Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Tim Albone

Cool Runnings meets Joseph O'Neill's Netherland in an inspiring and feel-good story of bravery and sporting success from a country so widely known for war and extremism. This is the true story of the Afghanistan cricket team and their extraordinary attempt to join the world's elite cricketing nations. That this devastated nation should be able to field a cricket team at all, let alone one as successful as this, is an unbelievable achievement. Seven years ago, in a country which does not have a real cricket pitch even today, there was no national team. But a group of young Afghan men, exiled by war, learnt to play in the smashed concrete of refugee camps, and have risen from obscurity to the groomed grass pitches of international cricket. 
 
With unlimited access, Tim Albone travelled alongside the team for the two years, charting the players' progress from refugees in Pakistan to the brink of international sporting stardom. Far from being bogged down in cricket jargon, this tale of a gang of dedicated, charismatic, occasionally exasperating young men seeking triumph out of disaster is one that will move and inspire everyone. 
 
Foreword by Mike Atherton.

Out of the Ashes

The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Afghanistan cricket team

Mefo Phillips

The lure of a long-distance ride leads Mefo Phillips to team up with her sister Susie and their spotted Appaloosa horses Leo, a flirt with a passion for Mars Bars, and affectionate, gluttonous Apollo, for a pilgrimage down the medievil Way of St.James from Canterbury to Spain. The lure of a map of European glof courses entices Mefo's husband Peter to follow them in a rackety old horsebox... 
Slowed by thunderstorms, vertigo, worn-out horseshoes and a variety of eccentric farmers, it's boiling midsummer by the time they reach the Castilian plains after a meander across lush springtime France. With 1,700 miles, four mountain ranges, and encounters with galloping goats, nude pilgrims, rampant donkeys and a fountain of red wine behind them , horses and humans are inseparable by the time they reach Santiago and the suddenly daunting prospect of a trundle in the horsebox back to England and a normal life.

Horseshoes And Holy Water

Anne Mustoe

Myriad wonderful characters populate the pages of Anne Mustoe's fascinating book as she pedals along three very different, but equally evocative, roads - the Amber Route from the Baltic to the Adriatic, the Santa Fe Trail from the Missouri River to New Mexico and the Pilgrims' Way of St James from Le Puy to Santiago de Compostela. 
 
Battling against ferocious winds in Jutland, blizzards in the Rockies, traffic jams of cyclists along the Danube and menus in Czech, Hungarian and Basque, Mustoe survives with her usual fortitude and wry humour, even when she is knocked off her bike by a short-sighted nonagenarian in a Fiat Panda.

Amber, Furs and Cockleshells

Bike Rides with Pilgrims and Merchants

Henry Rollins

Using his trademark wit, insight and verve, icon Henry Rollins shares journals from his gruelling world tours of 1997 and 1998, as well as a record of the fulfilment of his longstanding dream to journey through Africa. He takes us on a rollercoaster of highs and lows, frustrations and exhilaration - from roving gangs of baboons in Kenya to haggling with immigration officials in Madagascar and his thoughts on meeting his childhood heroes, Black Sabbath - and finds a way to make his unique experiences accessible and meaningful to us all.

Smile, You're Travelling

Richard Branson

As far back as stories go, pioneers have reached for the skies. In the last two hundred years, they have mastered the air and made the modern world possible. Today they are bringing outer space within our reach. They're inventors and toymakers, amateurs and adventurers, visionaries, dreamers and, yes, crackpots. Some have called them irresponsible, even dangerous. But Richard Branson has met many of them. He has worked with them, funded them, and flown with them. He admires them, and trusts them, and thinks they and their kind are our future. 
 
In this book Richard Branson looks at the history of flight through the stories and people who have inspired him throughout his life. In these pages you will find tales of miraculous rescues; of records made and broken; of surprising feats of endurance and survival, including some of his own adventures, as well as developments in the future of air travel (and space travel). It is a story of pioneers, and of course it includes the world famous Montgolfiers and the Wright brothers, but he also wants to describe some of the lesser-known trailblazers. People like Tony Jannus, who in 1914 created the first scheduled commercial flight in the world, flying his passengers over the waters of Tampa Bay at an altitude of just fifty feet! The 'bird man' Leo Valentin, who in the 1950s jumped from 9,000 feet with wooden wings attached to his shoulders. And Branson's friend Steve Fossett, who dedicated his life to breaking records and having adventures. 
 
This is their story. It is also, in a small way, his own.

Reach for the Skies

Ballooning, Birdmen and Blasting into Space

Phil Doran

Rising From The Mist in the sun-blushed hills of Tuscany is Il Piccolo Rustico, a 300-year-old stone farmhouse that Nancy Doran dreams of lovingly restoring into an idlyllic home. All her husband Phil can see is a crumbling money pit that, as far as dreams go, is more of a nightmare. 
Reluctantly leaving behind high -octane, air-conditioned Los Angeles where he lives and works as a writer-producer, Phil is uprooted to a strange country intoxicated by O sole mio, virgin olive oil and oak-aged Chianti. The local village reveals itself to be a hive of seething passions, secrets and age-old blood feuds, and the newcomers find that life is not all strolls around town during the passagiato and relaxing under the awnings of picturesque cafes. 
Beset by a rift of exasperating challenges - from the cunning tricks of the Pinatore family to an infuriating Byzantine Italian bureaucracy - it is only with an inspired touch of the 'Inner Italian' that Phil and Nancy finally manage to soften the hearts of their neighbours and are embraced by the community.

Reluctant Tuscan, The

Alex Horne

Alex Horne is not a birdwatcher. But his dad is, so with the prospect of fatherhood looming on his own horizon, Alex decided there was no better time to really get to know both his father and his father's favourite hobby. So he challenged his dad to a Big Year: from 1 January to 31 December they would each try to spot as many birds as possible; the one who spied the most species would be the victor. Along the way Alex would find out what makes his dad tick, pick up a bit of fatherly wisdom and perhaps even 'get into' birdwatching himself. 
 
Join Alex as he journeys from Barnes to Bahrain in this charming tale of obsession, manliness, fathers and sons, and the highly amusing twists and turns of a year-long bird race.

Birdwatchingwatching

One Year, Two Men, Three Rules, Ten Thousand Birds

When ex-headmistress Anne Mustoe gave up her job, bought a bike and took to the road, she couldn't even mend a puncture. 12,000 miles and 15 months later, she was home. 
 
Her epic solo journey took her around the world, through Europe, India, the Far East and the United States. From Thessaloniki to Uttar Pradesh, from Chumphon to Singapore, she faced downpours, blizzards and blistering deserts, political turmoil and amorous waiters - alternated with great kindness from strangers along the way. 
 
A Bike Ride is the first in the series of Anne Mustoe's successful and inspiring travelogues.

A Bike Ride

12,000 miles around the world

Hunter Davies

'I am fascinated by people turning their daft dreams into a reality. How did they do it and why?' 
 
Driven by his own passion for collecting Hunter Davies has packed his notepad and set off in search of Britain's maddest museums. As he explores these hidden gems he soon discovers that they are everywhere and that they celebrate just about everything, from lawnmowers in Southport to pencils in Keswick. 
 
But as Hunter travels up and down the country he comes to realise that it isn't only the collections that are fascinating, it's also the people who have put them together. Whether they're a man who loves his Heinz so much he's changed his name to Captain Beany or a kleptomaniac Vintage Radio buff, these eccentric collectors are Britain's finest and could live in no other country in the world. 
 
Once you discover these museums and get to know their curators, Great Britain won't look quite the same again...

Behind the Scenes at the Museum of Baked Beans

My Search for Britain's Maddest Museums

Ed Stafford

In April 2008, Ed Stafford began his attempt to become the first man ever to walk the entire length of the River Amazon. Nearly two and a half years later, he had crossed the whole of South America to reach the mouth of the colossal river. 
 
With danger a constant companion - outwitting alligators, jaguars, pit vipers and electric eels, not to mention overcoming the hurdles of injuries and relentless tropical storms - Ed's journey demanded extreme physical and mental strength. Often warned by natives that he would die, Ed even found himself pursued by machete-wielding tribesmen and detained for murder. 
 
However, Ed's journey was an adventure with a purpose: to help raise people's awareness of environmental issues. Ed had unprecedented access to indigenous communities and witnessed the devastating effects of the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest first-hand. His story of disappearing tribes and loss of habitats concerns us all. 
 
Ultimately though, Walking the Amazon is an account of a world-first expedition that takes readers on the most daring journey along the world's greatest river and through the most bio-diverse habitat on earth.

Walking the Amazon

860 Days. The Impossible Task. The Incredible Journey

‘I stood on the beach truly alone for the first time. I would not see another person for sixty days. I was on an uninhabited tropical island and I had nothing with me to help me survive. No food, no equipment, no knife and not even any clothes. All I had was my camera kit so that I could intimately record my self-inflicted sentence.’ 
 
 What if you were abandoned on a tropical island with no food or water, no basic equipment, not even a knife, and no clothes – could you survive? Extreme adventurer Ed Stafford isn’t sure, but he’s about to find out as he pushes himself to the limit in this gripping and inspirational test of human survival. 
 
 For sixty days, with only his explorer’s instinct and a video camera to record his experiences, Ed faces the ultimate feat of physical and mental endurance. He confronts blazing heat and brutal loneliness; eats snails to escape starvation and battles illness, dehydration and fatigue in what is his most dangerous, and at times life-threatening, challenge to date. 
 
 This epic story of survival, full of exhilarating highs and devastating lows, is told with raw emotion and captivating honesty. This book will leave you amazed and exhausted.

Naked and Marooned

One Man. One Island. One Epic Survival Story

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