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2 weeks ago | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord
“Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women’s Ascent of Denali”By Cassidy Randall; Abrams Press, 2025; 275 pages; $28. In 1970, a team of six women climbed to the top of Denali — and, significantly, made it safely back down. This little-known expedition has finally been exceedingly well researched and told by author Cassidy Randall.
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4 weeks ago | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord
“Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future”By Neil Shubin; Dutton, 2025; 273 pages; $32. Author Neil Shubin’s long career in evolutionary biology began with fossil hunting — especially for ancient fish with limbs, finds that help explain the development of terrestrial life — and extended into broader discoveries about the origins of many groups of vertebrates.
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1 month ago | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord
“Still Water Carving Light”By Peggy Shumaker; Red Hen Press, 2025; 112 pages; $17.95. “The Nancy Poems”By John Morgan; Cirque Press, 2024; 31 pages; $10. Peggy Shumaker, a stalwart supporter of Alaska writers and the larger arts community, is a professor emerita from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a former Alaska writer laureate.
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2 months ago | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |Chaun Ballard |Andrea L. Hackbarth
“Second Nature”By Chaun Ballard; BOA Editions, 2025; 128 pages; $35 hardcover, $19 paperback, $9.99 ebook. “The Museum of Unnatural Histories”By Annie Wenstrup; Wesleyan University Press, 2025; 120 pages; $26.95 jacketed cloth, $16.95 paperback, $22.95 ebook. “Waveforms: a short course in piano tuning”By Andrea L. Hackbarth; Small Harbor Publishing, 2025; 33 pages. $12 paperback.
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2 months ago | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |Betsy Longenbaugh
“Death in the Underworld: An Alaska Murder Mystery”By Betsy Longenbaugh; Epicenter Press, 2025; 260 pages; $18.95 paperback, $6.99 Ebook. Betsy Longenbaugh, a resident of Douglas, honed her writing skills as a newspaper reporter and in more recent years has researched and written about famous Alaska murders.
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Mar 1, 2025 | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |Jerry Martien |Kurt Hoelting
“Waveshock: Ed Ricketts, The Voyage of the Grampus & Our Biopoetic Future”By Jerry Martien; Empty Bowl Press, 2025; 75 pages; $16. “Apprentice to the Wild”By Kurt Hoelting; Empty Bowl Press, 2025; 153 pages; $20. Empty Bowl Press, an independent press on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, has as its mission the support of literature that addresses the love and preservation of human communities in wild places.
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Jan 31, 2025 | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |Eowyn Ivey
“Black Woods, Blue Sky”By Eowyn Ivey; Random House, 2025; 306 pages; $29. Eowyn Ivey’s debut novel “The Snow Child,” in 2012, became an international bestseller and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Based on a Russian folk tale but set on an Alaska homestead in the 1920s, that book combined a sense of magic with the real world of a wilderness homestead and the lives of an aging, childless couple.
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Nov 8, 2024 | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |John Straley
“Big Breath In”By John Straley; Soho Press, 2024; 288 pages; $28.95. John Straley, the acclaimed Alaska author of 13 crime novels in two series, is back with a stand-alone novel. Straley’s previous books, which most recently include “So Far and Good” and “Blown by the Same Wind,” have always drawn upon his experience working as a criminal defense investigator. He’s also made considerable use of the setting, particularly the rain-soaked environment of Southeast Alaska.
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Oct 12, 2024 | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |Ned Rozell
“Summer of Gravel and Steel: a thru-hike of Alaska, 20 years after the first”By Ned Rozell; self-published, 2024; 346 pages; $25 paperback, $15 Kindle. Fairbanksan Ned Rozell is perhaps best known for the science and natural articles he writes for the University of Alaska’s Geophysical Institute (which are distributed to Alaska newspapers) and his earlier book “Walking My Dog, Jane.” He now refers to that earlier book as a “prequel” to his new one.
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Sep 28, 2024 | 
adn.com | Nancy Lord |Sara Berg
“Kissing Kevin: An American Nurse in the Vietnam War”By Sara Berg; Cirque Press, 2024; 114 pages; $15; Black and white photos by the author. In 1970, Sara Berg, a 21-year-old straight out of nursing school and encouraged by recruiters to be patriotic and save lives, enlisted as an Army nurse. Her assignment was to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh, Vietnam, just south of Saigon. In her new memoir, she describes her work during that year and how it changed her life forever.
