Reading Age: 13+ Years

All surfers dream of shedding responsibilities and answering the siren song of the ocean swells. For most, it is an ideal that recedes as age advances - as family, career and provider commitments overwhelm the wanderlust of youth. But what if you could defy the slow march of age?... Shelve all your worldly pressures, pack up the family and a few trusty surfboards and hit the open road for the Great Australian surfing road trip? Best-selling surf writer Tim Baker is doing just that. Inspired by the dreams of his youth, and in the face of looming middle-age, Baker is embarking on the Big Lap, with his wife Kirsten and two children, Vivi, 8, and Alex, 4. Starting in late January 2011, the family will set out from their home in Currumbin, Queensland, heading south down the east coast. Over the next six to eight months, they will circumnavigate the country, as Baker documents the state of surf culture and our coastline, and the array of colourful characters encountered along the way. Surfari Highway will evoke all the magic and charm, the challenges and perils of the Australian coastline and the curious variety of human sub-species who inhabit it. The result will be a lively, colourful handbook on how to trade your life for another variety, the delights and dangers that lay in wait for those who dare to chase their dreams, and how a family of four survive six months on the road in the close quarters of a four-wheel drive and a caravan. It is a story for anyone who has ever dreamed of an alternative to the busy, micro-scheduled existence of work, school, shopping and housework. It offers vindication for all those Sea Changers and Baby Boomers, mature age longboarders and carefree beachcombers who have heeded the surf's call. And it will provide an inspirational text for every bored office worker, desperate housewife or unfulfilled suburban dad who senses there has to be another way.
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Why do you mess up when it matters the most - and how can you perform your best instead? Sian Beilock reveals the new science of why we all too often blunder when the stakes are high. She explains the inescapable links between body and mind, and shows how to succeed brilliantly w...hen it matters most.
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First published in the 1950s, this is a classic account of the discovery in 1911 of the lost city of Machu Picchu.

The best-known modern Chinese fairy tale is the story of three sisters from Shanghai, who for most of the twentieth century were at the centre of power in China. It was sometimes said that `One loved money, one loved power and one loved her country', but there was far more to the... Soong sisters than these caricatures. As China battled through a hundred years of wars, revolutions and seismic transformations, each sister played an important, sometimes critical role, and left an indelible mark on history. Red Sister, Ching-ling, married Sun Yat-sen, founding father of the Chinese republic, and later became Mao's vice-chair. Little Sister, May-ling, was Madame Chiang Kai-shek, first lady of the pre-Communist Nationalist China and a major political figure in her own right. Big Sister, Ei-ling, was Chiang's unofficial main adviser. She made herself one of China's richest women - and her husband Chiang's prime minister. All three sisters enjoyed tremendous privilege and glory, but also endured constant attacks and mortal danger. They showed great courage and experienced passionate love, as well as despair and heartbreak. The relationship between them was highly charged emotionally, especially once they had embraced opposing political camps and Ching-ling dedicated herself to destroying her two sisters' world. Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister is a gripping story of love, war, exile, intrigue, glamour and betrayal, which takes us on a monumental journey, from Canton to Hawaii and New York, from exiles' quarters in Japan and Berlin to secret meeting rooms in Moscow, and from the compounds of the Communist elite in Beijing to the corridors of power in democratic Taiwan. In a group biography that is by turns intimate and epic, Jung Chang reveals the lives of three extraordinary women who helped shape the history of twentieth-century China.
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Nick Duncan is a semi-retired, wealthy shipping magnate who lives in idyllic Beautiful Bay, Vanuatu, where he is known as the old patriarch of the islands. He is grieving the loss of his beguiling Eurasian true love, Anna and is suffering for the first time from disturbing flashb...acks to the Second World War.
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