MAGGIE: In 2019 we gave up the constraints of a frequently frantic existence to live and travel in a campervan for a year; to be in the flow of life; trusting the great mystery of the universe to guide us. We got far more than we expected. The truth is that the truth is stranger than fiction. PETE: On our adventures we encountered sea turtles on a remote island; a mystical prophet woman in an Aborigine rainforest; were bitten by a rare spider; visited most of the Lord of the Rings film locations with uncanny ramifications; collected Maori tea; encountered mysterious Broch energies, and many more weird and wonderful experiences This is: HISstory and HERstory Sit back and come with us on an adventure.

A young woman who marries an Arabian finds herself facing dangers and challenges that she never thought imaginable. She starts her journey traveling to one of the oldest countries in the world. Her new home in Arabia turns out very different than she expected. The way she was raised as an American is all but forgotten when forced to learn the new ways of an ancient culture. She soon discovers that she must learn their language and abide by their religion if she is to survive in their country. After almost fourteen years of living in Arabia she becomes desperate to return to her beloved country to live. She captured her one chance to leave with her three young children and made it back to her hometown. She lived with her three children only for a short while before he came to take them back to Arabia. Her worst nightmare had begun. She unexpectedly met an American man from her hometown who saved her life as she adventured on yet another dangerous journey traveling alone to Arabia in hope of being reunited with her children. This woman’s true life experiences along with various research makes this one of the most intriguing books about the real everyday life of the people in ancient Arabia. This is her true story, finally told.

Los Angeles newspaper reporter Laura LaFlamme is brutally attacked while on assignment in El Salvador. When, after regular doses of anti-depressants and shock treatment, she is able to return to her job, she discovers that her editors want her to exploit her ordeal in order to sell papers. Disgusted, horrified and still traumatized by her nightmare in Central America, she quits her job and vanishes -- from her friends, from her family, from everyone. Enter Bill Wade, his curiosity about a colleague he scarcely knew becomes an obsession, Wade launches a one-man search for Laura. His journey takes him to dusty West Texas, the home of the Marfa "Ghost Lights," to the top of an enchanted mesa in New Mexico's Sky City, and ultimately to a small weaving village known as the "Lourdes of the Southwest." It is here, in the presence of a dramatically changed Laura LaFlamme, that Wade realizes that his true journey -- the one into her soul and inside his own heart -- has just begun.

'Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.' The prophetic words of Galadriel, addressed to Frodo as he prepared to travel from Lothlorien to Mordor to destroy the One Ring, are just as pertinent to J R R Tolkien's own fiction. For decades, hobbits and the other fantastical creatures of Middle-earth have captured the imaginations of a fiercely loyal tribe of readers, all enhanced by the immense success of Peter Jackson's films: first "The Lord of the Rings", and now his new "The Hobbit". But for all Tolkien's global fame and the familiarity of modern culture with Gandalf, Bilbo, Frodo and Sam, the sources of the great mythmaker's own myth-making have been neglected. Mark Atherton here explores the chief influences on Tolkien's work: his boyhood in the West Midlands; the landscapes and seascapes which shaped his mythologies; his experiences in World War I; his interest in Scandinavian myth; his friendships, especially with the other Oxford-based Inklings; and the relevance of his themes, especially ecological themes, to the present-day. "There and Back Again" offers a unique guide to the varied inspirations behind Tolkien's life and work, and sheds new light on how a legend is born.

When Sean Astin, veteran Hollywood actor of over 30 movies including The Goonies, and Rudy, landed the part of Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings, he knew it was going to be different to anything he'd ever worked on before. Here he shares his heartfelt opinions on his early movies, how he got the part of Sam at that point in his career, and what it was like to be on set for nearly two years of his life. How did he and the other cast members get along? What were the excitements and the dangers they faced during filming? What happened the evening that Elijah Wood lost the keys to his room? How did Sir Ian McKellen cope when he didn't like the music the hobbits listened to during make-up and what happened when the crew considered striking? Revealing and immensely readable, There and Back Again is the behind-the-scenes look at what it was like to be involved in the making of one of the biggest movie franchises of all time.

This is a unique tale of one man's spiritual adventure, tracing God's unusual plan of providence from 1950s America to England and back again. Dwight Longenecker's conversion story is a roller coaster ride through fundamentalism, Oxford, Cambridge, and the modern Catholic Church. Brought up in an Evangelical Protestant home, he attended the fundamentalist Bob Jones University, and continued his education by studying theology at Oxford University before being ordained as an Anglican minister, serving as a curate, a school chaplain in Cambridge, and a country parson on the Isle of Wight. Realizing that he and the Anglican Church were on divergent paths, in 1995 Longenecker and his family were received into the Catholic Church in England. For ten years they continued to live in England where he worked as a freelance writer and charity worker. Then in 2006 the door opened to return to the United States and be ordained as a Catholic priest. This story of one man's amazing journey from Protestant fundamentalism through the Church of England to the Catholic priesthood offers an inspiring tale of God's providence, and the truth that "all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose."