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Saylor's Triangle

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By Craig Bieber (CNC Alaska, $19.95)

The blurb: "Nick and Beth Saylor built the family business into one of the largest corporations in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. ... Soon Nick is drawn back into the business by the mystical warnings of a kapuna friend in Maui and an Alaska Native spiritual leader. Beth and Nick race Mexican drug cartel members, deranged killers-for-hire, would be terrorists, law-enforcement agents and a drug dealer from Alaska to Seattle as they scramble to save themselves, their company and a huge slice of humanity."

Excerpt: "Alaska can be spectacular in early January. On the cloudless days when the brilliant white hoarfrost and the midday sun highlight every singular surface, it has a frozen grandeur that is breathtaking. In the midwinter cold, the postcard beauty is deceptive, because life is fragile at 20 degrees below zero. ... On this spectacular January day, Nick Saylor took it all in from the 12th-floor penthouse of the Saylor building. ... At this bittersweet time in his life, it was all too familiar to Nick."

The Great Land: How Western America Nearly Became a Russian Possession

By Jeremy Atiyah (Parker Press, $29.95)

The blurb: "For more than a hundred years after Europeans had begun populating the Atlantic shores of North America, the Pacific coast of the continent remained a blank on their maps and in their minds When Russians from Siberia first sighted the mountains of Alaska in 1741, they called it the Great Land. ... Who would be the first to settle the coast that was destined to become the cultural and economic powerhouse of the world? ... This book is the story of how western America very nearly came to be a possession of the Empire of Russia."

Excerpt: "New Archangel in 1867 was not a hopeful town. It was usually raining. A line of wooden houses linked by planked sidewalks straggled amid bracken on a dank shore above the ocean. The whole town clung to its harbor, under the backdrop of dark, menacing mountains that crowded around, bristling with thin black trees up to the snowline. ... This was one of North America's remotest towns. It belonged neither to Britain's Canadian territories nor to the United States but to the Empire of Russia."

Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska's Political Establishment Upside Down

By Kaylene Johnson (Epicenter Press, $19.95)

The blurb: "Sarah Palin, 39, a hockey mom and former small-town mayor, though her dream of making a difference in the male-dominated realm of Alaska politics was over. ... Yet the former prep basketball star and one-time TV journalist could not shake the feeling that she was destined for something bigger."

Excerpt: "Palin's childhood home faces Alaska's Talkeetna Mountains. In the spring, purple violets, Indian paintbrush and wild geraniums carpet the mountains' alpine tundra in a bloom of color. In winter, the snow-covered mountains take on a rose blush in the soft alpenglow. Sarah could see these mountains from the front porch of the family's little house in downtown Wasilla. These mountains would become ... a place of sustenance and renewal for her boisterous and busy family."

Submit books by Alaskans or on topics of interest to Alaskans to Mike Dunham, Reading the North, Anchorage Daily News, 1001 Northway Drive, Anchorage 99508.

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