National Network for Equitable Library Service

A riveting account of the roguish acts of the first pirates to raid the Pacific, a crusade that ended in a sensational trial back in England.

Joe Johnson Jr. ran away from home at the age of 12, hopping a freight train at the height of the Great Depression. He managed to talk his way into the U.S. Army two years later. Seeking freedom and adventure, he was sent to the Philippines. Adrift in spirit, Joe visited a teenage prostitute, and they became unlikely, smitten allies. Yet when the Japanese attacked on December 8, 1941, their hopes of being together had to wait. Joe and his fellow soldiers fought for four brutal months in Bataan and Corregidor, until they were forced to surrender.

In 1969, five young men from Montana set out to accomplish what no one had before: to scale the sheer north face of Mount Cleveland, Glacier National Park's tallest mountain, in winter. Two days later tragedy struck: they were buried in an avalanche so deep that their bodies would not be discovered until the following June. This is the account of that fated climb and of the heroic rescue attempt that ensued.

A fast-paced, firsthand glimpse into the lives of paramedics who work with the National Park Service: a unique brand of park rangers who respond to emergencies in some of the most isolated and rugged parts of America. Between calls, Grange reflects upon the democratic ideal of the National Park mission, the beauty of the land, and the many threats facing it.

On January 17, 1913, Douglas Mawson, leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, was alone and near starvation--and one hundred miles from base camp. This thrilling account of his journey back establishes Mawson as one of history's greatest polar explorers.

This is the captivating account of the magnificent but doomed quest, led by Robert O'Hara Burke and William Wills, to be the first Europeans to cross the harsh Australian continent in 1860. Plagued with disputes and food shortages they battled the extremes - the searing desert heat, the boggy mangroves, the flooding rains... Only one man survived the expedition's dash to reach the Gulf of Carpentaria. Yet despite their tragic fates, the names Burke and Wills remain synonymous with perseverance and bravery in the face of overwhelming odds.

An American fighter pilot doomed to die in Buchenwald but determined to survive. On August 13, 1944, Joe Moser set off on his forty-fourth combat mission over occupied France. Soon, he would join almost 170 other Allied airmen as prisoners in Buchenwald, one of the most notorious and deadly of Nazi concentration camps. Tom Clavin's Lightning Down tells this largely untold and riveting true story. Moser was just twenty-two years old, a farm boy from Washington State who fell in love with flying.

On January 20, 2003, at 10:45 a.m., a massive avalanche released from Tumbledown Mountain in the Selkirk Range of British Columbia. Tonnes of snow carried 13 members of two guided backcountry skiing groups down the 37-degree incline of a run called La Traviata and buried them. After a frantic hour of digging by remaining group members, an unthinkable outcome became reality. Seven people were dead. The tragedy made international news, splashing photos of the seven dead Canadian and US skiers on television screens and the pages of newspapers.

In 1834, Osborne Russell joined an expedition from Boston, which proceeded to the Rocky Mountains to capitalize on the lucrative salmon and fur trade. Beginning at the age of twenty, he detailed the life of a trapper in his journal and recorded his adventures through treacherous terrain, encounters with dangerous wildlife, and confrontations with the natives of the Rockies.

This true-life wilderness survival story recounts seventeen-year-old Alex Messenger's near-lethal encounter with a grizzly bear during a canoe trip in the Canadian tundra. Left for dead, he wakes to find that his summer adventure has become a struggle to stay alive.