22 Alaska books our reviewers recommend for when you’re hunkered down
From “Raven’s Gift” to “Shadows on the Koyukuk," here are David James and Nancy Lord’s top picks.
Something to read while hunkering down: This political thriller set in a familiar Juneau
Book review: “Rinn’s Crossing” is a political thriller, mystery, procedural, environmental treatise, cultural commentary, morality tale and romance.
New Straley novel returns to Cold Storage, Alaska, and a post-war future
Book review: In “What is Time to a Pig?” the year is 2027, “seven years after the U.S. president’s war with North Korea, and the whole world had gone a little crazy.”
Adventurer Roman Dial recounts search for his missing son in a fiercely gripping memoir
Book review: In “The Adventurer’s Son," Dial’s seamless writing takes us though searches in the jungle, bureaucratic tangles, surprise friendships, illegal poaching and mining, and tips and dead ends.
Spot-on historical novel imagines a 1924 quest to the Shumagin Islands
Book review: “Steller’s Orchid” is a perfect example of literature that can entertain while also teaching about place, history and the human heart.
Best-selling author of ‘cozy’ mysteries sets new series in small-town Alaska
Book review: Quirky characters, wildlife encounters, a friendly park ranger — it’s all here in “Thin Ice." But Paige Shelton generally avoids the worst clichés about Alaska and Alaskans.
How one man’s passion for fly-fishing led to protecting Russian salmon rivers
Book review: “Stronghold” is thestory of one man, Guido Rahr, responsible for initiating and advancing the stronghold concept in the North Pacific, particularly on Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.
Our book reviewers’ favorite reads of 2019
From poetry to fiction and true crime, these are the books that left the deepest impressions on ADN reviewers David James and Nancy Lord this year.
Poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield turns her vision south
Book review: Bradfield challenges not just the traditions of travel writing and our ideas of the place we know as Antarctica, but the forms and uses of poetry.
Scientific method meets 'A Wilder Time,’ in tales drawn from Greenland’s ice sheet
Book review: “A Wilder Time” is largely about the process of science — how it is to have a theory and proceed to test it, how science is always questioning, always re-evaluating and revising what we know about life.
After Tahlequah and her calf, an anthology dedicated to orcas and their world
Book review: Several Alaskan writers contributed to “For Love of Orcas," an anthology sparked by the story of an orca that carried her dead calf for 17 days around Puget Sound.
From Quinhagak to Scotland, archaeology reveals meaning in new book of essays
Book review: In “Surfacing,” Kathleen Jamie, a poet and nonfiction writer from Scotland, follows her fascination with archaeology and cultural histories to various sites around the world.