Reading the North

By Michael A. Carson (Michael A. Carson, $25)

The blurb: A memoir of the Wasilla-based author's time in Alaska.

Excerpt: "Our family came to this valley in 1935 as part of a colonizing project for the Matanuska Valley and Alaska. At that time, Alaska was a Territory of the United States, not a State, and there were no Counties or Boroughs; there were just incorporated cities. Congress granted us statehood in 1958 but before that we were only a Territory. We had Territorial Police, and here in the Valley, we had a U.S. Commissioner who handled most of the local problems. We also had a Deputy U.S. Marshal, and the U.S. Fish and Game which enforced fish and game rules, which was of particular importance to people interested in surviving here on wild game, such as moose, caribou, and fish, which was pretty much all of us."

Hidden Alaska: Bristol Bay and Beyond

Photography by Michael Melford, text by Dave Atcheson (National Geographic, $24)

The blurb: A collection of more than 80 photographs by renowned National Geographic photographer Michael Melford depicting Bristol Bay and the remote realm surrounding it.

Excerpt: "While any number of Alaska's regions might be held up as the crown jewel of our country's remaining wilderness areas, even among a land as unspoiled and varied as this, there are a few truly special places, the quintessential wilderness, the best of the best. For Alaska that very well might be the Bristol Bay region."

The Affair at Cloud Bay

By Douglas Terrel (Douglas Terrel)

The blurb: An increasingly mad Tom Archer finds stability for a time in the U.S. Army before being captured and detained as a prisoner of war. After the war is over, aimlessness leads him to a job in remote Alaska, and he brings his demons with him.

Excerpt: "At six years of age Tom Archer was grimy as a miner, scrawny, nearly dumb. He didn't begin to understand real human life, hadn't yet been exposed to any. His intellect was famished and his emotional core as hollow as the rotted foundation stumps of the Archer shack. He craved the sensation of a soft human touch but he didn't really know that because he'd never felt one, had never seen one, and like a thin dusty puppy he edged close to the source of violence to solicit blows and kicks when the agonies of loneliness overwhelmed his spirit: abuse was attention, cruelty affection. He didn't even know he was lonely, couldn't know the paradox because he'd never experienced friendship. Tom Archer's childhood did nothing to prepare him for life, it only tenderized him for what was to come. The field was plowed for the planting of madness."

-- Compiled by Matt Sullivan, Anchorage Daily News