Travel Literature

A classic combination of travel, humour, music and modern American history.
The best-loved comedian in Britain heads off on the most famous highway in the world on an unforgettable journey. Having always dreamed about taking a trip on the legendary Route 66, Billy Connolly is finally heading off on the ride of a lifetime. Travelling all 2,488 miles of this epic road, known as 'The Main Street of America', the Big Yin will share the experiences of the countless travellers who have taken the journey before him. The tales he'll ... read more

Iran is probably the most misunderstood country in the world, and its people are among the most feared. Award-winning travel writer Jill Worrall, with her friend Reza Mirkhalaf, a leading tour manager from Tehran, describe an Iran the world has forgotten about.
Few people in the west know anything about the Iranian people beyond their current politics and religion. Two Wings of a Nightingale uses the threads of Iran's silk road heritage as a basis for a road trip travelogue. Many of the places visited have rarely been written... read more

In this travel guide for ardent readers, two book lovers team up to create an eclectic and infinitely browsable guide to literary landmarks in Europe and the United States. Divided into two sections, the book begins with broad thematic chapters: Author Houses and Museums, Literary Festivals and Walking Tours, and Hotels, Bars, and Restaurants where famed scribes sipped, supped and slumbered. From Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to the Old Courthouse Museum immortalised in To Kill a Mockingbird. The second half of the book is devoted to... read more

In this title, Paul Theroux sets off for Cape Town from Cairo - the hard way. Travelling across bush and desert, down rivers and across lakes, and through country after country, he visits some of the most beautiful and dangerous landscapes on earth. It is a journey of discovery and of rediscovery - of the unknown and the unexpected - charting places unknown and those known as a young teacher 40 years before. In the Swahili language, the word "safari" simply means "journey", and this - to Theroux - is the ultimate journey. It is a t... read more

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.

Des Moines, Iowa born writer Bryson's first success was the travel book "The Lost Continent". After living in England for several years, he wanted to go back to the USA to find the perfect little US town of his past, he lovingly called Amalgam. More travel books followed, in the form of "Neither Here Nor There" (where he travels through Europe), "Notes From A Small Island" (where he travels around the United Kingdom, before returning back with his to the USA to live there for good) and "A Walk In The Woods" (where he walks the Appa... read more

The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across 1930s Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although freque... read more

Until the early 1990s, when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, travelling behind the iron curtain was never easy. In undertaking his new journey through Eastern Europe, breathing in its rich history, and exquisite sights and talking to its diverse peoples, Michael fills what has been a void in his own experience and that of very many others. NEW EUROPE is very much a voyage of discovery, from the snows of the Julian Alps to the beauty of the Baltic sea, he finds himself in countries he'd barely heard of, many unfamiliar and myste... read more

This book gives the curious tourist not only a modern-day portrait of New Zealand and the far-flung islands, their political systems, and economic diversity, but also looks at the early settling of this massive area which covers about a fifth of the surface of the earth. When European navigators first sailed into this region, they were astonished at the exotic shared culture and language of the natives, separated in some cases by terrifying stretches of open ocean. The story of the peopling of the South Pacific Islands and New Ze... read more

Take two voluptuous dames d'un certain age, one fond of a romp in the lavender fields, the other an anxious first-time tour operator. Add eight expectant tour guests, throw them together in the French countryside with lashings of good food and wine, and you have Ooh la la! A French Romp.

'Leaving the blinding sand for the cool shade of the trees, I walked carefully through the undergrowth to where Dave, using two twigs as chopsticks, was picking up a freshly severed human finger'...John's trip to India starts badly when his girlfriend returns home. Left to his own devices, he soon finds himself looking at the sharp end of a knife in a train station cubicle. But his life is saved - and turned upside down - by an enigmatic fellow traveller called Rick, who persuades John to question his mundane plans for the future, ... read more

Judith Schalansky was born in 1980 on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall. The Soviets wouldn't let anyone travel so everything she learnt about the world came from her parents' battered old atlas. An acclaimed novelist and award-winning graphic designer, she has spent years creating this, her own imaginative atlas of the world's loneliest places. These islands are so difficult to reach that until the late 1990s more people had set foot on the moon than on Peter I Island in the Antarctic. On one page are perfect maps, on the other un... read more

Join A.J. Mackinnon, your charming and eccentric guide, on an amazing boat called Jack de Crow. Equipped with his cheerful optimism and a pith helmet, this Australian Odysseus in a dinghy travels from the borders of North Wales to the Black Sea - 4,900 kilometres over salt and fresh water, under sail, at the oars, or the end of a tow-rope - through twelve countries, 282 locks and numerous trials and adventures, including an encounter with Balkan pirates. Along the way he experiences the kindness of strangers, gets very lost, and pe... read more

Fascinating, highly readable tales of travels in the troubled land of Afghanistan by award-winning New Zealand travel writer Ian Robinson. Tourists in Afghanistan are rare: very few have the courage to travel there in today's uncertain and tense times. But, in 2008, Ian Robinson ventured into the hustle, bustle and dangers of the streets of Afghanistan's cities and towns. He also went alone, on horseback, into the sparsely populated northern-eastern regions of the country. Compelled by a romantic desire to find the 'old' Afghanista... read more

In 200 Carla Coulson left behind a corporate life and her own promotional business in Australia to take up her passion for photography. Based in Florence, Carla has pursued her love of Italian life through the lens of her camera, capturing her own unique journey. This is her story.

Twenty-five years ago, a young curator of mammals from the Australian Museum in Sydney set out to research the fauna of the Pacific Islands. Starting with a survey of one of the most inaccessible islands in Melanesia - Woodlark, in the Trobriands Group - that young scientist found himself ghost-whispering, snake wrestling, Quadoi hunting and plunged waist-deep into a sludge of maggot-infested faeces in search of a small bat that turned out not to be earth-shatteringly interesting. With accounts of discovering, naming and sometimes ... read more

Eleven years ago, Sydney girl-about-town Carla Coulson swapped a corporate job and a cushy life for an old camera, an uncertain future and a way of living that would ignite her soul. She recorded the first part of her journey - her new life in Florence and, later, Paris - in the books Italian Joy and Paris Tango. Early in her new career as a photographer, Carla was advised to 'shoot from the heart'. In this wonderfully diverse collection of photographs, taken in Italy, France, Greece, India and her native Australia, Carla does jus... read more

Kusang never thought she would leave Tibet. Growing up in a remote mountain village, she married a monk and gave birth to two children. But then the Chinese army invaded, and their peaceful lives were destroyed forever. Thousands were tortured, prison camps were set up and Kusang's monastery was destroyed. The family were forced to flee across the Himalayas in the depths of winter, battling cold, fear, starvation and exhaustion. It took a month to reach India, where they were then passed from one refugee camp to another, all the wh... read more

A beautifully illustrated and harmonious exploration of one of the world's most beloved cities by acclaimed author Donna Leon.
In a city as ancient as Venice, myths and legends passed down from generation to generation record more than just love or murder. They are the storehouse of a city's mores, emblems of its identity. In Venetian Curiosities, acclaimed novelist Donna Leon recounts some of Venice's most intriguing tales: an elephant brought in for Carnival wreaks havoc upon the city before seeking refuge in a church, the ... read more