In 1939, four brutal murders occurred at three separate locations on a single day in “Cache Creek country,” a remote Alaska gold-mining region near Talkeetna. Two of the victims, Dick Francis and Frank Jenkins, had mined there for almost three decades, but disputes over mining claims in the 1930s launched the two men into protracted court battles and an arena of antagonism. By 1938, when Francis' claims were auctioned to satisfy courtordered damages awarded to Jenkins, everyone in the scattered but close-knit mining community of Cache Creek country was aware of the bitter feud. At the end of the 1939 mining season Jenkins and one of his young employees were bludgeoned to death in Wonder Gulch; three miles away, Helen Jenkins was murdered near the Jenkinses' cabin along Little Willow Creek; and, in his Ruby Creek cabin, Francis was found shot in the head with a revolver in his hand — an apparent suicide. He was thought to have first vengefully murdered the others. But an autopsy revealed that Dick Francis had been shot twice in the head. The shocked and outraged mining community began to suspect that the Jenkins/Francis feud had been ruthlessly exploited for caches of gold long rumored to be hidden on the Jenkinses' property. The case assumed sensational proportions in Alaska and, because law enforcement was minimal in this remote region, angry Alaskans clamored for a full-blown investigation by the FBI. More than sixty years later, the evidence—never made public before—whispers that justice may not have been served.

In 1941, Anna Harker is attacked by an ax-wielding assailant in the gold-bearing ridges bordering the Alaska Range. It is this moment of savagery that propels the people of Wild Rivers, Wild Rose. Anna’s lover, Wade Daniels, learns of the deaths of Anna’s husband and their worker, and he rushes to the hills to look for Anna and hunt the murderer. As she lies dying on the tundra, Anna relives the major events of her Alaska life while searching her memories for what could have led to the violence. And, decades later, an outsider named Billie Sutherland steps into a community still haunted by the murders. Plagued by her own ghosts, Billie delves into the past, opening old wounds. In this gripping novel by Sarah Birdsall, lives are laid bare and secrets ring out in the resonant Alaska Range foothills.

These astonishing stories tell of miners terrorized by spirits wandering their claims, of roadhouse owners visited daily by ghosts, and of reindeer herders who run in fear as one of their own departed comes back in spirit form to continue his duties after death.

Hunts and Home Fires an account of fifty years of life spent on the last frontier. It is a reflection on the spirit of small town Alaska and of a people used to bringing home wild foods for the table. It is about youth and coming of age, about individual industry, hard work, family, and life in general. Hunting and fishing stories are the backbone, mixed with how-to information, humor, and a bit of history. There are essays regarding an interesting mix of subjects through a fifty year journey.

Stories of people who helped build the great land.

Winner of the Colin Roderick Award for Australian writing, the Ned Kelly Award for Australian crime fiction, and the CWA Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. Peter Temple's The Broken Shore is a transfixing and moving novel about a place, a family, politics and power, and the need to live decently in a world where so much is rotten. The Broken Shore, his eighth novel, revolves around big-city detective Joe Cashin. Shaken by a scrape with death, he's posted away from the Homicide Squad to the quiet town on the South Australian coast where he grew up. Carrying physical scars and more than a little guilt, he spends his time playing the country cop, walking his dogs, and thinking about how it all was before. But when a prominent local is attacked in his own home and left for dead, Cashin is thrust into what becomes a murder investigation. The evidence points to three boys from the nearby aboriginal community—everyone seems to want to blame them. Cashin is unconvinced, and soon begins to see the outlines of something far more terrible than a burglary gone wrong. Peter Temple is currently being hailed as the finest crime writer in Australia, but it won't be long before he is recognized as what he really is—one of the nation's finest writers, period. Born in South Africa, Temple is writing a dynamic kind of literary thriller that ultimately defies classification.

In 1837 Representative Joseph J. Anthony stabs the speaker of the house to death during a debate about wolf pelts. In 1899 Hot Springs police shoot it out with the county sheriffs over control of illegal gambling. In 1974 President Richard Nixon resigns in part due to the outspokenness of Pine Bluff native Martha Mitchell. In this special print project of the online Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture, legendary cartoonist Ron Wolfe brings these and many other stories to life. Accompanied by selected entries from the encyclopedia, Wolfe’s cartoons highlight the oddities and absurdities of our state’s history. Seriously, you couldn’t make up this stuff.

When the body of a promising young rodeo star is found in the chimney of a cabin, private detective Sean Stranahan is hired by the girl's mother to find the truth and teams up with Sheriff Ettinger to investigate the mysterious legends of the Crazy Mountains to catch a killer.