From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland--and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser's brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the family's apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery--that his grandfather's cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex--leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance--material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.

A travel memoir through thirty countries, a thousand insulin injections, and one man’s journey from despair to confidence. With tips and information from the American Diabetes Association. In the middle of a yearlong backpacking trip around the world with his wife, Oren Liebermann is teaching English to young Buddhist monks in Pokhara, Nepal, when his body begins to fail him. He is constantly thirsty and exhausted, and by the time he steps on a scale, he has lost forty-five pounds. At a local clinic, a doctor gives him a diagnosis that will change his life forever: “I’m sorry to tell you, my friend, that you are a diabetic.” Devastated, Liebermann is trapped in a freezing hospital room, trying to recover enough to fly home. His friends and family urge him to call off the rest of his trip. He had quit his job as a TV news reporter for this dream-come-true journey, but the nightmare diagnosis has thrown his world into disarray. However, Liebermann and his wife, Cassie, make a decision. They have an adventure to finish, and he has the rest of his life to live. Bold, raw, and poignantly candid, The Insulin Express tells the story of what happens when the best-made travel plans are subject to the ever-present chaos of life, and how a major setback can turn into the opportunity of a lifetime. Despite struggling with a chronic disease that almost kills him in the Himalayas, Liebermann hikes along the Great Wall of China, conquers the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, and sips cobra whiskey in Laos. What begins as a travel chronicle across thirty countries transforms into a single journey of resilience and self-discovery—going from hopelessly lost and then wonderfully found.

No Place to Fall is Victor Saunders' follow up to his Boardman Tasker Prize winning debut book Elusive Summits . Covering three expeditions in Nepal, the Karakoram and the Kumaon, each shares the exhilaration of attempting new alpine-style routes on terrifyingly committing mountains. In 1989 Victor Saunders and Steve Sustad completed a difficult route on the West Face of Makalu II , only to be brought to a storm-bound halt above 7,000 metres while descending. Without food or bivouac gear, they endured a tortuous descent after a night in the open. Two years later the pair were with a small team in the Hunza valley exploring elusive access to a giant hidden pillar on the unvisited South-East Face of Ultar , one of the highest and most shapely of the world's unclimbed peaks. In 1992 Victor Saunders was part of a joint Indian-British team climbing various peaks in the Panch Chuli range. A happy and successful expedition narrowly avoided ending in tragedy when Stephen Venables broke both legs in a fall on the descent from Panch Chuli V and Chris Bonington survived another fall going to his aid. The dramatic evacuation of Venables, in which the author took a major part, forms an exciting climax to a story of cutting-edge, alpine-style climbing in the world's highest mountains. No Place to Fall offers enviable mountain exploration, enriched by sharing the lives of the mountain peoples along the way. Victor Saunders casts a perceptive, if bemused, eye over his fellow climbers and reflects on the calculation of risk that drives them back year after year to chance their lives in high places.