Ruth has worked at Fireside Books off and on since the summer of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and is currently the frontlist buyer. She reads a lot of Alaskan history, epic novels, science and natural history, speculative fiction, and all the picture books.
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Ruth says: Castner canoed the entire Mackenzie River in summer of 2016, from Slave Lake to the Arctic Ocean. His strong writing makes short work of a long paddle, and he brings a profitable haul of stories from the territory, alternating his contemporary travelogue with the journeys of Alexander Mackenzie and other fur-trade voyageurs. Abandon notions of timeless wilderness! Mackenzie’s grueling foray into the unknown in the cold of the Little Ice Age could have happened in another world, compared to Castner’s sunburned and lightning-plagued trip in our hot century. Mackenzie thought he failed to find a Northwest Passage to the Pacific, but he was just 200 years too early for ice-free Arctic shipping routes.
Reading this will make you eager for the thaw so you can launch a canoe and go somewhere. I’m not quite as ambitious as Brian Castner, but I might paddle Palmer Slough all the way to the Pacific.
New York Times Bestseller
The Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club Pick
“Every once in a while, I read a book that opens my eyes in a way I never expected.” —Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine book pick)
People Magazine’s Top 10 Books of 2017
Eowyn recommended this to me, and she's never steered me wrong. Reading it is like a deep and entertaining after-dinner conversation with your most interesting friend. The author walked the Appalachian Trail, but this isn’t a hiker’s travelogue – that experience is just a jumping-off point for examinations of how and why we make trails, and how they make us. It’s the sort of book that deepens the way you read the landscape around you.
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This has been my favorite book since age 4 and I still stand by that choice. I used some pictures from it in a presentation on Beringia for a 400-level quaternary biogeography class, and my professor was so excited he wanted his own copy. Paleontology, plate tectonics, and songs by Hobo Jim! Every kid needs Thunderfeet.
“Remarkable. . . . A deftly woven narrative saturated with violence, hardship, and triumph. Readers will be richly rewarded, for by the end of this deeply felt novel it is hard to let the frontier town and its people go.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Powerful . . . [Kingsolver] has with infinitely steady hands worked the prickly threads of religion, politics, race, sin and redemption into a thing of terrible beauty.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
Author Corey Ford documents the moving story of naturalist George Steller, who served on the 1741-42 Russian Alaska expedition with explore Vitus Bering.
In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer—its sunlight and storms—into twenty-two crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia’s grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland.
A visionary work that combines speculative fiction with deep philosophical inquiry, The Sparrow tells the story of a charismatic Jesuit priest and linguist, Emilio Sandoz, who leads a scientific mission entrusted with a profound task: to make first contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life.
Alexie once again reasserts himself as one the most compelling contemporary practitioners of the short story. In Blasphemy, the author demonstrates his talent on nearly every page. . . . Will appeal to fans of Junot Diaz, George Saunders, and readers new to Alexie will find this enriching collection to be the perfect introduction to a formidable literary voice. . . .
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks | Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
*Newbery Honor book
*Winner of the Schneider Family Book Award
This #1 New York Times bestseller is an exceptionally moving story of triumph against all odds set during World War II, from the acclaimed author of Fighting Words, and for fans of Fish in a Tree and Sarah, Plain and Tall.
Son of the famous American journalist Louis Fischer, who corresponded from Germany and then Moscow, and the Russian writer Markoosha Fischer, Victor Fischer grew up in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, watching his friends’ parents disappear after political arrests.