Books

Author Mary Emerick came to Sitka to try to find herself in the ocean layers that trace the island coastlines.

Richard Chiappone’s novel set in Homer is both suspenseful and lighthearted.

Her many books on the state and its history included the acclaimed “Good Time Girls of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rush.”

In “Extreme North: A Cultural History,” author Bernd Brunner examines the way our northernmost lands have developed and the way they’re perceived worldwide.

Reminiscent of outdoors periodicals from the early 20th century, this book provides humor, observation and understanding for bears.

Thirty years ago, an Eagle River teacher helped her students navigate the cycle of life as they rallied around a 10-year-old classmate facing terminal brain cancer.

Anchorage writer Nathan Shafer delivers stories that both tread on traditions from familiar mythology and subvert literary norms.

Lara Messersmith-Glavin uses single-word elements to frame writings about the experiences of her youth on a seine boat fishing outside Kodiak.

Author Olivia Hill documents her 3,000 mile journey from Kansas City to Alaska and her life in tiny Tatitlek starting in the early 1980s.

Book review: In “My Father’s Smokehouse” and “Old Woman with Berries in her Lap,” Alaskan Vivian Faith Prescott explores the traditions of the Tlingit and Sami through food, identity and a sense of place.

Whether you’ll be baking in the sun or on the run, consider adding a few of these books to your summer reading list.

The new book by Inupiaq poet Joan Naviyuk Kane pairs with her previous work “Sublingual” as a passionate rebuff to Arctic colonization.

Book review: Brendan Jones’ follow-up to his successful first novel tackles family, politics and the pandemic.

Book review: In “The Treeline,” author Ben Rawlence produces a page-turner that demonstrates how the forests may be the world’s last hope against climate change.

Book review: “Black History in the Last Frontier” uncovers untold stories of both successes and structural racism over decades in Alaska.

Book review: Poetry Month may have ended with the last of April, but these new volumes are worthy of reading year-round.

The book, with multiple contributors, takes young readers through the biology of mosquitoes and explains why they might not be so expendable after all.

The Anchorage native’s eight-story collection features “a recognizable Alaska and characters living at its various edges, often in complicated, troubled relationships viewed with both humor and compassion.”

From Norway to Antarctica and many points in between, the British scientist explains how melting ice across the planet is putting Earth in peril.

In Deb Vanasse’s latest historical inquiry, she explores the treaty that saved the northern fur seals from extinction and the story of a man who advocated for their preservation.

From his arrival in the state in a Porsche convertible to co-founding the Great Tanana Raft Classic, Helfferich’s Alaska adventures translate into rich prose.

Eldest daughter Elishaba Doerksen stretches deep into the history of her abusive father as well as the family’s time in Alaska.

Author Mark Piesing documents the search for the Italia, a dirigible lost during a collaborative expedition between a Norwegian explorer and an Italian aviator.