California Lighthouses Guidebook, by Sharlene and Ted Nelson

California Lighthouses Guidebook, by Sharlene and Ted Nelson Sailing along California’s often forbidding coast was a risky venture before 1854, the year the state’s first lighthouse was established. Eventually more than forty lighthouse stations were built to guide mariners along 1,200 miles of coastline from San Diego to the Redwood Coast, and through bays and…

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Hill of Dead Horses, by Sarah Birdsall

Hill of Dead Horses, by Sarah Birdsall In the early twentieth century a bear frightens a team of horses into plunging to their deaths from off a hill near a proposed railroad route through wilderness Alaska. In 1974 young Californians Thomas Findlay and Emily Wells dig post holes for a cabin on that very hill…

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Secret Places, by Don Stuart

Secret Places, by Don Stuart Three days before the season opening, Native Alaskan commercial salmon fisherman, Johnny Ingman leaves his hometown of Sweetwater bound for the fishing grounds and disappears. Johnny’s disappearance comes at a time of deep frustration in Johnny’s tiny home village. Changing pressures, values, and demands from the outside world are increasingly…

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Death at the Shipshape Bookshop, by Greta McKennan

Death at the Shipshape Bookshop, by Greta McKennan Junetta Beale is living in paradise. As owner of the Shipshape Bookshop in Southeast Alaska, she sells books in town, operates a lending library for the locals, and serves the villages in her floating bookmobile. She loves her peaceful coastal life. That peace is shattered when she…

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Death in the Underworld, by Betsy Longenbaugh

Death in the Underworld, by Betsy Longenbaugh Federal Marshal Frank Leishke is called to the scene of the vicious murder of a prostitute in Douglas, Alaska, in 1916. The site of the largest gold mine in the world, Douglas was also home to numerous bars, prostitutes, and itinerant workers. Leishke is aided in his work…

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The Ghost of the Kenai, by Aurora Hardy

The Ghost of the Kenai, by Aurora Hardy In 1796, the men at Fort Kenay or Russian Redoubt Saint Nicholas are terrified. A ghost, a woman in a tattered white dress, screams nightly along the banks of the Kenai River below the bluffs where the fort stands. Young Nicholas arrives with Captain Zaikov on his…

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Chasing the Dark, by Joseph Jackson

Chasing the Dark, by Joseph Jackson Joe Jackson’s life has seemed to follow the hours of low light; waking in the pitch-dark to beat the sun and lingering until it’s long gone. The stories told in between range from hunting snowshoe hares in the cold of Alaskan winter; Spey casting monotonously to king salmon and…

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Censure and Repeal, by Don Stuart

Censure and Repeal, by Don Stuart The charismatic CEO of a high-tech multinational corporation dies when his self-driving car plunges off a cliff into Puget Sound. The company’s own technical experts find that the car’s computer was turned off at the time of the accident. So the police rule his death a suicide. But lawyer…

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Murder in Vancouver 1886, by Marion Crook

Murder in Vancouver 1886, by Marion Crook Vancouver, 1886, a bustling city with a growing population and tantalizing opportunities. Some of those opportunities are illegal. When Amy MacDonald, the school teacher at Hastings Mill, discovers new Win­chester ’86 rifles are being smuggled through the city, she tries to enlist the aid of the earnest but…

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Mercy Pilot, by Dirk Tordoff

Mercy Pilot, by Dirk Tordoff Joe Crosson, a brave and skilled pilot, became a national hero between the world wars flying mercy missions in the North. He pioneered air routes throughout Alaska and foresaw the future of commercial aviation. Above all else, he loved to fly. In 1929, Crosson generated newspaper headlines worldwide flying a…

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