Alaska in Fiction

Read a novel featuring settlers, miners, mushers, trappers, fishermen, bush pilots, pipeline workers, Aleuts, Tlingits and others who share the expansive Alaskan frontier. These books are available to borrow from the Lititz Public Library or through Interlibrary Loan.

Dolls Behaving Badly by Cinthia Ritchie
A divorced mother living in an Anchorage trailer park with her eight-year-old son works as a waitress while maintaining relationships with a misfit family and sharing her Polish grandmother’s comforting recipes.

My One Square Inch of AlaskaMy One Square Inch of Alaska by Sharon Short
A high-school senior caring for her younger brother and his mute Siberian husky packs up the car and sets out for Alaska in an effort to learn more about their mother who died years before.

Skeleton Lake by Mike Doogan
An ex-cop takes on two 20-year-old cold cases: the disappearance of his father and the murder of a fellow cop.

Fire and Ice by Julie Garwood
The daughter of a notorious thief leaves her job at a major Chicago newspaper when she follows the trail of a murdered runner killed near Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, supposedly the victim of a polar bear attack.

The Romanov’s Cross by Robert Masello
An Army epidemiologist travels to a small island off the coast of Alaska to investigate the recently exposed bodies of a colony that was wiped out by the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.

Village of the Ghost Bears by Stan Jones
An Alaskan state trooper’s cases include the mysterious death of a hunter, a deadly incident of arson and a strange plane crash.

Degrees of SeparationDegrees of Separation by Sue Henry
After several years spent recovering from a devastating knee injury, a champion musher is working to get back into shape for the Iditarod when she stumbles upon a corpse during a practice run.

And She Was by Cindy Dyson
A young woman follows her fisherman boyfriend to the Aleutian Islands where she finds work as a cocktail waitress and decides to learn more about the town’s dark secrets.

The Yiddish Policemen's UnionThe Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon
In a world where Alaska, rather than Israel, has become the homeland for the Jews following World War II, a detective and his half-Tlingit partner investigate the death of a chess prodigy.

The Fugitive Wife by Peter C. Brown
In 1900, a Midwestern farm girl flees her strained marriage and is hired by a gold company to take care of horses on a boat filled with prospectors bound for Alaska.

Legend of a Suicide by David Vann
A collection of five semi-autobiographical short stories and a novella depict a boy’s confused relationship with his suicidal father, set against the backdrop of the Alaskan wilderness.

Though Not DeadThough Not Dead by Dana Stabenow
A native Alaskan ex-investigator inherits a homestead from her late uncle and receives a cryptic letter from him imploring her to discover his father’s fate, a mystery involving a priceless artifact.

Raven Stole the MoonRaven Stole the Moon by Garth Stein
Two years after her son drowned in a boating accident, a woman turns to a shaman for help after she flies to Alaska to revisit the scene of the tragedy.

Originally published on May 17, 2013 in the Lititz Record Express.