* First surfing adventure narrative by a woman * Sales benefit the Surfrider Foundation Amy Waeschle became a surf addict shortly after catching her first waveo. To her, surfing is more of a feeling than a sport, combining the mental quest for exploration with the physicality of riding a wave. Hunting down waves in remote corners of the world, from Morocco to Fiji to Canada, Waeschle has found unique and fascinating cultures that have changed her views and fostered her surfing mission. Chasing Waves is her collection of interrelated stories based on these adventures and a chronicle of her evolution from nervous newbie to self-confident and skillful surfer. Anyone who has ever longed for a daring diversion from day job and doldrums will connect with these tales of wanderlust, vagabonding, and riding the surf.

Thirty-two-year-old Mags Abarquez is a single mom to a preschooler with golden ringlets, and by God, she is going to be good. After a lifetime of only being interested in catching the next wave, she tries out for her company’s training faculty, determined to be serious and make it work this time. The only catch? Luke, her hot, younger training mentor. With a sexy nape, a penchant for paper-thin T-shirts and a disarming smile, he’s Mags’ personal brand of kryptonite. Can she stay the course when temptation loves to banter and is so good with her son? A contemporary romance set in the Philippines about motherhood, workplace attraction and finding that sweet spot between passion and vocation, Chasing Waves will make you swoon and smile.

Back in 2005, I started writing what I’d planned to be a non-fiction book about NRAO (the National Radio Astronomy Observatory), based on visits, photos and interviews to this interesting place. My contact was Wesley Sizemore, NRAO’s public face and “Keeper of the Quiet”, a term which will make more sense to you once you read more about NRAO and the NRQZ (the National Radio Quiet Zone). I didn’t get to finish the book. Life intervened, I got caught up in other things and my photos, interviews and written pages (there are quite a few of them) sat in my Documents folder, gathering digital dust for about seven years. Rather than let it all sit there till oblivion, I thought it’d do more good published, unfinished as it is, so in 2012, I went through what I had, re-organized it, re-wrote some sections, re-edited some of the photos, and published it on my website in seven instalments. For this book edition in 2019, I went through everything once again, re-organized the text once more and laid it all out in book format. I want to state once more that the story is incomplete and I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. Some sections aren’t filled in properly. As I wrote them, I had more questions that would get clarification only during subsequent visits, which never materialized. So please forgive whatever rough edges you find, including my barely adequate photos, since I was also at the start of my photographic career at the time. If I ever get the chance to make subsequent visits and finish writing the whole story, great. If not, here is what I have, for your enjoyment. It is worth reading. More people should know about the work being done by the NRAO: it is a neat place doing interesting research into things that have always obsessed humans: outer space, planets and aliens!

**Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Autobiography** Included in President Obama’s 2016 Summer Reading List “Without a doubt, the finest surf book I’ve ever read . . . ” —The New York Times Magazine Barbarian Days is William Finnegan’s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life. Raised in California and Hawaii, Finnegan started surfing as a child. He has chased waves all over the world, wandering for years through the South Pacific, Australia, Asia, Africa. A bookish boy, and then an excessively adventurous young man, he went on to become a distinguished writer and war reporter. Barbarian Days takes us deep into unfamiliar worlds, some of them right under our noses—off the coasts of New York and San Francisco. It immerses the reader in the edgy camaraderie of close male friendships forged in challenging waves. Finnegan shares stories of life in a whites-only gang in a tough school in Honolulu. He shows us a world turned upside down for kids and adults alike by the social upheavals of the 1960s. He details the intricacies of famous waves and his own apprenticeships to them. Youthful folly—he drops LSD while riding huge Honolua Bay, on Maui—is served up with rueful humor. As Finnegan’s travels take him ever farther afield, he discovers the picturesque simplicity of a Samoan fishing village, dissects the sexual politics of Tongan interactions with Americans and Japanese, and navigates the Indonesian black market while nearly succumbing to malaria. Throughout, he surfs, carrying readers with him on rides of harrowing, unprecedented lucidity. Barbarian Days is an old-school adventure story, an intellectual autobiography, a social history, a literary road movie, and an extraordinary exploration of the gradual mastering of an exacting, little-understood art.

When Richard “Frosty” Hesson was first approached by a young Jay Moriarty in 1990, the skinny kid with a sparkle in his eye only wanted one thing from the icon: his help in becoming a better surfer. Hesson, one of the first to conquer the huge waves off northern California known as Mavericks, recognized that the kid “had a vision.” Jay quickly demonstrated a resolve that reminded Frosty of his younger self, pursuing his goal with a seriousness far beyond his years. His attitude and work ethic earned Frosty’s respect and, eventually, his friendship. Making Mavericks is the inspiring story of their father-son bond and of the challenges that made each of them who they were—surf legends, and the subject of the upcoming film Chasing Mavericks. In Making Mavericks, Frosty talks about his turbulent youth spent under difficult circumstances, with parents who tried to find a positive way to handle a child with a passion for water and a disregard for his own safety. Throughout his life he developed principles to live by, principles that would become the core tenets of his teaching philosophy. Most significantly, Frosty talks about how one of his best students, Jay Moriarty, used his philosophy to become a surfing phenomenon, and whose life inspired the phrase, “Live like Jay.” Affecting and poignant, Making Mavericks is a celebration of Hesson’s determination to live with joy and purpose, and his desire to help others do the same.