Reading the North

By Lynn Schooler (Bloomsbury, USA $25)

The blurb: In the spring of 2007, hard on the heels of the worst winter in the history of Juneau, Lynn Schooler finds himself on the far side of middle age and exhausted by laboring to handcraft a home as his marriage slips away. Fleeing the turmoil, Schooler shoulders a pack and sets out on a solo journey into the Alaska wilderness.

Excerpt: "Winter just kept growing harder. Cold air flowing down from the glaciers pooled in the cove, and the temperature plummeted, falling so low that sawdust froze into a fist-sized knot around the spindle of the table saw, preventing me from raising or lowering the blade. Storm after storm sailed in from the gulf, until by Christmas nearly twenty feet of snow had fallen. It was the worst winter in Juneau's recorded history, and by January the land had begun to starve. Deer, driven from the forests, died by the dozen on the beaches. A hungry wolf too ate my neighbor's dog."

Spirits of the North: Two-legged, Four-legged, Winged, Finned, Rooted, and Flowing

By Kathleen M. K. Menke (Crystal Images, $26.95)

The blurb: Author and photographer Kathleen Menke shares her portraits of the spirits she has encountered in over two decades of exploring Alaska, Yukon Territory, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.

Excerpt: "For days surrounding summer solstice, the sun circles around, low in the sky for twenty-four hours. Arctic poppies bend their faces to follow the sun. Butterflies and moths fold their wings on landing to maximize warmth. Cocoons on the ground stir to life. For a few brief weeks, plants flourish and animals with their young eat well. The strong, with their diversity of adaptations and migration patters, survive the winter."

Tundra: Nature's #1 Comic Strip

By Chad Carpenter (Tundra & Associates, Inc.)

The blurb: Another book of comic strips from ADN cartoonist Chad Carpenter.

Excerpt: "Having no professional marketing skills, yet sharply-honed penitentiary coercion, Zack somehow managed to convince Chad he was the ideal candidate for selling TUNDRA merchandise to the masses. While he has yet to learn how to read, write or spell correctly, he has successfully used his overbearing "charm" and unorthodox people-skills to earn a place in the TUNDRA empire. He has also proven to be incredibly efficient at counting money; although after years of coming up short, Chad has learned to count it twice."

-- Compiled by Matt Sullivan, Anchorage Daily News