Some look through the glass and admire what lies beyond. I look beyond the glass and imagine what's ahead. What is an adventure? It's an encounter with the unexpected, an exquisite moment in time that can never be repeated, those memorable chapters in our personal story that cause us to go to the attic and lift the lid of the trunk. I've lived the experiences in my books because I walked the beaten paths where those stories were born and embraced the culture that colors the pages. I'm an intrepid traveler and adventurer with still a few personal chapters to write. As I look beyond the glass, I wonder… Will my trunk ever be full?
In l847, young and daring John Rumell jumps ship on the French-occupied Marquesas Islands, inhabited by hostile cannibals. There, he becomes infatuated with the chief’s daughter, Princess Marita, a beautiful and irresistible temptress. To win the princess’s hand in marriage, John must kill her former lover and submit to a painful tattooing custom. Months later, he discovers he was tricked. Broken and permanently branded with tribal tattoos, John leaves the tribe, wandering aimlessly about the island.
When word reaches John that the chief is dying, he returns and accepts the dying man’s wish that he become their leader. John works tirelessly to form an alliance between his tribe and the French, ultimately leading his people toward a more peaceful existence.
Typeeis Herman Melville’s account of his sojourn on the Marquesan Island of Nuku Hiva in the 1800s. It nearly replicated my distant relative’s story, making it a must-read.
Melville was a young sailor with an adventurous spirit. Disenchanted with his hard life on a whaling ship he deserted and escaped to Nuku Hiva’s Bay of Taipaivi where he was captured by a cannibal tribe. For four months, he lived and survived among savages.
After Melville returned to civilization he later wrote Typee– the story that forever changed how I view savages. A century-plus later, I stepped freely off a boat onto Nuku Hiva’s distant shore. Visions of the impetuous and foolhardy sailor relative whose footprints I was about to trace made my scalp tighten with anticipation.
I am particularly drawn to stories about early adventures at sea.
Life on a whaling ship was difficult and bred all manner of contemptible acts by the crew. When the journey was ill-fated, like the one in this book, it pointed the spotlight directly on the tainted core of ship life.
This book introduced the greedy side of the 1800s whaling industry and told the story surrounding the doomed whaling ship and the ship’s drug-addicted surgeon. It presented the raw side of humanity and what lengths desperate men resort to in order to survive. It was shades of whaling seamen Herman Melville and John Rumell’s experiences surviving with savages.
The story was riveting and begged the question: Who are the realsavages?
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2016 A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN NOTABLE BOOK 2016
A ship sets sail with a killer on board . . . 1859. A man joins a whaling ship bound for the Arctic Circle. Having left the British Army with his reputation in tatters, Patrick Sumner has little option but to accept the position of ship's surgeon on this ill-fated voyage. But when, deep into the journey, a cabin boy is discovered brutally killed, Sumner finds himself forced to act. Soon he will face an evil even greater than he had encountered at the…
Norwegian-born Thor Hyerdahl was disenchanted with the civilized world and desired a more primitive lifestyle. In 1938, he took a bride and set out for the wild and remote Marquesan Island of Fatu Hiva—minus all worldly possessions.
The couple stepped headlong into the unknown—most notably the natives. But the once-hostile natives had abandoned their savage ways, allowing for a peaceful co-existence. A year later, the extreme hazards of island living won out over idealism, forcing the Hyerdahls to return to civilization.
Hyerdahl’s notion that he could shed his civilized cloak to live bare-skinned in paradise was foolhardy. Like Herman Melville, Hyerdahl survived to tell his amazing story. Other daring adventurers, like my branded relative, were less fortunate.
Outlander is an adventure of epic proportion, from the 1940s WWII war-torn battlefield where the story begins, to the bloodstained 18th-century Scottish battlefield of Culloden.
Like clansman Jamie, whose red arm hairs stood on end when he made love to Claire in the grass, so did the little hairs on the back of my neck stand on end with this talented author’s vividly described scenes. Page after page aroused the adventurer in me, sending me on a wild and unimaginable journey into the unknown. My heart was synchronized with the passionate relationship between the former British combat nurse and her Scottish lover, each bound by the double-ended cord tying them to the century that threatened to keep them apart.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The first book in Diana Gabaldon’s acclaimed Outlander saga, the basis for the Starz original series.
One of the top ten best-loved novels in America, as seen on PBS’s The Great American Read!
Unrivaled storytelling. Unforgettable characters. Rich historical detail. These are the hallmarks of Diana Gabaldon’s work. Her New York Times bestselling Outlander novels have earned the praise of critics and captured the hearts of millions of fans. Here is the story that started it all, introducing two remarkable characters, Claire Beauchamp Randall and Jamie Fraser, in a spellbinding novel of passion and…
I love adventure stories that offer unexpected challenges in foreign lands.
This story, set in upper-class England and rural China in the 1920s, is about Kitty, a selfish, beautiful, and attention-seeking woman, and the shy and unattractive English bacteriologist, Walter, who falls hopelessly in love and asks for Kitty’s hand in marriage. Kitty consents, but Walter’s discovery of her lover and the resulting social pressure, force the couple to enter into a marriage doomed for failure.
Even though bitterness prevails, the couple set off for Walter’s assignment in the cholera-infected area of China. It is an act of suicide, fraught with peril.
During their dangerous sojourn in this strange and foreign land, the couple’s discoveries are many. In the end, they realize that the greatest discovery is their mutual love.
'She did not know what to say. She was undecided whether indignantly to assert her innocence or to break out into angry reproaches. He seemed to read her thoughts. "I've got all the proof necessary" '
Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with Charles Townsend, a man whom she finds charming, attractive and exciting. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange but terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera…
Looking for clean romantic suspense with spiritual undertones?
Look no further than the Acts of Valor series by Rebecca Hartt. With thousands of reviews and 4.7-5.0 stars per book, this 6-book series is a must-read for readers searching for memorable, well-told stories by an award-winning author.
A dead man stands on her doorstep.
When the Navy wrote off her MIA husband as dead, Eden came to terms with being a widow. But now, her Navy SEAL husband is staring her in the face. Eden knows she should be over-the-moon, but she isn’t.
Diagnosed with PTSD and amnesia, Navy SEAL Jonah Mills has no recollection of their fractured marriage, no memory of Eden nor her fourteen-year-old daughter. Still, he feels a connection to both.
Unfit for active duty and assigned to therapy, Jonah knows he has work to do and relies on God, who sustained him during captivity, to heal his mind, body, and hopefully his family.
But as the memories lurking in his wife's haunted eyes and behind his daughter's uncertain smile begin to return to him, Jonah makes another discovery. There is treachery in the highest ranks of his Team, treachery that not only threatens him but places his new-found family in its crosshairs.
Presumed Dead, Navy SEAL Returns Without Memory of His Ordeal in the Christian Romantic Suspense, Returning to Eden, by Rebecca Hartt
-- Present Day, Virginia Beach, Virginia --
A dead man stands at Eden Mills' door.
Declared MIA a year prior, the Navy wrote him off as dead. Now, Eden's husband, Navy SEAL Jonah Mills has returned after three years to disrupt her tranquility. Diagnosed with PTSD and amnesia, he has no recollection of their marriage or their fourteen-year-old step-daughter. Still, Eden accepts her obligation to nurse Jonah back to health while secretly longing to regain her freedom, despite the…
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