Fiction Archives - Reidhead & Company

An Afterclap of Fate

An epic poetry book about the history of Mallory on Everest.

An Afterclap of Fate: Mallory on Everest

Winner of the 2006 Boardman Tasker Prize for mountaineering literature.

In this epic narrative, Charles Lind creates a detailed, poetic, and convincing account of mountaineering’s greatest mystery – Mallory and Irvine’s last climb on Everest.

Mallory described a climb as a spiritual journey: “To struggle and to understand – never this last without the other.” An Afterclap of Fate is a profound recreation of that struggle, the journey to understand during the climb, set within a meticulously researched narrative. The reader is taken into the stream of Mallory’s consciousness. This vivid reliving of the detail of the climb leads the reader into the heart and soul of Mallory himself. The narrative stretches from Mallory’s earliest childhood memory to moving recollections of the First World War and finally to the realization of the dream – the summit of Mt. Everest.

An Afterclap of Fate is more than a meditation on the paths of glory and the changeling nicknamed Free Will, it is also about the why of climbing and its wild joy.

Stephen Venables called it “a magnificent poem … beautiful … and incredibly moving.” It is haunting and unforgettable – an elegy and a paean to the pioneers of the Golden and Silver Ages of mountaineering.

“This is a bold book; fact, fiction and fantasy rolled together in a refreshingly different approach. … the writing is powerful, superbly structured and Lind indeed casts the fine spell of words.”

– Ronald Faux, 2006 Boardman Tasker Prize chair of judges

Print Length: 186 pages
Weight: 10.6 ounces
Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.5 inches

eBook: $9.99 available at Amazon.

Paperback: $18.95 available at Amazon and on order at most independent bookstores.

North

North is a historical tale of arctic adventure, political chicanery, the power of love, and abandonment at the ends of the earth.

Lieutenant Parish sails to the Arctic Ocean on the adventure of a lifetime as the leader of the American Arctic Expedition. It is a journey that will make his name in history – if he survives. Unfortunately for Parish, the ultimate survival of the expedition depends on corrupt and inept politicians. However, unknown to Parish in his arctic prison, his new wife, Martha, is a greater ally than he ever realized. As Martha casts off her innocence and overcomes the obstacles of the political machine, Parish struggles to hold his men together in a hostile landscape that pushes the human psyche into new and dangerous spaces.

North is set in the late nineteenth century and based on the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition – which has been called “one of the most shameful episodes in American Arctic history.” The novel explores the tragic story of the expedition’s terrible ordeal and its inevitable end.

Roger Hubank is a prize-winning novelist whose work is largely devoted to exploring risk-taking in a wilderness of one kind or another.

A rock-climber and mountaineer since the 1960’s Roger Hubank has climbed extensively in Britain and the Alps. His work has been published in the United States, in Spain, and has appeared in various editions in the UK. A former Lecturer in English Literature at Loughborough University, he holds degrees from the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham.

Print Length: 410 pages
Weight: 1.2 lbs ounces
Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.025 inches

Paperback: $21.95 available at Amazon and on order at most independent bookstores.

eBook: $9.99 available at Amazon.

Reviews

“Roger Hubank comes close to producing the first great historical novel of the twenty-first century.”

— The Observer

“North was the book that whacked me.”

— Dermot Somers

Hazard’s Way

WINNER OF THE 2001 BOARDMAN TASKER

WINNER THE 2001 BANFF MOUNTAIN FESTIVAL GRAND PRIX

Hazard’s Way is the story of a young man’s development and his struggles to cope with strict 19th-century Edwardian family life, with conflicting attitudes toward the Boer War, and with the contradictory influences of the friends he makes in his life as a climber. It is a story of change, the inevitable conflicts between generations, and the young pushing the limits of impossible beyond those of their elders.

The novel is a marvelous evocation of the climbing lifestyle at Wastdale Head in England’s Lake District, and it is set among the company of actual climbers from the period – Oppenheimer, Collie, the Abrahams, and Montague. It culminates in a crisis that all climbers will recognize: a crossroads of intuition and ego.

Print Length: 260 pages
Weight: 14.1 ounces
Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.5 inches

eBook: $9.99 available at Amazon.

Paperback: $21.95 available at Amazon and on order at most independent bookstores.

Evening Light

The first Briton to climb all fourteen of the world’s 8000 meter summits, George Hazard long ago sacrificed wife and child to his ambitions as a mountaineer. Returning from a trekking trip to take up a commission from his publishers, his truck goes off the road. Emerging from a coma he is confronted by his daughter, Calon, who he abandoned many years before.

As father and daughter embark on a fraught relationship, Hazard discovers that Calon has found, in her in-laws, the family she needed. Drawn gradually, despite himself, into their domestic life he is forced to look on helplessly as they are caught up in a succession of personal calamities.

Meanwhile, as Hazard continues to struggle with his autobiography, he discovers that the story of his life is inextricable from that of other lives. Finally, overwhelmed by a scandal erupting out of his past, he is forced to recognize that a man is forever what he has been at any time for others. And might, at any time, be called upon to answer for it.

Evening Light asks those disturbing questions some mountaineers prefer to keep to themselves.

Roger Hubank is a prize-winning novelist whose work is largely devoted to exploring risk-taking in a wilderness of one kind or another.

Print Length: 336 pages
Weight: 1.1 lbs
Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x .84 inches

Paperback: $21.95 available at Amazon and on order at most independent bookstores.

eBook: $9.99 available at Amazon.

The Sea-Wolf

Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf is a novel of adventure, brutality, and survival at sea. Humphrey van Weyden, rescued from a shipwreck, is forced into service aboard the Ghost, a sealing ship under the command of the violent and powerful Wolf Larsen. Van Weyden must grow stronger and wiser to survive life on the ship, and he will need all of these skills to survive the final challenge.

Jack London (1876-1916) was an American author and journalist. Before finding success as an author, London worked grueling jobs including on a seal-hunting ship, as an oyster pirate, and as a prospector in the Klondike Gold Rush. His writing found success in the then-burgeoning magazine industry.

Print Length: 314 pages
Weight: 1 lb
Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x .785 inches

Paperback: $14.95 available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and on order at most independent bookstores.

White Fang

Jack London’s White Fang is the tale of a wolf-dog and its coming of age amongst the violence of the wild northern frontier. The novel follows White Fang’s journey from a wild pup, to his abuse as a ruthless prizefighting dog, and finally as the faithful companion of a loving master. White Fang is a companion novel to London’s best-known work, The Call of the Wild.

Print Length: 212 pages
Weight: 9.1 ounces
Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x .53 inches

Paperback: $12.95 available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and on order at most independent bookstores.

Publisher’s Note

White Fang is an amazing story that is one of my personal favorites.

In my English Lit class our teacher would talk for hours about how White Fang is a symbolic story about the change from nature to civilization and that the world we live in depends on the survival of the fittest. While this is not untrue, it is also so much more.

It’s a story that teaches you about surviving even when the odds are mentally and physically against you. It’s about learning new things and trying new experiences—and that adapting to a new way of life does not mean giving up who you are. Most importantly, though, White Fang is a story about learning to trust, even when the world has given you no reason to, for with the power and love that comes from true friendship you can overcome any obstacle life throws at you.

Taking Leave

Fleeing from an imprisoning job and a disintegrating marriage, Anthony Hardman seeks refuge in a remote house on the edge of a lonely moor. Here, set free by the liberating expanses of sky and rock, he begins to discover the co-existence of past and present, and the strangeness of remembered experience, in the re-awakening of the bold young climber he once was, finding his fulfillment among the limestone crags and gritstone edges.

Darker memories, long suppressed, emerging from his buried self, compel him to re-examine the breakdown of relations with his wife, Elizabeth. Through his friendship with a shepherd and his family, above all with a feral child, he begins to understand what has been lacking in his life. Meanwhile, as he and Elizabeth struggle to come to terms with the unfinished business of their marriage, a catastrophe is looming which will have tragic consequences.

Set among the hills and crags of the Peak District, Roger Hubank’s novel explores the nature of the “self”, its relationship with the sustaining energies of the earth, and the claims of other lives.

Roger Hubank is a prize-winning novelist whose work is largely devoted to exploring risk-taking in a wilderness of one kind or another.

Print Length: 296 pages
Weight: 11.4 ounces
Dimensions: 8.5 X 5.5 X .74 inches

eBook: $9.99 available at Amazon.

Paperback: $21.95 available at Amazon.

Reviews

“The lyrical evocations of place urge on the reader a sense of a living presence, akin to the omnipresent landscape in the work of Thomas Hardy…”

— Val Randall in the Alpine Journal

The Call of the Wild

The Call of the Wild is the story of Buck, who starts the tale as a domesticated dog living a life of luxury on a Californian estate. However, when Buck is kidnapped to work as a sled dog in the Yukon, he must learn to survive in the harsh, unforgiving wilderness. With each brutal lesson encountered on his journey, Buck loses his civilized demeanor and adapts to the realities of life in the wild. London’s novel White Fang is the companion and mirror to The Call of the Wild.

Print Length: 98 pages
Weight: 6.4 ounces
Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x .245 inches

Paperback: $9.95 available at Amazon, the Barnes & Noble, and on order at most independent bookstores.

Publisher’s Note

Gambling, travel, fights to the death, acts of heroism, feats of strength and vengeful ghost dogs are all a part of what makes The Call of the Wild just a fun book, and part of why I never get tired of reading it.

The first time I read it was back in grade school. From the first page, I was hooked. Buck, the hero of the tale, draws you in so quickly that before you realize it you’re invested—emotionally—in the survival of a fictitious character. He’s a hero you want to not only see succeed but also get his happy ever after—or at least a nice family.

For me, Buck is one of the most realistic literary heroes. He is thrown into a life he never wanted but doesn’t let that get him down. Instead, he works to learn what he needs to survive, getting help when he needs it. He is not always good at what he does, and sometimes he fails. He might not possess much honor, but he is loyal and true to himself.