I am surprised at the low ratings some readers have given this book. I am on the threshold of going the full 5. Because Everett Ruess did not leave the author much information with which to write, is not the fault of the author or the book. That the low rating reader has never hiked SE Utah or n...
The Lost Explorer: Finding Mallory on Mount Everest by Conrad Anker and David Roberts (Simon & Schuster 1999) (796.522). This is one of the most exciting books I've read about Mount Everest. Conrad Anker is a legendary Alpine climber. This is the story of an expedition to Everest in 1999 for ...
Maurice Herzog was the first person to reach the summit of Annapurna, one of the 8,000 meter peaks. The expedition he guided in 1950 suffered tremendously on the way down, as did Herzog who lost all fingers and toes to frostbite. His account of the journey was a testimony to the team-building s...
This room had no expansive views of St James’s Park and was by no means luxuriously furnished. There was a rank of filing cabinets in battleship grey, a depressed-looking aspidistra on the windowsill and two upright chairs of a Dickensian age and character forlornly standing in front of a battere...
Only when he and then the doctor arrived did she feel able to leave the distraught woman. She was clearly of a very nervous disposition and Verity wondered if she ought to sympathize with Professor Dolmen for having to put up with his wife’s nerves or blame him for the state of them. Of course, i...
He had telephoned his sister-in-law to let her know he was coming and demanding food and a bed for the night. The Duchess met him at the door and fussed over him. ‘No lunch! My poor boy, you must be famished. We’ll have tea straight away.’ ‘Connie, darling, it’s so good to...
A porter rescued Mrs Cardew’s two suitcases from the goods van and Blackie, her maid, who appeared to be even older than her mistress, appeared from third class with Mrs Cardew’s jewellery bag, which was her special care and never left her sight. The chauffeur, who tipped his cap and said his nam...
It disgusted him to have to fly in such a plane but he had no option. The cotton wool handed out to passengers by the stewardess did little to lessen the noise of the engines which made reading tiring. He had bought a copy of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man at the aerodrome’s bookstall in an effo...
Herzog’s extremities were numb up to his ankles and wrists. Lachenal’s toes and patches on the soles of his feet had turned black. Rébuffat had only frostnip on a pair of toes, and Terray had somehow avoided frostbite altogether. Three years later, the British expedition to Everest would climb mo...
Edward spent a day at the Oval with Tommie Fox watching England draw with the West Indies. A third wicket stand of 264 between Len Hutton and Walter Hammond recalled Hutton’s mighty 364 against Australia at the Oval the previous year.Edward itched to take up a cricket bat again but had to make do...
Hermione was obviously besotted with him and when he had rung to suggest an evening at the Four Hundred she had responded with embarrassing enthusiasm. ‘But not the Four Hundred. That’s frightfully old-fashioned now. The place to go is the Cocoanut Grove – you know, in Regent Street.’ Hermione so...
‘I really don’t see how schoolboy escapades could possibly end in murder years later. I probably ought to be in Germany talking to Thayer’s business partner – what’s his name? – Heinrich Hoffmann.’ He swung the Lagonda in front of a tram, to the driver’s fury. ‘But the fac...
To put it crudely, most of his patients were too ill to do more than lie on their beds or, when the weather was as warm as it was now, relax on the long chairs in the garden soaking up the sunshine. Verity was unable to stay still for more than a few minutes at a time. The sight of patients iller...