Summit

An Audible.com Bestseller in Action & Adventure

An action-packed mountaineering adventure in which a mysterious discovery leads to breathtaking revelations about the world's highest peak.

A summit is a summit, and the truth is the truth. But the view from 8,848 meters isn't always so clear. Two men, seventy years apart, push for the top of Mount Everest, driven by forces beyond their control and something inside that says climb.

After eight successful summits, Mount Everest guide Neil Quinn is confident he can handle anything the mountain throws his way. But then disaster strikes steps from the top, leaving him with a lot of questions and a very old swastika-embellished ice axe that should never have been so high on the mountain -- not if Everest's meticulously documented history is accurate.

But before Quinn can even catch his breath, the combined wrath of his vengeful employer and an angry client drives him out of the Himalayas and back to Europe, where the newly blackballed English guide struggles to make ends meet and discover the truth of what happened that fateful day. He soon uncovers the story of Josef Becker, a Nazi climber who sought the top of the world seventy years before, when Europe teetered on the brink of the Second World War.

Quinn's innocent queries into Becker's expedition soon have neo-Nazis, assassins, and history buffs vying to take possession of the axe -- proof of Nazi alpine superiority, and strong evidence that a German climber was the first to summit Mount Everest.

Beautifully written and meticulously researched, Summit follows two climbers across two continents as their stories and movements intertwine across history, culminating in one final push for the top of the world.

HARRY FARTHING is an Englishman born in 1964 in Lynton, North Devon, and raised in the West Country. He was educated at St. Michael's Preparatory School, near Barnstaple; Allhallows Public School, near Lyme Regis; and at the University of the West of England in Bristol. From 1987, he enjoyed a successful career with one of the world's largest commercial real estate consultancies. During this period, he lived and worked in London; Lisbon, Portugal; and Milan, Italy; becoming managing director of the company's Italian operations and European Board Director with responsibility for activities in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, and Qatar. In 2010 he took early retirement to move with his American wife to Charleston, South Carolina, to raise their two daughters and pursue a career in writing. Harry Farthing has had a lifelong interest in exploration, archaeology and world history, both published and alternate. He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and has travelled widely to extreme environments such as the Sahara Desert, the Himalaya, the Amazon and the Arctic North. An experienced mountaineer, he has climbed Mt Blanc and the Matterhorn in the Alps, Mt McKinley in Alaska, Shishapangma, the highest mountain in Tibet, and Mount Everest itself. In 2010 he successfully led all thirteen members of a charity climb to the summit of Kilimanjaro in Africa. In 2011 he made a journey across North America by BMW Motorcycle that linked the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific Oceans and travelled 2000 miles of unpaved roads above the 60th Parallel. That trip was the latest in a series of long motorcycle journeys that started with a ride from the UK to the Moroccan Sahara when he was just nineteen. An accomplished public speaker, he has also raised substantial funds for charity through his climbing. Summit, his debut novel, marries his knowledge of world travel, adventure sports, mountaineering and modern history to create an exciting action story that is both compelling and thought provoking.