What were you doing when you were 22? Where were you in the world? What did you want to do with your life? Ben Parkinson was a 6'4" paratrooper. He was in Afghanistan fighting for his country. He wanted to always be a soldier, to be a father and to get home in one piece. But we don't always get what we want. So the question is: how do we react when that happens? Easy: you find something new to fight for.

An SBS Gurkha soldier's account of how his tough Nepali upbringing and the lessons learned in his army life enabled his record-breaking conquest of all 14 of the world's 8,000m peaks in under seven months. What happens when ambition meets limitless imagination? Enter Project Possible: a seemingly unreachable goal to climb all 14 'death zone' mountains in record time. The previous record was seven years, 10 months and six days. I did it in six months. 

After passing the world's toughest Special Forces selection to get into D Squadron, 22 SAS, in 1979, Mark 'Splash' Aston thought he'd missed out on all the action. Too late to fight with the SAS in a decade long secret war in Oman, when terrorists then seized the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980 Splash missed out again when responsibility for the counter-terror role was passed to their comrades in B Squadron just weeks earlier. Then on April 2nd 1982 Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands.

With four years in the Parachute Regiment, 10 years in the SAS and two Everest summits to his name, no one is better equipped than Jay Morton to reveal what it takes to become the best of the best. Soldier is Jay Morton’s masterclass in mindset, strategy and excellence. Drawing on his extraordinary personal experience, it provides in-depth, comprehensive lessons and practical takeaways. 

Mark Wales thought his life would end in a cornfield in Afghanistan. Mark and his SAS troops emerged from that scorched battlefield 12 hours later, his mentor gunned down, his dream career now a nightmare. Over four deployments of intense warfighting, Mark watched the line between right and wrong become blurred. When he left the SAS he was adrift, crippled by guilt. On a mission to rebuild himself, Mark turned his life around. He fought his way into the gates of a US Ivy League business school and into the boardrooms of top-tier international corporations.

Matt 'Mace' Mason is deployed on a deniable SAS mission in war-torn Yemen, becoming embroiled in a hostage rescue that goes terribly wrong. Pulling at the strings of the local political scene is not only the local warlord who is destined to become Mace's nemesis, General Ruak Shahlai, but hardbitten American arms dealer Erica Atkins, who controls a whole international network to her advantage. As well as his own team, Mace has to work, initially unwillingly, with female CIA Agent (and Islamic scholar) Redford. 

When 3 Para began their assault under cover of darkness on Mount Longdon in June 1982, nobody knew what to expect. The three platoons of B Company each approached the mountain silently, treading carefully through a series of defensive minefields. But following an explosion, fighting quickly escalated with shocking speed and severity, resulting in some of the bloodiest close hand fighting, terrible injuries and shocking loss of life experienced by British troops since the Korean war. 

Whether serving in the Special Forces, rowing oceans or investigating some of the world’s most notorious drug cartels, Jason Fox has overcome more than his fair share of emotional and mental conflicts. Now, he shares the tools he’s developed at the cutting edge of an elite military career and shows how you, too, can build the resilience and inner strength to overcome whatever challenges life puts in front of you.

An inspiring selection of hand-picked adventures, chosen by Ed Stafford. For those who don’t mind a bit of discomfort in order to experience the wilder side of our amazing planet. Open your mind and reboot your soul with these unforgettable adventures.

Everybody has heard the SAS motto that who dares wins, but Special Forces warrior Dean Stott also lives his life by another powerful mantra - that of the relentless pursuit of excellence. In 16 years of service, Dean rose to the top of Britain's fighting force, taking part of some of the most daring and dangerous operations in the war on terror. But then, following a horrific parachuting accident, Dean's dream career was cut short, and his ethos was put to its toughest test.  

Ex-special forces soldier Alex Abbott escaped the Middle East under a cloud and now lives hand-to-mouth in Singapore. Scraping a living as a gun for hire and estranged from his family, Abbott is haunted by ghosts of the past, drinking to dull the pain. Life's tough, but there is one upside - at least he's not in Baghdad. That's about to change. When a job goes badly wrong, Abbott's in hot water. Next he learns that his military son, Nathan, is missing in Iraq. Knowing something is wrong, needing to find his son and desperate for redemption, Abbott has no choice but to go back.

The latest adventure from best-selling author Ben Fogle explores what we can learn from nature about living well and living wild. What can rowing across the Atlantic teach us about boredom and about patience? Can coming down from Everest take more resilience than climbing up in the first place? How can the isolation of the South Pole highlight what’s most important? And how can we tap into the same reflective state in our daily lives? 

The real story of one of the greatest explorers who ever lived by the man described by the Guinness Book of Records as ‘the world's greatest living explorer’. Sir Ranulph Fiennes is uniquely qualified to write a new biography of Captain Scott. This is the first biography of Scott by someone who has experienced the deprivations, the stress and the sheer physical pain that Scott lived through.

Ben Timberlake has spent a lifetime in pursuit of the ultimate rush. This is an account of his near-execution in wartime Yugoslavia, his time in the SAS, combat in Iraq, encounters with a gambling-obsessed 9/11 hijacker, veterans blissed out on MDMA, as well as exploring hook-ups in the world of extreme sex and battling a heroin habit on a remote Scottish island. In this pilgrimage on the road of excess Ben looks at the social, biological, religious and personal factors that drive people to the edge and has a whole lot of fun along the way.

There are still dark corners of our planet that are yet to be explored. In this remarkable book, Steve Backshall offers an unflinching account of his adventures into these uncharted territories around the globe, in search of world firsts. Each location brings its own epic challenges - whether it's the first climb of an arctic ice fall in Greenland, the first recorded navigation of a South American river, or the first exploration of the world’s longest cave system in Mexico. But all of them represent new tests of the limits of human endeavour.