His father wrongly executed when he was a child, Taziar Medakan had turned to stealing for his survival. He was the Shadow Climber, skilled at remaining one with the shadows, unseen in the midst of his enemies. And he stole not for profit, but for the challenge of it, donating most of his booty to those in need. But though Taz could defeat any trap, he wasn't prepared for the treachery of Ilyrian, a cunning politician ready to sacrifice the Shadow Climber to gain power himself. So Taz found himself in the baron's dreaded dungeons from which even a master thief's only escape might be death! There he met Moonbear, a prince among barbarians, a swordsman beyond compare, and Taz's last hope for salvation. Together the two sought their pathway to freedom. But it was a pathway that would set a whole kingdom on their trail in a pursuit led by Ilyrian and a Dragonrank sorcerer on his own mission of magical revenge.

“In climbing the Seven Summits, Silvia Vasquez-Lavado did nothing less than take back her own life—one brave step at a time. She will inspire untold numbers of souls with this story, for her victory is a win on behalf of all of us.”—Elizabeth Gilbert Endless ice. Thin air. The threat of dropping into nothingness thousands of feet below. This is the climb Silvia Vasquez-Lavado braves in her page-turning, pulse-raising memoir chronicling her journey to Mount Everest. A Latina hero in the elite macho tech world of Silicon Valley, privately, she was hanging by a thread. Deep in the throes of alcoholism, hiding her sexuality from her family, and repressing the abuse she’d suffered as a child, she started climbing. Something about the brute force required for the ascent—the risk and spirit and sheer size of the mountains and death’s close proximity—woke her up. She then took her biggest pain as a survivor to the biggest mountain: Everest. “The Mother of the World,” as it’s known in Nepal, allows few to reach her summit, but Silvia didn’t go alone. She gathered a group of young female survivors and led them to base camp alongside her. It was never easy. At times hair-raising, nerve-racking, and always challenging, Silvia remembers the acute anxiety of leading a group of novice climbers to Everest’s base, all the while coping with her own nerves of summiting. But, there were also moments of peace, joy, and healing with the strength of her fellow survivors and community propelling her forward. In the Shadow of the Mountain is a remarkable story of heroism, one which awakens in all of us a lust for adventure, an appetite for risk, and faith in our own resilience.

A classic in the genre of mountain literature—with a new preface by the author Rising more than 20,000 feet into the Alaskan sky is Denali, the tallest mountain in North America. In this collection of exhilarating and stunning narratives, Jonathan Waterman paints a startlingly intimate portrait of the white leviathan and brings to vivid life men and women whose fates have entwined on its sheer icy peak.

When Shadow received a message that Shylar needed his aid, the master thief and his three companions, Allerum - now an elf swordsman but once a twentieth century American soldier - and the two Dragonmages, Silme and Astryd, immediately set out for Shadow's hometown of Cullinsberg. For Shylar, town madam and high in the thieves' underground, was all the family Shadow had. But Cullinsberg was an armed trap waiting to close on the four adventurers. For they had slain the Chaos Dragon, and in so doing unleashed a force of pure Chaos, a force which then bonded with the single greatest surviving Dragonmage. Driven by Chaos-induced madness, this master of powers far beyond those of Silme and Astryd would now use anyone and any means to take his deadly revenge on those four warriors of Law.

Extensively researched and illustrated guidebook of nearly every conceivable aspect of outdoor camping and survival in all types of terrain and climate.

* Concise, objective account of the 1996 Everest debacle * One of Simpson's most controversial and challenging books * Short listed for the 1997 Boardman Tasker Award In 1992, an Indian climber was left to die alone high on the South Col of Mount Everest by other climbers who watched his feebly waving hand from the security of their tent thirty yards away. Some film footage of his corpse was later shown on television. Why did these onlookers not hold the dying man's hand and comfort him? The answer appalls Joe Simpson, who was himself left for dead in a crevasse at the foot of Siula Grande in Peru in 1985. It is an uncomfortable ethical question that he is forced to confront as he attempts a difficult new route on Pumori, with a clear view of the whole South Col from close to the vantage point where Eric Shipton first spotted the way up the south side of Everest taken by Hillary and Tenzing in 1953. Now that Everest has become the playground of the rich, where commercial operators offer guided tours to the top up fixed ropes, camping amidst the detritus and unburied corpses of previous less fortunate climbers, Simpson wonders if the noble, caring instincts that once characterized mountaineering have been irrevocably displaced as in other facets of today's society. On investigation, he finds it a less black and white issue that at first it seemed. "I shall never forget the horror of dying alone, the awful empty loneliness of it," he says. Yet his empathy for the victims of storms, altitude sickness, or misjudgments, is tested time and again as he explores anecdotally and in conversations with his companions on Pumori, the moral climate of mountaineering in the 1990s.

Now in one volume, the final two novels in the startlingly original Bifrost Guardians series: an epic saga of a Vietnam soldier sent through time and space. Shadow’s Realm: When Shadow received a message that Shylar needed his aid, the master thief and his three companions, Allerum—once a twentieth-century American soldier but now an elf swordsman—and the Dragonmages, Silme and Astryd, immediately set out for Shadow’s hometown of Cullinsberg. For Shylar, town madam and high in the thieves’ underground, was all the family Shadow had. But Cullinsberg was an armed trap waiting to close on them. For they had slain the Chaos Dragon and unleashed a force of pure Chaos, a force which then bonded with the single greatest surviving Dragonmage. Driven by Chaos-induced madness, this master of powers far beyond theirs would use anyone and any means to take his deadly revenge on these four warriors of Law.... By Chaos Cursed: For Al Larson, it began with his death in a firefight in Vietnam. He woke from death to find himself alive—in a body and a world not his own! Transformed into an elf warrior, he became an unsuspecting pawn of the Norse gods, claimed by both Chaos and Law. Faced with challenges that would take him to Hel and back, Al teamed up with two sorceresses and a master thief in the endless battle against Chaos. But when Al and Shadow the thief slew the Chaos Dragon, they unleashed a magical force beyond anyone’s power to contain. Working a desperate magic, Al and his companions fled back to a twentieth-century America which was not quite Al’s own. But Chaos wouldn’t let Al, Shadow, and the Dragonrank mages Silme and Astryd escape so easily. A mortal man once again, Al found himself caught in a last-ditch fight to save everyone he held dear, as Chaos pursued him into the heart of New York City....