Back To The Wild

The photographs and writings of Christopher McCandless

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die. "It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order." —Entertainment Weekly McCandess had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Not long after, he was dead. Into the Wild is the mesmerizing, heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world’s attention. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding—and not an ounce of sentimentality. Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.

INDIGO'S #1 BEST BOOK OF 2019 NATIONAL BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE MARROW THIEVES, THE #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER, MULTI-AWARD WINNER AND CANADA READS FINALIST "Wildly entertaining and profound and essential." --Tommy Orange, The New York Times Broken-hearted Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for almost a year--ever since he went missing on the night they had their first serious argument. One hung-over morning in a Walmart parking lot in a little town near Georgian Bay, she is drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been flocking to hear a charismatic preacher. By the time she staggers into the tent the service is over, but as she is about to leave, she hears an unmistakable voice. She turns, and there is Victor. Only he insists he is not Victor, but the Reverend Eugene Wolff, on a mission to bring his people to Jesus. And he doesn't seem to be faking: there isn't even a flicker of recognition in his eyes. With only two allies--her odd, Johnny-Cash-loving, 12-year-old nephew Zeus, and Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with deep knowledge of the old ways--Joan sets out to remind the Reverend Wolff of who he really is. If he really is Victor, his life, and the life of everyone she loves, depends upon her success. Inspired by the traditional Métis story of the Rogarou--a werewolf-like creature that haunts the roads and woods of Métis communities--Cherie Dimaline has created a propulsive, stunning and sensuous novel.

A New York Times Bestseller "The Wild Truth is an important book on two fronts: It sets the record straight about a story that has touched thousands of readers, and it opens up a conversation about hideous domestic violence hidden behind a mask of prosperity and propriety."–NPR.org The spellbinding story of Chris McCandless, who gave away his savings, hitchhiked to Alaska, walked into the wilderness alone, and starved to death in 1992, fascinated not just New York Times bestselling author Jon Krakauer, but also the rest of the nation. Krakauer's book,Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris’s life and his journey has not yet been told - until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.

“We walked toward the part of the library where the air smelled as if it had been interred for years….. Finally, we got to the hallway where the wooden floor was the creakiest, and we sensed a strange whiff of excitement and fear. It smelled like a creature from a bygone time. It smelled like a dragon.” Thirteen-year-old Juan’s favorite things in the world are koalas, eating roast chicken, and the summer-time. This summer, though, is off to a terrible start. First, Juan’s parents separate and his dad goes to Paris. Then, as if that wasn’t horrible enough, Juan is sent away to his strange Uncle Tito’s house for the entire break! Uncle Tito is really odd: he has zigzag eyebrows; drinks ten cups of smoky tea a day; and lives inside a huge, mysterious library. One day, while Juan is exploring the library, he notices something inexplicable and rushes to tell Uncle Tito. “The books moved!” His uncle drinks all his tea in one gulp and, sputtering, lets his nephew in on a secret: Juan is a Princeps Reader––which means books respond magically to him––and he’s the only person capable of finding the elusive, never-before-read Wild Book. Juan teams up with his new friend Catalina and his little sister, and together they delve through books that scuttle from one shelf to the next, topple over unexpectedly, or even disappear altogether to find The Wild Book and discover its secret. But will they find it before the wicked, story-stealing Pirate Book does?

The New York Times bestselling Seekers series from Erin Hunter continues in the third book in the Return to the Wild story arc. River of Lost Bears is filled with the high-stakes action and heart-pounding adventure that fans of Seekers and the #1 nationally bestselling Warriors series crave. Kallik, Toklo, Lusa, and Yakone head away from the ice toward warmer territories. As they approach the mountains, Toklo is faced with an impossible choice. Though he is desperate to leave the struggles of their quest and to find his place in the world of brown bears, is he ready to leave his friends behind?

A wry memoir of growing up, coming out, and going back to the land as a lesbian feminist in the rural Midwest of the 1960s and 70s Dianna Hunter was a softball-loving, working-class tomboy in North Dakota, surviving the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Mutually Assured Destruction in the shadow of a strategic air command base. Communists and antiwar hippies were the enemy, but lesbians were a threat, too: they were unhealthy, criminal, and downright insane. It took Dianna a while to figure out that she was one, a little longer to discover how she fit in with her new communities in the city and the countryside. This is her story—a frank account by turns comic and painful of a well-behaved Midwestern girl finding her way through polite denial and repression and running head-on into the eye-opening events of the 1960s and ’70s before landing on a dairy farm. A bumpy route takes Dianna to the Twin Cities, then to rural Minnesota and Wisconsin as—by way of the antiwar movement, women’s liberation, and a dose of lesbian feminism—she and her friends try to establish a rural utopia free of sexual oppression, violence, materialism, environmental degradation—and men. They dream big, love as they see fit, and make do until they don’t. Dianna buys a dairy farm and, with it, a new set of problems thanks to the Reagan-era farm crisis. A firsthand account of the lesbian feminist movement at its inception, Wild Mares is a deeply personal, wryly wise, and always engaging view of identity politics lived and learned in real life and, literally, on the ground, flourishing in the fertile soil of a struggling dairy farm in the American heartland.

City girl Calla Fletcher attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, and unwittingly finds herself torn between her desire to return to the bustle of Toronto and a budding relationship with a rugged Alaskan pilot in this masterful new romance from acclaimed author K.A. Tucker. Calla Fletcher was two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild, unable to handle the isolation of the extreme, rural lifestyle, leaving behind Calla’s father, Wren Fletcher, in the process. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when her father reaches out to inform her that his days are numbered, Calla knows that it’s time to make the long trip back to the remote frontier town where she was born. She braves the roaming wildlife, the odd daylight hours, the exorbitant prices, and even the occasional—dear God—outhouse, all for the chance to connect with her father: a man who, despite his many faults, she can’t help but care for. While she struggles to adjust to this new subarctic environment, Jonah—the quiet, brooding, and proud Alaskan pilot who keeps her father’s charter plane company operational—can’t imagine calling anywhere else home. And he’s clearly waiting with one hand on the throttle to fly this city girl back to where she belongs, convinced that she’s too pampered to handle the wild. Jonah is probably right, but Calla is determined to prove him wrong. As time passes, she unexpectedly finds herself forming a bond with the burly pilot. As his undercurrent of disapproval dwindles, it’s replaced by friendship—or perhaps something deeper? But Calla is not in Alaska to stay and Jonah will never leave. It would be foolish of her to kindle a romance, to take the same path her parents tried—and failed at—years ago. It’s a simple truth that turns out to be not so simple after all.