The Longest Way Home: One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down by Andrew McCarthy

 

 

“A soulful and searching book. Vibrant and elegant…McCarthy’s prose shines with intelligence and intimacy. One feels pulled along…the book gaining momentum and meaning page by page” (Cheryl Strayed, The New York Times Book Review).

With absorbing honesty and an irrepressible taste for adventure, award-winning travel writer and actor Andrew McCarthy takes us on a deeply personal journey played out amid some of the world’s most evocative locales. Unable to commit to his fiancée of nearly four years—and with no clear understanding of what’s holding him back—McCarthy finds himself at a crossroads, plagued by doubts that have clung to him for a lifetime. Though he ventures from the treacherous slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro to an Amazonian riverboat and the dense Costa Rican rain forests, McCarthy’s real journey is one of the spirit. Disarmingly likable, McCarthy isn’t afraid to bare his soul on the page, and what emerges is an intimate memoir of self-discovery and an unforgettable love song to the woman who would be his wife.

Every Day the River Changes: Four Weeks Down the Magdalena by Jordan Salama

 

 

An exhilarating travelogue for a new generation by a protege of John McPhee ("A born journalist") and Pico Iyer ("A writer, a traveler—a virtuoso—of rare talent and energy") about a journey along Colombia’s Magdalena River, exploring life by the banks of a majestic river now at risk, and how a country recovers from conflict.

An American writer of Argentine, Syrian, and Iraqi Jewish descent, Jordan Salama tells the story of the Rio Magdalena, nearly one thousand miles long, the heart of Colombia. This is Gabriel García Márquez’s territory—rumor has it Macondo was partly inspired by the port town of Mompox—as much as that of the Middle Eastern immigrants who run fabric stores by its banks.
 
Following the river from its source high in the Andes to its mouth on the Caribbean coast, journeying by boat, bus, and improvised motobalinera, Salama writes against stereotype and toward the rich lives of those he meets. Among them are a canoe builder, biologists who study invasive hippopotamuses, a Queens transplant managing a failing hotel, a jeweler practicing the art of silver filigree, and a traveling librarian whose donkeys, Alfa and Beto, haul books to rural children.
 
Joy, mourning, and humor come together in this astonishing debut, travel writing about a country too often seen as only a site of war, and a tale of lively adventure following a legendary river.

Man Down (Rogue Book 2) by Irma Venter and Karin Schimke

 

 

In Irma Venter’s follow-up to the electric Hard Rain, Ranna Abramson returns home to the lion’s den to resurrect a long-dead past and save the man she loves.

Ranna Abramson wants to disappear.

But she knows she can’t keep running when a former enemy tracks her down in Mumbai with dire news: her onetime lover, journalist Alex Derksen, has disappeared back home in South Africa.

Torn between her desire for him and fear of a homecoming, Ranna knows she’s the only one who can find him. But only two things in South Africa would welcome her—the inside of a cell or the bottom of a grave. There, to the police she’s the prime suspect in three murders. To the press, she’s the Black Widow serial killer.

Despite her instinct to stay away, Ranna makes the journey. But the key to finding Alex lies in her painful past. And to uncover it, she’ll need to unravel a web of secrets tied to a long-forgotten crime.

Even if she finds Alex before it’s too late, Ranna must answer for past sins…or risk losing him forever.