raggio di cento metri e nel giro di dieci minuti". ...Show more

Among The Believers: An Islamic Journey by V. S. Naipaul

$12.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: good

Provence 500 Photos by Gerard Shoen

$16.00 NZD

Category: Photography | Reading Level: very good

Anyone who has visited Provence knows that it is more than a place of spectacular beauty; it is also a way of life. Attracting travelers from across the globe, Provence offers the visitor peace and tranquility in the striking beauty of landscapes ablaze with color: from ocher hills and lavender fields, to stark cliffs and swaying olive trees. Gerard Sioen, an internationally recognized photographer and himself an inhabitant of Provence, takes the reader on a personal photographical tour of Provence's most celebrated sights. He showcases the region's wealth of architectural styles ...Show more

The Naked Rower: How two Kiwis took on the Atlantic - and won! by Rob Hamill

$15.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: very good

Rob Hamill and Phil Stubbs were the winners of the inaugural Trans-Atlantic Double Handed Rowing Challenge. Their victory elevated them to hero status both in New Zealand and around the world. This is the story of how they triumphed over the elements to win the race.

The Journals and Letters of Sir Alexander Mackenzie by W. Kaye Lamb (ed.)

$45.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Reading Level: very good

The Secrets of Italy: People, Places, and Hidden Histories by Corrado Augias

$20.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

There is Michelangelo, but also the mafia. Pavarotti, but also Berlusconi. The debonair Milanese, but also the infamous captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship. This is Italy, admired and reviled, a country that has guarded her secrets and confounded outsiders for centuries. At a time when this Itali an paradox is more evident than ever, cultural authority Corrado Augias poses the puzzling questions: how did it get this way? How can this peninsula be simultaneously the home of geniuses and criminals, the cradle of beauty and the butt of jokes? An instant #1 bestseller in Italy, Augias' latest sets out to rediscover the story - different from the history - of his country. Beginning with how Italy is seen from the outside and from the inside, he weaves a geo-historical narrative, passing through principal cities, re-reading classics and biographies of the people that have, for better or worse, made Italians who they are. From the gloomy atmosphere of Cagliostro's Palermo to the elegant court of Maria Luigia in Parma, from the birth of the ghetto of Venice to the heroic blaze of the Neapolitan uprising against the Nazis, Augias sheds light on the true Italian character under the surface, explaining her not only to outsiders, but to Italians themselves. The result is a sort of novel of a nation, whose protagonists are both the figures we know from the history and literature, and characters long-hidden between the cracks of historical narrative and memory. ...Show more

Riding the Iron Rooster - By Train Through China by Paul Theroux

$16.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: good

Winner of the Stanford Dolman Lifetime Contribution to Travel Writing Award 2020 Paul Theroux left Victoria Station on a rainy Saturday in April thinking that taking eight trains across Europe, Eastern Europe, the USSR and Mongolia would be the easy way to get to the Chinese border - the relaxing way, even. He would read a little, take notes, eat regular meals and gaze contentedly out of windows. The reality, of course, was very different. In fact, Theroux experienced a decidedly odd and unexpected trip to China that set the challenging tone for his epic year-long rail journey around that vast, inscrutable land - a journey which involved riding nearly every train in the country. 'Wry, humorful and occasionally querulous ... as Theroux makes excruciatingly clear, travelling alone in the Middle Kingdom is not for the faint of heart or stomach' Time. ...Show more

Apples in the Snow: A Journey to Samarkand by Geoffrey Moorhouse

$15.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

$16.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

"Shadow of the Silk Road" records a journey along the greatest land route on earth. Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor, the mythic progenitor of the Chinese people, to the ancient port of Antioch--in perhaps the most difficult and ambitious journey he has undertaken in forty years of travel. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, "Shadow of the Silk Road" is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval. One of the trademarks of Colin Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him. "Shadow of the Silk Road" encounters Islamic countries in many forms. It is about changes in China, transformed since the Cultural Revolution. It is about false nationalisms and the world's discontented margins, where the true boundaries are not political borders but the frontiers of tribe, ethnicity, language and religion. It is a magnificent and important account of an ancient world in modern ferment. ...Show more