Popular North American Adventure Books

Find adventure books written by authors from North America for the next part of the Read Around The World Challenge. (22)

1.

America the Beautiful? : One Woman in a Borrowed Prius on the Road Most Traveled by Blythe Roberson EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
The author of How to Date Men When You Hate Men examines Americans' obsession with freedom, travel, and the open road in this funny, entertaining travelogue that blends the humorous observations of Bill Bryson with the piercing cultural commentary of Jia Tolentino. For writer and comedian Blythe Roberson, there are only so many Mary Oliver poems you can read about being free, and only so many times you can listen to Joni Mitchell's travel album Hejira, before you too, are itching to take off. Canonical American travel writers have long celebrated the road trip as the epitome of freedom. But wh... continue

2.

Archipelago by Monique Roffey EN

0 Ratings
Description:
When a flood destroys Gavin Weald's home, tearing apart his family and his way of life, he doesn't know how to continue. A year later, he returns to his rebuilt home and tries to start again, but when the new rainy season arrives, so do his daughter's nightmares about the torrents, and life there becomes unbearable. So father and daughter and their dog - embark upon a voyage to make peace with the waters. Their journey will take them far from their Caribbean island home, into other unknown harbours and eventually across a massive ocean. They will sail through archipelagos, encounter the grande... continue

3.

Aru Shah and the City of Gold by Roshani Chokshi EN

0 Ratings
Description:
Aru Shah and her sisters,including one who also claims to be the Sleeper's daughter, must find their mentors Hanuman and Urvashi in Lanka, the city of gold, before war breaks out between the devas and asuras. Aru has just made a wish on the tree of w

4.

At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
Introduction by China Miéville Long acknowledged as a master of nightmarish visions, H. P. Lovecraft established the genuineness and dignity of his own pioneering fiction in 1931 with his quintessential work of supernatural horror, At the Mountains of Madness. The deliberately told and increasingly chilling recollection of an Antarctic expedition’s uncanny discoveries–and their encounter with untold menace in the ruins of a lost civilization–is a milestone of macabre literature. This exclusive new edition, presents Lovecraft’s masterpiece in fully restored form, and includes his acclaimed scho... continue

5.

Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse EN

Rating: 4 (3 votes)
Description:
NOMINATED FOR THE 2021 HUGO AWARDS AND THE 2020 NEBULA AWARDS FOR BEST NOVEL From the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Resistance Reborn comes the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, inspired by the civilizations of the Pre-Columbian Americas and woven into a tale of celestial prophecies, political intrigue, and forbidden magic. A god will return When the earth and sky converge Under the black sun In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal, but this year it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscr... continue

6.

Brave the Wild River : The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny EN

Rating: 4 (1 vote)
Description:
The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition he... continue

7.

Explosion in a Cathedral by Alejo Carpentier, John Sturrock EN

Rating: 2 (1 vote)
Country: North America / Cuba flag Cuba
Description:
A swashbuckling tale set in the Caribbean at the time of the French Revolution, Explosion in a Cathedral focuses on Victor Hugues, a historical figure who led the naval assault to take back the island of Guadeloupe from the English at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In Carpentier's telling, this piratical character walks into the lives of the wealthy orphans Esteban and Sofia and casts them abruptly into the midst of the immense changes sweeping the world outside their Havana mansion.

8.

Into Thin Air : A Personal Account of the Mount Everest Disaster by Jon Krakauer EN

Rating: 5 (5 votes)
Description:
When Jon Krakauer reached the summit of Mt. Everest in the early afternoon of May 10, 1996, he hadn't slept in fifty-seven hours and was reeling from the brain-altering effects of oxygen depletion. As he turned to begin his long, dangerous descent from 29,028 feet, twenty other climbers were still pushing doggedly toward the top. No one had noticed that the sky had begun to fill with clouds. Six hours later and 3,000 feet lower, in 70-knot winds and blinding snow, Krakauer collapsed in his tent, freezing, hallucinating from exhaustion and hypoxia, but safe. The following morning, he learned th... continue

9.

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'dell EN

Rating: 5 (2 votes)
Description:
A young Indian girl learns the art of survival when she is stranded on an isolated Pacific island.

10.

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville EN

Rating: 5 (3 votes)
Description:
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read First published in 1851, Herman Melville’s masterpiece is, in Elizabeth Hardwick’s words, “the greatest novel in American literature.” The saga of Captain Ahab and his monomaniacal pursuit of the white whale remains a peerless adventure story but one full of mythic grandeur, poetic majesty, and symbolic power. Filtered through the consciousness of the novel’s narrator, Ishmael, Moby-Dick draws us into a universe full of fascinating characters and stories, from the noble cannibal Queequeg to the natural history of ... continue