True stories of endurance & survival Books

A donation will be paid to the Burwood Spinal Unit for every copy of this book sold. 'It was all so sudden. Twenty seconds and then silence. I started calling out, 'Can anyone hear me?' - nothing but silence. Over the next few hours I heard hysterical sobbing and people clapping as others were...

1875 A True Tale of Shipwreck and Survival in the Southern Seas Imagine one woman, forty-seven men and a three-year-old boy, shipwrecked on a tiny sub-Antarctic island. For seven months they eat albatross and burn penguin skins for fuel, before a passing whaler picks them up. The woman was my gr...

From the co-author of the bestselling 'The Dangerous Book for Boys', this is a book of heroes, new and old, known and sadly forgotten, now to be glorified as they ought to be. From Captain Scott to Joe Simpson, from Douglas Bader to Ernest Shackleton, from Gertrude Bell to Emily Pankhurst, Conn Iggu...

'So there I was - a twenty-one year old black female university student walking down a suburban street with a gun, no shoes and murder on my mind. I was going to kill the past. I didn't know what else to do with it' Stacey Patton today is a vibrant and impressive young woman with a promising career ...

When she was fourteen, Jasvinder Sanghera was shown a photo of the man chosen to be her husband. She was terrified. She'd witnessed the torment her sisters endured in their arranged marriages, so she ran away from home, grief-stricken when her parents disowned her. "Shame" is the heart-ren...

Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother, a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games - games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. She no longer considered Dave a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army co...

I heard a horrible screaming sound, like an animal being slaughtered ...then I realised it was me.' When Katie Piper was 24, her life was near perfect. Young and beautiful, she was well on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a model. But then she met Daniel Lynch on Facebook and her world qu...

High Misadventure explores the dark face of climbing in New Zealand - the times when a slip or a poor decision can lead to tragedy. Climber/journalist Paul Hersey takes eight incidents from among the many of recent decades, and explores the critical factors behind them. Among the incidents he covers...

The stories from the Victorian Bushfires‚ Australia′s greatest ever disaster‚ have touched many New Zealanders as well as our neighbours in Australia. Black Saturday is a book everyone touched by the tragedy, and moved to help the victims, will want to own. Told a...

A world renowned child psychiatrist, FBI consultant and child advocate takes us inside his pioneering work with trauma victims. Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, starving youngsters raised in cages, toddlers who witnessed their par...

'No one could fail to be gripped by his heartfelt excitement and emotion over what was the adventure of a lifetime.' Independent At the age of twenty-three, Bear Grylls became the youngest Briton to reach the summit of Mount Everest. At extreme altitude youth holds no advantage over experience, and ...

Just in time for the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic, this graphic deluxe edition compiles firsthand accounts, testimonies, and letters by notable Titanic survivors, including Archibald Gracie, Lawrence Beesley, Elizabeth W. Shutes, and the "unsinkable" Molly Brown. Full of historically acc...

He'd been her friend for years. He said he loved her. Then she realised she didn't know him at all! When everything seemed to be falling apart in Sophie's life, she was thankful for her friend Kas, who was always at the end of a phone, ready to listen and to offer comfort and advice. Her father's co...

 Hell on High Seas chronicles some of the most remarkable stories of survival and daring that the world’s oceans have hosted over the past half century. Bizarre, unbelievable accounts of people who went missing and were given up for dead, only to miraculously reappear, apparition-like, mo...

Blue Water is a collection of true adventure stories from a writer in love with the sea ...From an action-packed journey to the Arctic ice pack, encounters with whales and storms, to rescuing a derelict yacht - only to later be washed ashore on a New Zealand beach - Lindsay Wright has experienced it...

Fascinating stories of some of the bravest people this country has ever produced Kiwi Heroes brings together the tales of 50 of New Zealand’s bravest people. Some of the people featured are household names-some are barely known outside their own households. Some have become hero...

'We'd fought fires before and won - in many ways it's a part of life, here in the bush, so you make sure you're prepared. But as I watched the cars melting, our ancient ash tree torn up by the roots and the air itself on fire, it occurred to me that we might lose this fight. It occurred to me that t...

A the age of 16, Dean Taylor was invited to go on his first hunting party to Stewart Island. It was a trip that immediately captivated him with the rugged beauty of the island, and the thrill of the hunt of deer in such a remote part of the world. Since then he's been back to the island another 21 t...

In 1968, the Sunday Times organised the Golden Globe race - an incredible test of endurance never before attempted - a round the world yacht race that must be completed single-handed and non-stop, going into port for repairs or supplies would mean disqualification. This remarkable challenge inspi...

Sir Peter Blake was a much loved and greatly admired yachtsman and adventurer, and this book is a wonderful tribute to his achievements. It is drawn entirely from Peter's logbooks of his last voyage, written up by his friend and colleague Alan Sefton, who was manager of blakexpeditions and was with ...

The Deadliest Catch is the hit TV series featuring the harrowingstruggles of fishermen on the wild and freezing Bering Sea - it's theperfect storm but for real. It was Discovery Channel's highest-ratedseries in 2006, the third season finale had 3.85 million viewers, itreceived four Emmy nominations ...

Jonny Kennedy was the star of the unforgettable Emmy award-winning documentary "The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off". He was an extraordinary character determined to live an ordinary life despite being born with the agonising condition Dystrophic Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB), which meant that his skin could l...

A classic memoir of prison breaks and adventure -- a bestselling phenomenon of the 1960s Condemned for a murder he had not committed, Henri Charriere (nicknamed Papillon) was sent to the penal colony of French Guiana. Forty-two days after his arrival he made his first break, travelling a thousand gr...

From the Sunday Times bestselling author comes a harrowing and moving memoir about two innocent and frightened 'unfosterable' children who do not know what it means to be loved. The shock that strikes Casey and her family when Ashton and Olivia arrive is immeasurable. Two dirty, frightened little wa...

HELL ON HIGH SEAS chronicles some of the most remarkable stories of survival and daring that the world's oceans have hosted over the past half century. Bizarre, unbelievable accounts of people who went missing and were given up for dead, only to miraculously reappear months later. Amazing feats of d...

When Isobel and Alex came home from school to find their abusive father had brutally murdered their mother, their world was thrown into chaos. Plunged into a care system that neglected them, Isobel and Alex were expected to come to nothing, and had only each other to rely on. Isobel and Alex's mothe...

Joe knew his mother was cruel and violent, but he trusted his beloved father to protect him from her. When a freak accident saw his father burn to death in front of him, Joe was left at the mercy of his mother. Without the love of his friend and brother, he wouldn't have survived. With them, he went...

How can you forget your past when it keeps coming back to haunt you? Judy Westwater, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Street Kid, was determined to turn her back on her cruel and violent childhood. She didn't stand a chance. All too soon hope turned to fear and she knew she'd have to run again...

When Judith Summers' husband and father both died within the space of two weeks, she found herself floundering. Life for her and her eight-year-old son Joshua seemed relentlessly bleak. Then George bounced into their lives. A loving Cavalier King Charles Spaniel with film-star looks, George reawoke ...

The worst storm in history seem from the wheelhouse of a doomed fishing trawler; a mesmerisingly vivid account of a natural hell from a perspective that offers no escape. The 'perfect storm' is a once-in-a-hundred-years combination: a high pressure system from the Great Lakes, running into storm win...

On February 22, 2011, journalist Jane Bowron had been living back in her hometown of Christchurch for three years when the city was struck by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake - just five months after a 7.1 earthquake. The first quake had caused damage but no fatalities. This time it was the ultimate horro...

There are regular reports in the media of mountaineering fatalities and costly rescues, and to some of us climbing may seem a selfish and crazy game in which victims have only themselves to blame. But to Dunedin climber Paul Hersey climbing is nothing less than a reason for living; even if - or perh...

This is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history. In March 1996, &...

A Captain's Duty tells the life-and-death drama of Captain Richard Phillips, who was held captive by pirates on a tiny lifeboat off Somalia's anarchic, gun-plagued shores. Unabridged.

August 5th 2005. On a secret mission to an underwater military installation thirty miles off the coast of Kamchatka, Russian Navy submersible AS-28 ran into a web of cables and stuck fast. With 600 feet of freezing water above them, there was no escape for the seven crew. Trapped in a titanium tomb,...

Given away by her mother at five months old, raped on the day of her first communion at age seven - when Celine Roberts was told 'No one wants you', she believed it. Illegitimate and unwanted, Celine was forced by her foster mother into prostitution. Her bones were broken, her nose was crushed and s...

Shahnaz Khari was brought up in a wealthy British Pakistani household where she wanted for nothing. Her problems started when, at the age of 12, she was forced to give up school to become cook and housemaid to her brothers in her parents' absence. She never went back to school. For Shahnaz, one nigh...

At the age of 18, Carolyn Jessop was forced to marry a 50-year-old stranger and religious cult member. She became one of six wives and bore him eight children in 15 years. When the cult started preaching death and destruction, she knew she and her children had to escape. Carolyn Jessop's extraordina...

'We're hungry,' his brother kept repeating. 'We're hungry, Justin. Please find us some food.' Justin was just five years old; his brothers two and three. Their mother, a heroin-addict, had left them hungry and alone, while she went to get her next fix. Later that day, after trying to burn down the f...

'Harrowing, spellbinding . . . nothing less than an indictment of the entire Bush era' Observer, 'Shocking' The Times In August, 2005, as Hurricane Katrina blew in, the city of New Orleans had been abandoned by most citizens. But resident Abdulrahman Zeitoun, though his wife and family had...