In this first full biography of Alan Villiers, based on extensive research in both Australia and England, Kate Lance has produced a fascinating portrait of Villiers and the world he inhabited. Alan Villiers was born in Melbourne in 1903 and, from boyhood, had a passion for the sea and sailing. In 1921, after a lucky break won him a job as a journalist on the Hobart Mercury, he produced his first book based on his experience on a whaling expedition to the Antarctic, soon followed by his account of the voyage of the Herzogin Cecilie on its voyage from Australia to Great Britain. Over the next decades he sailed all over the world, including his own ship, the Joseph Conrad. Lance depicts the legendary sailor as a man of contradictions, who lived for the sea and adventure, and who is now respected and recognised as a brilliant writer, photographer, journalist and adventurer.

In a story that even she will admit borders on the surreal, Angela Gilltrap, ex-'Strictly Dancing' star finds herself living in Sugar Hill in Harlem, New York City. From the shores of Bondi Beach to the six-floor walk-up she shares with her boyfriend, composer/musician and international chess champion Kasaun Henry, she suddenly has to adjust, not only to her new city, but to the nuances of her new surroundings which happen to include the occasional drive-by, drug deals and daily arrests. For a performer who has always sung soul, jazz and gospel music, it is a dream come true.

In 1986, Susie and her friend Chloe, fresh-faced graduates from Brown University, were inspired by a placemat entitled 'Pancakes of Many Nations' to depart on an epic trip around the world, starting with Hong Kong and the People's Republic of China, then only recently opened to the rest of the world. As the two ventured into what turned out to be a strange and alien land, they encountered places far different from anything they had ever experienced, from the horrors of an open-ditch toilet in the back of a weird hybrid tenement hotel, to a magical boat ride through a fantastic landscape of wind-carved mountains.Armed only with Nietzsche's greatest works and a copy of Linda Goodman's Love Signs, Susie and Chloe were utterly unprepared for their expedition, and their experience alternated between culture shock and exotic adventure, until a near-tragedy turned the trip into a true-life international thriller.Recounted in Susan Jane Gilman's inspired and unmistakable voice, this adventure is an unforgettable voyage into a peculiarly modern heart of darkness.

Every year a quarter of a million well-healed, well-read travellers take the holiday of a lifetime to the Galapagos. To feed the book-buyers on this annual pilgrimage, there are a lot of beautifully illustrated guides to the fauna of the islands on the shelves, but very little about the scurrilous human adventurers who also passed this way. John Hickman presents an intriguing cast of characters, from Incas to whalers, pirates to Robinson Crusoes, the original Swiss Family Robinson and the revered Charles Darwin

Hackney,Tthat Rose-Red Empire is Iain Sinclair's personal record of the area of London in which he has lived for forty years. It is a documentary fiction, seeking to capture the spirit pf place, before Hackney succumbs to mendacious green papers, eco boasts, sponsored public art and the Olympic Park gnawing at its edges. Sinclair meets a cast of the dispossessed: writers, painters, photographers, barbers, surgeons, market traders, gangsters and bomb-makers. Legends of tunnels, Hollow Earth theories and the notorious Mole Man are unearthed. He uncovers traces of those who passed through Hackney: Lenin and Stalin; novelists Joseph Conrad and Samuel Richardson; comet discoverer Edmond Halley and scientist Joseph Priestley; filmmakers Orson Welles and Jean-Luc Godard; Tony Blair beginning his political career; even a Baader-Meinhof urban guerrilla on the run. And tells his own story: of forty years in one house, marriage, children, strange encounters, deaths . . .Once an Arcadian suburb of grand houses, orchards and conservations, Hackney declined into a zne of asylums, hospitals and dirty industry. Persistently revived, reinvented, betrayed, it has become a symbol of inner-city chaos, crime and poverty. Now, the Olympics, a final attempt to clamp down on a renegade spirit, seeks to complete the process: erasure disguised as 'progress'.

Most of us are on a quest to find happiness. Some people mediate, others buy self-help books. Janelle McCulloch decided to do something different. Travelling from LA to San Francisco, Maine, Nantucket, New York, Miami and finally to Key West, Janelle learns that happiness is actually very easy to find. You just need to stop looking for it. A beguiling mix of travel, soul-searching and signposts, philosophical and real, One for the Road is a road-trip ode to carpe diem, to living for the day. It’s a journey everyone should take at least once in their life.

NOW IN PAPERBACK. The name of every Parisian metro tells a story. In Metrostop Paris Gregor Dallas recounts a series of extraordinary but true tales about the city as he leads his readers around the metro. Both the armchair traveller and the visitor wil enjoy an illuminating journey in the company of a compelling storyteller and veteran of the city.The book includes visits to Paris catacombs at Hell's Gate, the literary caf s and old jazz cellars of Montparnasse and Saint-Germain-des-Pres and the seventeenth-century alleys of the Marais, along with trips to the Palais-Royal at the time of the Revolution and the world of opera during Claude Debussy's lifetime. Through the eyes of the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, Dallas describes the German occupation of Paris during the Second World War and the intellectual wars that immediately followed. A visit to the futuristic Cit de la Science at La Villette prompts the story of the Marquis de Mors, the French cowboy and anti-semite, who was eventually murdered by tribesmen of the Sahara Desert in 1896. Outside the Jesuit church of Saint-Paul Dallas tells us about Gabriel de Montgomery, forgotten ancestor of Montgomery of Alamein, who accidentally killed his king just there and, after leading the Protestant armies against Catherine de Medicis, was executed on the Place de Grave.

Gardens of Eden is not simply a stroll through the world’s most beautiful gardens; it is a romp through history and an armchair ride around the world. From the glorious paradise gardens of ancient Persia and the open spaces of Australia to the restrained gardens of Italy and the Buddhist-inspired landscapes of China and Japan, this lavishly illustrated book takes the reader on a colourful journey through more than 50 of the world’s loveliest gardens.

From the present-day street life of Ginza, to the heights of Mount Fuji in the company of 16th-century traveller and poet Basho: the most recent addition to Eland's Through Writers' Eyes series brings together a chorus of voices from Japan and across the globe. Extracts of prose, poetry and novels from a rich variety of writers, including Jan Morris, Nicolas Bouvier, Oswald Wynd, Peter Popham, Basho, Yasunari Kawabata, Alan Booth, Futabei Shimei, Angela Carter, Joao Rodrigues and Mary Crawford Fraser.