Family Travel

In January 2008, Graham Naismith, 37-year-old IT consultant and former police detective and his wife Eirene, aged 38 and a former teacher, spontaneously, and with no prior experience whatsoever, decided to embark on a 30,000 mile drive to Australia with their three daughters aged one, four, and six. Having previously sold their house in anticipation of a drop in the housing market and with Graham's job at the infamous ID Cards Scheme looking precarious, the climate was right.

After her father's sudden death, Alexandra Fuller realizes that if she is going to weather his loss, she will need to become the parts of him she misses most. So begins Travel Light, Move Fast, the unforgettable story of Tim Fuller, a self-exiled British black sheep who moved to Africa to fight in the Rhodesian War before settling as a banana farmer in Zambia. A man who preferred chaos to predictability and was more afraid of becoming bored than of getting lost, he taught his daughters to live as if everything needed to happen altogether, all at once - or not at all.

After defeating the terrifying Necromuse and his mysterious orchestra, all Amelia Jones hopes for is a return to normal. But to her surprise, her class is sent to Europe for a month of study abroad. This seems like the perfect escape from all her problems, but not long after they land in Salzburg, Austria, danger haunts their steps. A street musician claims there is something wrong with Amelia’s magic, odd visions of the past appear around the city, and Amelia finds a strange message preserved in a museum—a message she fears was left by the Necromuse.

My Family and Other Enemies is part travelogue, part memoir that dives into the hinterland of Croatia. Mary Novakovich explores her ongoing relationship with the region of Lika in central Croatia, where her parents were born..

Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in over 50 years at his mother’s funeral. Soon after, she persuades Henry to abandon South wood, his dahlias and the Major next door to travel through Brighton, Paris, Istanbul, Paraguay...

In 1973, Norma Cobb, her husband Lester, and their five children pulled up stakes in the lower 48 and headed north to Alaska to follow a pioneer dream of claiming land under the Homestead Act. The only land available lay north of Fairbanks near the Arctic Circle where grizzlies outnumbered humans 20 to one. In addition to fierce winters and predatory animals, the Alaskan frontier drew the more unsavory elements of society's fringes. From the beginning, the Cobbs found themselves pitted in a life or death feud with unscrupulous neighbors who would rob from new settlers.

Edie is fascinated by Victorian times, and she's just desperate to be cast in the lead role of her drama club production of Oliver. When she's given a real Victorian notebook she's determined to write the best story ever, all about a girl in a workhouse. But when she starts writing, something strange happens. Edie finds herself in Victorian London. She feels the same, but everything around her is completely different to what she knows. Soon, she realises she's living the life of another Edie Trimmer—and is in danger of being sent to a real workhouse!

Almost every couple faces a "now what?" moment as their last kid moves out of the house. There's a big empty nest looming over this new and uncertain stage in their lives. David and Veronica James chose to look at this next phase of life as a beginning instead of an ending. Rather than staying put and facing the constant reminders of empty bedrooms and backseats, a plan began to develop to sell the nest and hit the highway.

No one family has more experience of travelling together than the Whitehalls. Indeed they've been allowing us a window to their escapades for the past five years in the hit Netflix show Travels with My Father, and in this hilarious book, they have now decided to pool their advice for fellow travellers. To lay out the pitfalls of family holidays. The dos and don'ts, the highs and lows. In doing so, they are sharing some of their best anecdotes.

Otto and Sheed are the local sleuths in their zany Virginia town, masters of unraveling mischief using their unmatched powers of deduction. And as the summer winds down and the first day of school looms, the boys are craving just a little bit more time for fun, even as they bicker over what kind of fun they want to have. That is, until a mysterious man appears with a camera that literally freezes time.

When 12-year-old Flick Hudson accidentally ends up in the Strangeworlds Travel Agency, she uncovers a fantastic secret: there are hundreds of other worlds just steps away from ours. All you have to do to visit them is jump into the right suitcase. Then Flick gets the invitation of a lifetime: join Strangeworlds' magical travel society and explore other worlds. But, unknown to Flick, the world at the very centre of it all, a city called Five Lights, is in danger.

Fresh from saving their parents from the jaws of frenzied billionaire Mr Noah, 10-year-old Eliza and her genius little brother, Johnnie, are called upon once again. Their parents have disappeared into thin air and it’s up to the kids to save the day, traveling back in time to 5000 BC Egypt! Can they overcome friendly locals, a mysterious boy-god, snakes, a rainbow-coloured Sphinx and another plot to end the world? And—most importantly of all—will they survive time travel?

Al Chaudhury travelled back in time to save his father’s life. And it worked – Al’s dad is alive again and life is back to the way it should be. At least, that’s what Al thinks. Because when an accident nearly kills Al’s beloved Grandpa Byron, and forces Al back in time again, this time he leaves someone behind, trapped in another dimension forever. And now Al is forced to travel through time once more, not just to rescue his friend from the past, but also to save his Grandpa Byron’s life… and to make sure that there will be a future waiting for them all.

Ian Moore is a stand-up comedian in the UK and a husband, father of three boys, farmhand and chutney-maker in France. He is a mod in both walks of life and most of his time is spent travelling grumpily between the two. Comedian, mod and professional grump Ian Moore has had enough. Tired of being unable to park anywhere near his cramped house in a noisy town he doesn’t like, he hatches a plan to move his wife and young son to a remote corner of the Loire Valley in search of serenity and space.

In One Year Off, you can join the family on a trek up a Costa Rican volcano, cruise the canals of Burgundy by houseboat, and ride ferries through the Greek Islands. Later, as the Cohens wander further off the tourist trail, you can drive through the villages of Rajasthan, traverse the vast Australian Nullarbor, and discover the charms of Cambodia's Angkor Wat and the hidden shangri-las of northern Laos.

It's sink or swim for Jack and Annie when Magic Tree House whisks them off to the middle of the ocean. And that's just the beginning....

All her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet. Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands.

Faced with midlife and realizing that unless she gets her skates on, she'll never get to live out her fantasy of traveling the world with her family (and be like that woman from Eat, Pray, Love), Liz plans a year-long globetrotting trip. Annoyingly, things don't quite go as expected.

Dominic Cantori is an orphan. Ashamed of his situation, Dominic avoids making friends for fear of exposing his terrible secret. One day on a class trip to Ellis Island, a tour guide asks everyone about their families. Immediately, Dominic flees from the class and hides in a closet, where he falls asleep for hours.

In the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. As he records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India", Ondaatje simultaneously retraces the baroque mythology of his Dutch-Ceylonese family. An inspired travel narrative and family memoir by an exceptional writer.