How could this happen? Two people buying the same house? The year is 1951. Her life shattered by the sudden death of her husband, Trina Brown, a black lady with twin teenage daughters from Atlanta, Georgia, seeks a new life in Alaska. She begins working and buys a house at 144 East Chestnut Street in Juneau. She goes there with the help of her friend and mentor, Rose Williams. Aaron Mueller is a successful Jewish businessman from New York City whose wife dies of lung cancer. Losing all interest in his family business, he sells out and is looking for a new passion in his life. At the suggestion of a friend, he researches Alaska and decides he’ll find it there. Through a real estate trade magazine, he buys a house at 144 East Chestnut Street in Juneau and moves there. How did Janet Green manage a bank scam that caused Trina Brown and Aaron Mueller to buy the same house? Why does the FBI get involved? And how do a black lady from Atlanta and a Jewish businessman from New York City manage to live together and still get along?

Etta Jones was not a World War II soldier or a war time spy. She was a school teacher whose life changed forever on that Sunday morning in June 1942 when the Japanese military invaded Attu Island and Etta became a prisoner of war. Etta and her sister moved to the Territory of Alaska in 1922. She planned to stay only one year as a vacation, but this 40 something year old nurse from back east met Foster Jones and fell in love. They married and for nearly twenty years they lived, worked and taught in remote Athabascan, Alutiiq, Yup’ik and Aleut villages where they were the only outsiders. Their last assignment was Attu. After the invasion, Etta became a prisoner of war and spent 39 months in Japanese POW sites located in Yokohama and Totsuka. She was the first female Caucasian taken prisoner by a foreign enemy on the North American Continent since the War of 1812, and she was the first American female released by the Japanese at the end of World War II. Using descriptive letters that she penned herself, her unpublished manuscript, historical documents and personal interviews with key people who were involved with events as they happened, her extraordinary story is told for the first time in this book.

A collection of letters published in the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin by naturalist Muir when he was exploring Alaska in 1879-80. He describes the natives and missionaries, gold mines and towns, mountains and glaciers, trees and wildlife, and other aspects. Paper edition (unseen), $12.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Goats, glaciers, ice worms, and igloos teach the ABCs of the Last Frontier, where Z is for zero temperatures. Ages 3 and up.

This state ABC book for children features brilliant color photographs; each lively page highlights a unique aspect of Alaska’s beauty and culture. For each letter, a short poem describes the pictured word. The book’s eye-popping design and educational content will hold the child’s interest throughout countless readings. The mission of Boys and Girls Clubs Alaska is to empower and inspire the diverse youth of Alaska to reach their full potential by offering them hope, opportunity, and a safe environment.

Family correspondence, journals, drawings, and other materials form the basis of this collection documenting a slice of life at Cape Prince of Wales, an Alaska Eskimo village 55 miles across the Bering Strait from Siberia. Most of the letters were written by Ellen Louise Kittredge Lopp, a white teacher, missionary, and mother, who describes everyday Native life and celebrations, schoolroom adventures, visitors from trading and whaling ships, the environment, the subsistence way of life, and the herding of reindeer the school and mission acquired in 1894. Printed on heavy stock with crisp b & w illustrations. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

A soldier has six weeks to convince the only woman he has ever longed for to take a chance on life with him in Alaska.... Sara's letters were the only bright spot during Gabe's devastating tour in Iraq. With each new correspondence he fell harder, needed her more, wanted to be with her. Now, after initially rejecting his offer to meet, she's shown up at the door of his isolated cabin in Alaska looking for...what? Gabe's not sure what made Sara change her mind, but he knows he never wants to let her go. Major Gabe Randall is everything Sara Ryan wants but nothing she feels she deserves. A modern-day spinster, Sara hides behind family obligations and the safe, quiet life she's resigned herself to living. But secretly, even though she may have stretched the truth about who she is in her letters to him, she wants Gabe. Will he still want her when he discovers the real woman behind the pen? Once they meet, Gabe asks her for six weeks in Alaska. Six weeks to spend getting to know each other, and then she'll have to decide whether they are better together or apart.