McRoy & Blackburn, Publishers

Books from the north:
well-written fiction by Alaska authors, published by an Alaska press.

We are an Alaska publishing company, headquartered in the historic gold-mining town of Ester, Alaska. Our titles reflect the creativity, enthusiasm, and sheer stubborness of Alaskans and their way of life. Please see "About Us" for further details, contact information, and submittal details.


New from M & B


Devil's Share

The Devil's Share
By Kris Farmen
High adventure on the Alaska-Yukon border.

Adult
$16.95, paper
ISBN 978-0-9820319-3-3


Can we ever own land--or does the land instead possess us? That question underpins this elegantly written account of a young man's action-filled year in the Wrangell-St. Elias wilderness, where mountains rise to pierce the sky. There he faces the dangers hidden behind both the smiles of humans and the beauties of the vast country where Canada and Alaska meet.

In the spring of his eighteenth year, Jack enters those mountains to work at a lakeside wilderness lodge near his birthplace--a homestead from which his family had been evicted by federal action when he was a toddler. What starts out as a simple summer job assisting a family friend with his guiding business becomes a complex struggle for survival among the snares set by bears and glaciers, smugglers and park rangers, bitter weather and one beautiful, troubled young woman. Jack's adventure makes for a unique coming of age story; a genuine mountain man cannot fit comfortably in the early years of the twenty-first century, and he becomes truly a man out of time.

Alaska author Farmen, who has lived and worked in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, knows both the mountain landscape and the corners of the human heart; here his knowledge fills the pages with gripping prose.


News and Announcements

McRoy & Blackburn Author, Chandonnet, has a new book


Ann Chandonnet
"Write Quick": War and a Woman's Life in Letters, 1835-1867, is the new book by Ann Chandonnet. Based on genealogical research by her co-editor and third cousin, Roberta Pevear, "Write Quick" was published April 20, 2010 by Winoca Books.





Canadian readers!


Our books are now available at the best bookstore in the Yukon, Mac's Fireweed Books. Stop in and visit their great selection of northern literature in Whitehorse and Dawson City, or visit them online at www.macsbooks.ca.


Christmas is Coming Soon from M & B


Santa Christina

Santa Christina and Her Sled Dogs
By George William Kelly, artwork by Amy Cameron

Santa Christina and Her Sled Dogs is a light and charming story, full of Christmas cheer and happy dogs. Coming soon!








More New Titles from M & B


Humpy Cove

A new Alex Price Alaska adventure!
Humpy Cove
By Don G. Porter

Adult
$14.95, paper
ISBN 978-0-9820319-1-9



"If you fall in, toss me the lunch before you hit the water." So says Alex Price as the Alphonse and Gaston routine ('After you, my dear Alphonse--No! No! You first, Gaston!") is played by Alex and his former college roommate, Renaldo, in Don G. Porter's latest Alaska action adventure, Humpy Cove. The repartee between the two is fun, fast, and furious throughout the book, as is the action. The tale begins with the two hammering through the short seas of Resurrection Bay in Renaldo's boat on a dark and stromy day. Renaldo is headed for the site of his future hotel, Humpy Cove.... Alex and Renaldo fight and figure their way through following seas and following killers to solve the mystery of Humpy Cove.
--Bill Marsik, author of Gemini

Like his character Alex Price, author Don Porter has held both commercial pilot and private investigator's licenses and has flown for years in rural Alaska. The author's deep knowledge of the territory, the people, and the life of a bush pilot shines through in the many vivid details that color this tale of cold-blooded murder in the cold North. This is the third Alex Price novel Porter has published with Mcroy & Blackburn.


Nature Runs Wild

Nature Runs Wild
By Nita Nettleton

Adult
$13.95, paper
ISBN 978-0-9820319-0-2



Time has rolled through Alaska's Talkeetna Mountains since Jane Doe recovered her memory, her career as a children's book author, a supply of chocolate, and her family. She's done just fine since then, finding a new life and even sharing an adventurous hike over the Chilkoot Trail with her niece Caly. All's well--except she thinks she's nuttier than one of her own excellent chocolate-chip cookies. She hears music, dances with dust bunnies, and is bedeviled by an alter ego in her dreams, the unflappable and ultracompetent Ms. Berry Pie. Sanity may be overrated, but Jane thinks it would be nice to have some to spare. Just a little, maybe. What to do?

Get out of the house and get some distraction, that's the vote of her wise (if also faintly loony) neighbor. So she takes a job for the summer, a nice straightforward job as a cook at a wilderness lodge--except, like everything else Jane tackles, it doesn't stay straightforward for long. Jane's entertaining adventures offer valuable lessons--such as never, ever, try to bum a cigarette from a grizzly bear.

Like her character, author Nita Nettleton finds her adventures keep coming. Now enjoying life in Utah, Nita misses Alaska but stays in touch.

What reviewers have to say about Nita Nettleton:

"Nettleton writes with a breezy, friendly style."

--Michael Armstrong, The Homer News

"[Wake-Up Call of the Wild] is a bit mystery, a bit self-discovery, and a lot of gutsy, womanly wit...It has great momentum, with its fluid prose and unexpected developments... well written and a charming entertainment."

--Shana Loshbaugh, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner





Yukon Murders

Yukon Murders
By Don G. Porter

Adult
$14.95, paper
ISBN-13 978-0-9706712-9-5
ISBN-10 0-9706712-9-6



The place: the flat and frosty empty country of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta in western Alaska. The time: not very long ago. The hero: don't call him that. He'd hate it if you called him that. All in all, bush pilot Alex Price would rather be flying, just flying. True, he had added a private investigator's license to his commercial pilot's ticket. The state troopers can always use someone they can call "Detective" in court, and serving as an extra set of eyes and ears--or an extra gun hand--for the police made a nice change from shuttling the mail and supplies to the mines and villages throughout Bushmaster Air's territory. But that was before someone began killing a few leading citizens in the tiny villages of the delta--and the clues at the murder scenes all pointed straight to Alex's best friend. Now it's up to the bush pilot to play detective for real, before things get even worse. . . .





Red Mitten

The Red Mitten
By Sarah Birdsall

Adult
$15.50, paper (vi + 202 pp.)
ISBN 0-9706712-7-x



$25.95, cloth
ISBN 0-9706712-6-1



Memories have a way of coming back, drowning the present with the ghosts of the past. Out of Alaska's little-known lake country comes this darkly elegant tale that is part romance, part mystery, even part ghost story: the red mitten leaves its unique mark on many people. Chief among them is Katie Gibson, a dream-haunted young woman scarred within and without by the events that led to her self-exile from her childhood home in western Alaska. Returning now as an adult to the harshly beautiful shores of Lake Ilmenof, she must confront the memories-and the reality-of the two brothers who were her friends and lovers, the father who seemed to turn away from her and her mother just when he was most needed, the friends who peopled her life at the lake, and the tragedy that brought that life to a halt. It is only by uncovering the truths underlying that tragedy that Katie can once again begin to live fully, and to move toward love.

What reviewers have to say about The Red Mitten:

"Birdsall's novel is a mystery on many levels, an unsettling love story that hooks into America's wounding complexity, its meeting of Indian with non-Indian, modern life with remnants of traditional village life. Beautifully done in terms of 'spirit of place' and characters of that place-a haunting loon call of a novel that one still hears long after the reading of it."

-Susan Deer Cloud, award-winning author of In the Moon When the Deer Lose Their Horns.

The Red Mitten has been awarded a bronze medal in the 2007 Independent Publishers annual competition (IPPY).