The Lost City of Z is a grand mystery reaching back centuries, entailing a sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. It is a quest for truth that leads to death, madness, or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. This blockbuster adventure narrative delves into what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon.

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the 20th century": What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925, Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries, Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humans. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions inspired Conan Doyle's The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his 21-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilization—which he dubbed Z—existed. Then his expedition vanished.

Fawcett's fate, and the tantalizing clues he left behind about Z, became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness. For decades, scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett's party and the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad.

As Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett's quest, and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, irresistibly drawn into the jungle's green hell. His quest for the truth and discoveries about Fawcett's fate and Z form the heart of this complexly enthralling narrative.

The River of Doubt is an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth. This true story takes you through the treacherous journey along the black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon, known as the River of Doubt. It's a place where Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows, piranhas glide through its waters, and boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt sought the most punishing physical challenge he could find: the first descent of this unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Accompanied by his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt achieved a feat so monumental that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, including losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, enduring starvation, Indian attacks, disease, drowning, and even a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide.

The River of Doubt brings these extraordinary events to life in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller featuring one of America’s most famous figures. From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rainforest to the darkest nights of Roosevelt’s life, Candice Millard’s dazzling debut is a must-read.