"As Tolkien said, not all who wander are lost. Alan Cook is a walker who is always on the Road to Somewhere. (He) inspires us walkers to get moving on our own adventures. My chief reaction to the book is jealousy. I want to lace up my walking shoes and go exploring."-Wendy BumgardnerWalking the World: Memories and Adventures elevates the act of walking from something we do every day without thinking about it to a means for putting more fun and excitement into our lives. And we can become healthier, at the same time. Whoever said, "No pain, no gain," was out to lunch.Whether the subject is learning to walk, walking safely, finding interesting places to walk throughout the world, climbing mountains or taking long walks, Alan Cook writes about it with wit and humor. The book gets exciting when he tells about getting lost in the wilderness of Colorado, and stories of his three long walks (the California coast, Los Angeles to Denver and the British End-to-End) and Ethan Loewenthal's walk of the Appalachian Trail will make you want to get off your couch and follow their routes. After spending more than a quarter of a century as a pioneer in the computer industry, Alan Cook is well into his second career as a writer.ROCKY ROAD TO DENVERThe death of Roger McAllister's wife in 1984 prompts him to take a break from his accounting firm and join a walk from Los Angeles to Denver, sponsored by Zeus Shoes. The people he encounters will shake him out of his comfort zone, providing comedy, peril and sexual temptation. In addition, his dead wife appears to be keeping an eye on him. Roger's life will never be the same.DEATH AT MONKSREST--Charlie and Liz No. 3Liz Reid flies to England in the 1960s because of a poem about an ancient curse that her coworker, Charlie Ebersole, has sent her, which may have led to the murder of the sister of Charlie's English friend, Reggie, whose father is the owner of the hereditary estate of Monksrest. Liz works with Lord Wheatley to find clues in spite of the risks involved.EAST OF THE WALL--Charlie and Liz No. 2Charlie Ebersole and Liz Reid are recruited by the CIA to go into East Germany in June 1963, to attempt to obtain intelligence about a secret project of the Germans during World War II, about which information has been lost. The Berlin Wall and the Stasi (East German secret police) make this a perilous mission, but the two suspect that they are the most appropriate people for the job.TRUST ME IF YOU DARE--Charlie and Liz No. 1Charlie Ebersole is good at his job as a securities analyst for International Industries in Los Angeles in the year 1962, but he is also somewhat bored at being tied to a desk most of the time. He jumps at the chance to join the fraud section of II, and is immediately put on a case that will take him and another employee, Elizabeth Reid, to Buffalo, Fort Lauderdale, and possibly to Fidel Castro's Cuba, although the Bay of Pigs fiasco is a recent memory, and relations between Cuba and the United States are not good. Charlie and Liz find out that uncovering a Ponzi scheme isn't all just fun and games, but it can be dangerous too, especially when somebody is intent on them not discovering the truth. Before they are through they may wish they were back at their nice safe desks in Los Angeles.YOUR MOVE--CAROL GOLDEN NO. 7Carol looks for a serial killer who likes to play games. As she attempts to figure out the game and its significance for the killer she realizes that events oc...
