Here are 85 books that Whispering Alaska fans have personally recommended if you like
Whispering Alaska.
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I have lived in Alaska for forty years, working both as a construction worker and a college professor. I love Alaska, but not always the way it is depicted, particularly on reality TV. I hope the characters I create and the stories I tell will bring a more balanced view of everyday Alaskans, who are, after all, Americans too. The Hunger of Crows shows small-town Alaska through the eyes of four characters: two lifelong Alaskans, and two “from Outside” as we say here. Hopefully, it will provide a balanced view of this great place.
Although I happen to know that poet Anne Coray intended this to be an environmentalist novel (a town threatened with doom by a giant mining operation), this beautifully written story set in the fictitious town of Lost Mountain in remote Western Alaska is an example of how Alaskans come together in the face of threats to the beauty and natural wonder of our great land. It may be about the land, but it is the cast of quirky characters that makes it human.
The searing debut novel of poet and writer Anne Coray, Lost Mountain is an impassioned story of love, loss, environment, and politics against a landscape facing threat of destruction.
"Anne Coray, the author of three poetry collections, has brought her observational and writing skills to fiction that demonstrates both her attention to language and her passion for her home place. . . Lost Mountain is many things: a love story between the two main characters, a portrait of a small and isolated community, a mystery, a paean to salmon and lives that surround salmon, a not-very-disguised critique of a megamine…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I have lived in Alaska for forty years, working both as a construction worker and a college professor. I love Alaska, but not always the way it is depicted, particularly on reality TV. I hope the characters I create and the stories I tell will bring a more balanced view of everyday Alaskans, who are, after all, Americans too. The Hunger of Crows shows small-town Alaska through the eyes of four characters: two lifelong Alaskans, and two “from Outside” as we say here. Hopefully, it will provide a balanced view of this great place.
Born and raised in remote bush Alaska, Kanter’s hypnotizing writing will take you with him across the remote tundra of his home territory as he hunts and lives among the great herds of caribou. Each short chapter is like a prose poem, beautifully written and evocative of the people and the place. A glimpse into historical, almost prehistorical, life in Alaska.
Bestselling, award-winning author of Ordinary Wolves, a debut novel Publisher’s Weekly called “a tour de force”
Conservation-based story of changing Arctic from an on-the-ground perpective
Features full-color photography throughout
A stunningly lyrical firsthand account of a life spent hunting, studying, and living alongside caribou, A Thousand Trails Home encompasses the historical past and present day, revealing the fragile intertwined lives of people and animals surviving on an uncertain landscape of cultural and climatic change sweeping the Alaskan Arctic. Author Seth Kantner vividly illuminates this critical story about the interconnectedness of the Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska, the Western Arctic Caribou Herd,…
I have lived in Alaska for forty years, working both as a construction worker and a college professor. I love Alaska, but not always the way it is depicted, particularly on reality TV. I hope the characters I create and the stories I tell will bring a more balanced view of everyday Alaskans, who are, after all, Americans too. The Hunger of Crows shows small-town Alaska through the eyes of four characters: two lifelong Alaskans, and two “from Outside” as we say here. Hopefully, it will provide a balanced view of this great place.
Chosen by National Public Radio as “essential reading” for anyone traveling to Alaska, Kizzia’s lively, often humorous historical account of the remote copper mining town of McCarthy tucked beneath the Wrangel Mountains will astound you with its descriptions of bush country life in Alaska from 1938 to 1982. A book that begins and ends with the effects of a mass murder in a remote small town. Thrilling reading.
In this history of life in an isolated ghost town, bestselling Alaska author Tom Kizzia unfolds a deeply American saga of renunciation and renewal. The spirit of Alaska in the old days-impetuous, free-wheeling, and bounty-blessed-lived on in the never-quite-abandoned mining town of McCarthy. While the new state boomed in the pipeline era, cagey old-timers and young back-to-the-landers forged a rough wilderness community that lived by its own rules.
As the T'ang Dynasty mountain poet Han Shan wrote in his Cold Mountain Poems, "If your heart was like mine, you'd get it and be right here."
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
I have lived in Alaska for forty years, working both as a construction worker and a college professor. I love Alaska, but not always the way it is depicted, particularly on reality TV. I hope the characters I create and the stories I tell will bring a more balanced view of everyday Alaskans, who are, after all, Americans too. The Hunger of Crows shows small-town Alaska through the eyes of four characters: two lifelong Alaskans, and two “from Outside” as we say here. Hopefully, it will provide a balanced view of this great place.
This spectacular collection of award-winning short stories set in Anchorage is probably my favorite book of the past two years. Newton is the only one of these five authors whom I’ve never met, so I can say with complete neutrality that these stories make up the most memorable depiction of urban Alaskan life anywhere: doctors with expensive float planes and more expensive mistresses, a disturbed suburban clairvoyant, even one historical flashback to the mudhole the city was founded upon in 1915. Hilarious at times, but also a reminder to me that Alaska has always attracted a certain type of misfit politely referred to as “adventurous,” but often seen as simply “nuts.” Myself included.
*A MOST ANTICIPATED book by Vogue, Literary Hub, The Millions, Good Housekeeping, and Oprah Daily*
From a prizewinning author comes an “electric...stunning” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) debut story collection about women navigating the wilds of male-dominated Alaskan society.
Set in Newman’s home state of Alaska, Nobody Gets Out Alive is an exhilarating collection about women struggling to survive not just grizzly bears and charging moose, but the raw legacy of their marriages and families.
Alongside stories set in today’s Last Frontier—rife with suburban sprawl, global warming, and opioid addiction—Newman delves into…
Kim Heacox has written 15 books, five of them published by National Geographic. He has twice won the National Outdoor Book Award (for his memoir, The Only Kayak, and his novel, Jimmy Bluefeather), and twice won the Lowell Thomas Award for excellence in travel journalism. He’s featured on Ken Burns’ film, The National Parks, America's Best Idea, and he’s spoken about John Muir on Public Radio International’s Living on Earth. He lives in Gustavus, Alaska (next to Glacier Bay Nat’l Park), a small town of 500 people reachable only by boat or plane.
When Muir made his second great canoe trip in Alaska, in 1880, one of his canoe-mates, a Presbyterian missionary, brought along a little terrier named Stickeen. At first, Muir didn’t like the dog. But later, the two spent a cold, wet day exploring a massive glacier, and barely survived. Muir called it the greatest of his many adventure stories. The illustrations in this book are exaggerated, but stunning. You can almost feel the cold, and the elation man and dog feel at the end as they become fast friends.
First published as "An Adventure with a Dog and a Glacier" in 1897 in "The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine" and then expanded into a book and published in 1909, "Stickeen" by American naturalist John Muir is one of literature's most enduring dog stories. Based on a trip he took to Alaska in 1880 with a dog Stickeen and their trek out on a glacier, this short memoir is one of Muir's best-known publications whose enduring appeal has resulted in numerous adaptations and retellings. This thrilling and heart-warming tale follows Muir as he sets out to explore a glacier with the…
I wanted to visit Alaska since high school. It took me a couple of decades to make good on the urge, but I have made numerous trips. Alaska has everything I have always loved about Colorado, but in superlatives. From a historical standpoint, Alaska means mountains, mining, and railroads, exactly what I have written about in the lower forty-eight. Outdoors, there has never been any place that makes me happier than climbing mountains or rafting rivers. Spend two weeks in the Brooks Range with just one buddy without seeing another human and one comes to understand the land—and appreciate stories from people who do, too!
Wilderness guru Bob Marshall and I share at least one thing in common: despite several attempts, neither of us succeeded in climbing Mount Doonerak, the sentinel rising above the North Fork of the Koyukuk. I have traveled that country around the Gates of the Arctic multiple times, but I remain in awe of Marshall’s pioneering trips during the 1930s when the area was generally unknown and unmapped.
Marshall’s account is part history, part adventure, and part human-interest story as he teamed up with interesting characters like Ernie Johnson after whom he named Ernie Creek. The two always managed to feast on Dall sheep. And it was Marshall who named the Gates of the Arctic. For those who can’t travel first-hand through what is still wilderness, Bob Marshall remains an enjoyable armchair guide.
Exploring the great wilderness of Alaska's Brooks Range was Robert Marshall's joy and delight during the decade between 1929 and 1939. Marshall traveled this spectacular country, from the Upper Koyukuk drainage to the Arctic Divide, making maps, recording scientific data, and exalting in the beauty of that incredibly pristine landscape. Although his early death at thirty-eight ended an exceptional life too early, he left journals and letters to describe his favorite place on earth. These were edited by his brother George Marshall and were compiled to create this classic of environmental literature, now in its third edition after nearly fifty…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I've never been anything but a writer, despite growing up and spending my first 50 years in Alaska. Alaska has been my major topic—what else could it be in that overwhelmingly powerful place?—but it has also been my frustration, because Alaska is a real place that exists in most readers’ minds only as a romantic vision, and they resist any other version. Like the real Eskimos in my book, whose world is melting from climate change as they pump millions of barrels of crude oil from their homeland. The writers I chose are all Alaskans, like me, who tell those stories about the magical, terrifying place that lies behind the Disney version you already know.
Haines was best known as a poet, highly respected by other writers but uncompromising and without much commercial success or recognition. This collection of essays in the form of a memoir similarly makes no compromise, dispensing with plot, characters, or even a clear sense of time and geography. Instead, Haines takes the reader deep into the mind of a lone man surviving for decades in the harshest wilderness, thinking, observing, and writing—his own mind. And the writing is so strong, it turns out, that he doesn’t need those usually necessary tools of narrative he pointedly ignores. Instead, we feel the cold, see the hypnotic stars above the snow, and feel the brittle edge of aloneness. Through sheer stylistic austerity, those dark lonely nights are real.
In this wilderness classic, the quintessential Alaskan frontiersman relates his experiences from over twenty years as a hoemsteader. As New York Newsday has said of his work, If Alaska had not existed, Haines might well have invented it.''
I followed the call of the North from Germany to Alaska in 1989—too much Jack London in my formative years, you might say. After living in a cabin without running water and getting a degree in anthropology in Fairbanks, I drifted into the world of wilderness guiding and outdoors instructing, which for the next twenty-five years determined the course of my life. Human-powered travel, on foot or skis, by raft, canoe, or kayak, has fascinated me ever since. At the same time I became immersed in wildlife and natural history, which, despite threats to the Arctic, still largely play out as they did thousands of years ago.
Hoping to gain perspective on his troubled marriage, the deaths of friends, and the vagaries of middle age, charter-boat captain Lynn Schooler commits to a walkabout along the “Lost Coast,” one of Southeast Alaska’s wildest stretches.
What begins as a voyage of introspection soon becomes a grueling march—through pelting rain, jungle-like brush, and ankle-busting boulder fields—that climaxes in a long face-off with a rogue bear and the terrifying crossing of a meltwater torrent.
Just getting to this trail-less wilderness in Glacier Bay National Park tests Schooler's mettle; waves pound his small vessel, and boat-swallowing currents threaten his entry into Lituya Bay. On my Brooks Range traverse, I too was moving steadily toward home (in my case, Nome) a knowledge that powered each step and oar stroke.
In the spring of 2007, hard on the heels of the worst winter in the history of Juneau, Alaska, Lynn Schooler finds himself facing the far side of middle age and exhausted by labouring to handcraft a home as his marriage slips away. Seeking solace and escape in nature, he sets out on a solo journey into the Alaskan wilderness, travelling first by small boat across the formidable Gulf of Alaska, then on foot along one of the wildest coastlines in North America. Walking Home is filled with stunning observations of the natural world, and rife with nail-biting adventure as…
I have loved animals my entire life. I know first-hand the calming influence the unconditional love of a dog can bring to a person. In contentious Teams meetings on the computer, I pet my dog to keep calm. If I am sad or anxious, I grab the squeaky toy, and we play tug-of-war. I volunteered at the Animal Welfare Association, a no-kill New Jersey Animal Shelter. Through my work, I gained an understanding of how to assess the non-verbal cues of a dog. I’ve learned that it is essential to understand an animal’s body language more so than the standards and behaviors associated with breeds of dogs.
Kate Shugak, a park service ranger in Alaska, solves crimes with the aid of her canine companion, Mutt. Having a part wolf, part dog companion is integral to the story as Kate finds herself in precarious situations amongst the solitary and foreboding landscape. Kate will draw on her Native American heritage and culture to help her find an ancient artifact that has been missing for decades. Mutt leaps to Kate’s rescue as she uncovers the clues that villains are desperate to keep hidden.
In the newest entry in Dana Stabenow's "New York Times" bestselling "Kate Shugak" series, Kate and the rest of the Park rats are stunned by the death of Old Sam, Kate's eighty-seven-year-old uncle and foster father. In his will, he leaves almost everything to Kate, including a homestead deep in gold mining country that no one knew he had and a letter that reads simply, 'Find my father.' Easier said than done, since Sam's father is something of a mystery: an outsider who disappeared shortly after learning about Sam's existence, he took with him a priceless tribal artifact, a Russian…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
I love the combination of action and romance and suspense. It’s a real juggle as an author to balance the two main elements (suspense and romance mostly), give each depth and page time, and make us care about the people both in love and in peril. I’ve always been drawn to suspense, even as a kid. But I gotta have the relationships, too. I used to direct plays with my childhood friends, and there were always bad guys and the romance—and this was long before I was thinking of having a real romance!
This story has a great combination of romance and suspense and action. You gotta love Sam, who's just trying to keep his family's rescue organization going and has such strong loyalty toward his family. And Nora's courageous and feisty, just trying to survive from a dangerous situation. Carmen’s books are low on the explicit and violence/gore scale, which is perfect when you want to go on a ride without all of the extraneous cursing and whatnot.
The Midnight Sons ~ Men as Wild and Rugged as The Last Frontier Itself
Five brothers risk their lives to rescue those caught in the death grip of the Alaska wilderness...and find their hearts in danger of falling for women as tough as the Land of the Midnight Sun.
Series Description:
The siren call of Alaska's untamed wilderness, vast mountain ranges, and majestic glaciers draw thrill-seekers from around the globe. But with more unsolved missing person cases than anywhere else in the world, the Alaska Triangle has an ominous reputation. Enter the Midnight Sons, a team that risks their own…
