À Ménerbes, petit village du Luberon, la vie se poursuit sans beaucoup de changements pour Peter Mayle. Les us et coutumes des Provençaux sont encore obscurs et étonnants pour notre ancien publicitaire anglais. À la terrasse du Café du Progrès, au milieu des vignes ou sur les marchés aux truffes, des personnages réjouissants nous entraînent à la découverte des subtilités de leur région.
Touchant parfois au conte, cette chronique est une succession de tableaux qui nous ramènent avec plaisir dans l'atmosphère d'Une année en Provence.

In this work for armchair and actual travellers alike, the author records the events of a year in Provence, from foie gras and burst pipes in January, through the Tour de France preparations, the grape "vendange" and the mushroom season, to the Christmas gastronomic splurge.

Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.

Escaping the ills of the British climate, the Durrell family - acne-ridden Margo, gun-toting Leslie, bookworm Lawrence and budding naturalist Gerry, along with their long suffering mother and Roger the dog - take off for the island of Corfu. But the Durrells find that, they must share their various villas with a menagerie of local fauna.

It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.

Ignoring such dangers - and yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging: their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this...

INTRODUCED BY ADAM WEYMOUTH, award-winning author of The Kings of Yukon ''A wonderful book -- and a highly original contribution to the literature of travel'' PAUL THEROUX ''The Mississippi. Mighty, muddy, dangerous, rebellious and yet a strong, fathering kind of river. The river captured my imagination when I was young and has never let go.'' Mississippi Solo tells the story of one man''s voyage by canoe down the Mississippi River from its source in Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico - a longtime dream, and a journey of over 2,000 miles through the heart of America. Paddling into the Southern states - going from ''where there ain''t no black folks to where they still don''t like us much'' - Eddy is confronted by the legacy of slavery and modern racism, including an incident with a pair of shotgun-toting bigots. There are also the dangers of passing barges, wild dogs roaming the wooded shore, and navigating a waterway that grows vaster, and more hazardous, every day. But Eddy also encounters immense human kindness, friendship and hospitality, as well as coming to know the majestic power - and the awesome dangers - of the river itself. Mississippi Solo is an unforgettable American adventure.
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In 1993, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the States for a few years with his family, Bill Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home.

Contains three books - "My Family and Other Animals", "Birds, Beasts and Relatives" and "The Garden of the Gods". Offering portraits of the author's family and their many unusual hangers-on, this work also captures the beginnings of his lifelong love of animals.

Raynor Winn is the bestselling author of The Salt Path and The Wild Silence. The Salt Path won the inaugural RSL Christopher Bland Prize and was shortlisted for the 2018 Costa Biography Award and the Wainwright Golden B

B>Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is the true story of a 24-hour period on Everest, when members of three separate expeditions were caught in a storm and faced a battle against hurricane-force winds, exposure, and the effects of altitude, which ended in the worst single-season death toll in the peak's history./b> In March 1996, Outside magazine sent veteran journalist and seasoned climber Jon Krakauer on an expedition led by celebrated Everest guide Rob Hall. Despite the expertise of Hall and the other leaders, by the end of summit day, eight people were dead. Krakauer's book is at once the story of the ill-fated adventure and an analysis of the factors leading up to its tragic end. Written within months of the events it chronicles, Into Thin Air clearly evokes the majestic Everest landscape. As the journey up the mountain progresses, Krakauer puts it in context by recalling the triumphs and perils of other Everest trips throughout history. The author's own anguish over what happened on the mountain is palpable as he leads readers to ponder timeless questions.b>One of the inspirations for the major motion picture Everest, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Keira Knightley./b> Lire la suite Fermer

Bill Bryson's first travel book, The Lost Continent, was unanimously acclaimed as one of the funniest books in years. In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before.

Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein. Lire la suite Fermer

''Stunningly written'' Sunday Times ''Richly absorbing'' Guardian ''Hooks you in from the start'' Times ''Masterful'' Independent ''Hugely compelling'' Observer ''Wonderful'' Financial Times Siberia''s story is traditionally one of exiles, bitter cold and suffering. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos created during the boom years of the nineteenth century. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos travelled into this snow-bound wilderness in the first place is remarkable. That stately instruments might still be capable of making music in such a hostile landscape is nothing less than a miracle. Fusing history, nature writing and travelogue, The Lost Pianos of Siberia is a story about a piano hunt - a quixotic journey through two centuries of Russian history and eight time zones stretching across an eleventh of the world''s land surface. It reveals not only an unexpected musical legacy, but profound humanity in the last place on earth you might expect to find it.
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''Joyful, life-affirming, greedy. I loved it'' - DIANA HENRY ''Whether you are an avid cyclist, a Francophile, a greedy gut, or simply an appreciator of impeccable writing - this book will get you hooked'' - YOTAM OTTOLENGHI The nation''s ''taster in chief'' cycles 2,300 km across France in search of the definitive versions of classic French dishes. Agreen bike drunkenly weaves its way up a cratered hill inthe late-morning sun, the gears grinding painfully, like apepper mill running on empty. The rider crouched on top in arictus of pain has slowed to a gravity-defying crawl when, fromsomewhere nearby, the whine of a nasal engine breaks through her ragged breathing. A battered van appears behind her, the customary cigarettedangling from its driver''s-side window... as he passes, she casually reaches down for some water,smiling broadly in the manner of someone having almost toomuch fun. ''No sweat,'' she says jauntily to his retreating exhaustpipe. ''Pas de probleme, monsieur.'' A land of glorious landscapes, and even more glorious food, France is a place built for cycling and for eating, too - a country large enough to give any journey an epic quality, but with a bakery on every corner. Here, you can go from beach to mountain, Atlantic to Mediterranean, polder to Pyrenees, and taste the difference every time you stop for lunch. If you make it to lunch, that is... Part travelogue, part food memoir, all love letter to France, One More Croissant for the Road follows ''the nation''s taster in chief'' Felicity Cloake''s very own Tour de France, cycling 2,300km across France in search of culinary perfection; from Tarte Tatin to Cassoulet via Poule au Pot, and Tartiflette. Each of the 21 ''stages'' concludes with Felicity putting this new found knowledge to good use in a fresh and definitive recipe for each dish - the culmination of her rigorous and thorough investigative work on behalf of all of our taste buds.
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Sylvain Tesson, found a radical solution to his need for freedom, one as ancient as the experiences of the hermits of old Russia: he decided to lock himself alone in a cabin in the middle taiga, on the shores of Baikal, for six months. Noting carefully his impressions of the silence, Sylvain Tesson shares with us an extraordinary experience.

This is a continuation of Peter Mayle's account of an Englishman's life abroad. He tells of a school for noses in Haute Provence, the mysterious death of an oversexed butcher, the quest for the finest bouillabaisse and an assortment of characters from bars and boules courts.

I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to' And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England, he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of trim and sunny place where the films of his youth were set. Instead, his search led him to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost; lost to itself because blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a stranger in his own land.

Bryson's acclaimed first success, The Lost Continent is a classic of travel literature - hilariously, stomach-achingly, funny, yet tinged with heartache - and the book that first staked Bill Bryson's claim as the most beloved writer of his generation.
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An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirty years. Alex Kerr brings to life the ritualized world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, and tells the story of the hidden valley that became his home.But the book is not just a love letter. Haunted throughout by nostalgia for the Japan of old, Kerr's book is part paean to that great country and culture, part epitaph in the face of contemporary Japan's environmental and cultural destruction.Winner of Japan's Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize, and now with a new preface.Alex Kerr is an American writer, antiques collector and Japanologist. Lost Japan is his most famous work. He was the first foreigner to be awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan. Lire la suite Fermer

With an introduction by novelist David Vann In April 1992, Chris McCandless set off alone into the Alaskan wild. He had given his savings to charity, abandoned his car and his possessions, and burnt the money in his wallet, determined to live a life of independence. Just four months later, Chris was found dead. An SOS note was taped to his makeshift home, an abandoned bus. In piecing together the final travels of this extraordinary young man''s life, Jon Krakauer writes about the heart of the wilderness, its terribly beauty and its relentless harshness. Into the Wild is a modern classic of travel writing, and a riveting exploration of what drives some of us to risk more than we can afford to lose.
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Erika Fatland was born in 1983 and studied Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. Her 2011 book, The Village of Angels , was an in situ report on the Beslan terror attacks of 2004 and she is also the author of The Year Without Summer , describing the harrowing year that followed the massacre on Utoya in 2011. She speaks eight languages and lives in Oslo with her husband.

Cees Nooteboom was born in The Hague in 1933, and now lives in Amsterdam and on the island of Minorca. He is a poet and novelist who has been the recipient of numerous prestigious awards such as the Pegasus Prize and the Aristeion Prize for

Brimming with intricate research and enduring wonder, The Passenger is a love-letter to global travel

"These books are so rich and engrossing that it is rewarding to read them even when one is stu