In these one-liners, practical jokes, and funny stories, Tom Brennan shares hilarious and engaging tales of people, animals, and politicians of the Far North.

Mechele is young, attractive, and looking to cash in on her aesthetic assets when she moves from New Orleans to Alaska in 1994 to earn money for college tuition. Her charms ensnare the affections of three men, and the combined effects of jealously, lust, and greed take a deadly turn in this true crime story. Before a murder in the woods shatters her contented life, Mechele works as an exotic dancer at the Alaska Bush Company, where she spends her days pleasing a procession of hard-working men. John, Scott, and Kent are simultaneously smitten with Mechele, and offer affection in the form of lavish gifts and ultimately engagement rings. While the three men begin their affairs on the same path, violent murder blasts apart their parallel lives. One of the trio is shot in the back; another is accused of the murder. Dead Man's Dancer follows this murder case from 1996 throughout Mechele's tumultuous trial in 2006 that becomes a nationwide sensation. Shocking in its detailed portrayal of murder and convoluted love affairs, Dead Man's Dancer excites horror in readers that lingers far after the last page is turned.

The Snowflake Rebellion is a novel about the ultimate Alaska tea party--a satirical thriller about political rebellion gone wild. A young couple moves to Alaska from the East. Deeply in love, Colin and Sheila Callihan take opposing paths, he an oil company geologist, she an environmental activist. He discovers a vast oil reservoir on the North Slope; she becomes his most vocal critic. Governor Jimmy Pender asks Colin to join the Alaskan Independence Party and bring it under control. The party's increasingly militant members are creating a political firestorm. The state rebels against decisions made in Washington and economic control by outsiders. Colin leads the rebels' insurrection. After 50 years as a state, might Alaska go its own way? Author Tom Brennan explores the possibility in his unique novel The Snowflake Rebellion. In this semi-serious look at what might have been--and what lies ahead--Brennan writes the history of Alaska as it would look if a few events had played out differently.

Step by step, journalist Brennan walks readers through 13 notorious cases, drawing details from the confidential files of Alaska police detectives who investigate murder, mayhem, crimes of passion and greed, and an amazing amount of criminal stupidity.

Drawn from police files, eyewitness accounts, and news reports, these stories introduce extreme criminals in an extreme land.

Most people in the United States today no longer live their lives under the guidance of local institutionalized religious leadership, such as rabbis, ministers, and priests; rather, liberals and conservatives alike have taken charge of their own religious or spiritual practices. This shift, along with other social and cultural changes, has opened up a perhaps surprising space for chaplains—spiritual professionals who usually work with the endorsement of a religious community but do that work away from its immediate hierarchy, ministering in a secular institution, such as a prison, the military, or an airport, to an ever-changing group of clients of widely varying faiths and beliefs. In A Ministry of Presence, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan explores how chaplaincy works in the United States—and in particular how it sits uneasily at the intersection of law and religion, spiritual care, and government regulation. Responsible for ministering to the wandering souls of the globalized economy, the chaplain works with a clientele often unmarked by a specific religious identity, and does so on behalf of a secular institution, like a hospital. Sullivan's examination of the sometimes heroic but often deeply ambiguous work yields fascinating insights into contemporary spiritual life, the politics of religious freedom, and the never-ending negotiation of religion's place in American institutional life.

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson, then the American Minister to France, had the "complete skeleton, skin & horns" of an American moose shipped to him in Paris and mounted in the lobby of his residence as a symbol of the vast possibilities contained in the strange and largely unexplored New World. Taking a cue from Jefferson's efforts, David Post, one of the nation's leading Internet scholars, here presents a pithy, colorful exploration of the still mostly undiscovered territory of cyberspace--what it is, how it works, and how it should be governed. What law should the Internet have, and who should make it? What are we to do, and how are we to think, about online filesharing and copyright law, about Internet pornography and free speech, about controlling spam, and online gambling, and cyberterrorism, and the use of anonymous remailers, or the practice of telemedicine, or the online collection and dissemination of personal information? How can they be controlled? Should they be controlled? And by whom? Post presents the Jeffersonian ideal--small self-governing units, loosely linked together as peers in groups of larger and larger size--as a model for the Internet and for cyberspace community self-governance. Deftly drawing on Jefferson's writings on the New World in Notes on the State of Virginia, Post draws out the many similarities (and differences) between the two terrains, vividly describing how the Internet actually functions from a technological, legal, and social perspective as he uniquely applies Jefferson's views on natural history, law, and governance in the New World to illuminate the complexities of cyberspace. In Search of Jefferson's Moose is a lively, accessible, and remarkably original overview of the Internet and what it holds for the future.