Wilderness Fiction

"You'll never make it!" With encouragement like that, author Mickey Thomas, in a fit of youthful testosterone, and with meticulous inattention to detail, decided to embark on a once-in-a lifetime 3,400-mile bicycle trek from Montana to Alaska. While riding through knee problems, illness, homesickness, infatuation, bad weather, and meeting a host of quirky and hilarious characters, Mickey, and his group rides over some of the roughest roads and most desolate scenery in North America. Along the way, he discovers an inner strength as well as a new physical stamina he never had.

Evelyn King longs to marry the man she loves. She won't let anything stand in her way. But the frontier is a dangerous place. Killers and hostiles and beasts abound. As Evelyn is reminded when she and her beloved become the prey of two-legged wolves—and something far worse.

Mallory Reynolds is a driven woman fueled by her passion for photographing wild animals in remote locations. Every year she makes a trek deep into Alaska, but this time the unthinkable happens: she crash-lands after her plane stalls out in a storm. Injured, vulnerable, and threatened by the very creatures she loves, Mallory fears the worst - until she’s rescued by Michael Bradley, a mysterious mountain man living in self-imposed exile. Unfortunately, neither of them can leave Michael’s secluded cabin until spring. Mallory’s stuck with a stranger for months.

A plague has devastated the land. Bloodthirsty creatures stalk the night. A loose band of survivors fight for their lives. Can they make it through? And what will become of them if they do?

After inheriting his uncle’s lodge, Silas Matheson hopes the grandeur of the California Sierra Nevada will be a fresh start for his two young sons, and a chance to finally face his demons. It was here, fifteen years ago, that Silas and his friends Jessica, Danny, and Meg ventured into the mountain wilderness and Jessica vanished without a trace. When his boys go missing in the same dark woods, the fear and guilt that Silas has been running from ever since come crashing back.

Hotshot pilot Leo Eddowes is afraid of nothing and no one. So when she's asked to evacuate a man from the wilds of Alaska, she doesn't hesitate. But with enemies in close pursuit and the weather turning sour, what should have been a simple mission quickly shifts to disaster, and there's only one way out. When Elias Thorne disappeared, he was America's most wanted. Now he's spent more than a decade in one of the most remote places on Earth, guarding a dangerous secret. Leo's arrival, quickly followed by a team of expert hunters, leaves him no choice but to join forces with her.

Charlie Bone has finally found his father, but he’s disappeared again - on a second honeymoon with Charlie’s mother. But there’s no time to miss them, for there’s a strange salty mist in the air, and chilling howls in the night. And someone has been searching Charlie’s house. What are they looking for? And could Dagbert, the new boy with pale lips and cold aquamarine eyes, have something to do with it?

Caleb Jackson is on a journey. And not just the mission he and his friends have embarked on to fetch the Nez Perce chief’s runaway daughter. Otskai is eager to take on a challenge. She’s lived under the shelter of other’s choices her entire life, especially when she was betrothed to one of the village braves at the tender age of eight. Now with her husband's death, she’s finally found the freedom she always craved - even with a two-year-old to raise.

Nate King has a lot to be happy about. He and his family are settling into a new home, far from the taint of civilization. But the deep wilderness has its own set of dangers, including the greatest predator of them all: the giant grizzly. Nate has earned a reputation as Grizzly Killer, but this bear is different - this bear saved his life once, and Nate feels a debt of honor. But is it possible to teach a wild griz to go against its murderous nature? Will Nate's plan be any match for the mammoth bear's four-inch claws and wickedly sharp teeth? Or will his family learn a fatal lesson of their own?

What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural? In A Darker Wilderness, a constellation of luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.

Strathnaver, Scotland, summer 1792. The Highland Clearances abruptly destroy Artis MacKay's idyllic world. Patrick Steller, the Countess of Sutherland's estate manager, murders Artis' family and burns her village. Forced into indentured servitude in the colonies, she becomes a Virginia plantation servant. After seven long years, Artis receives her freedom dues - land in Kentucky. Bear MacKee grew up in the Highlands too, but disease claims his parents on his family's voyage to the colonies.

Legendary mountain man Shakespeare McNair has seen enough winters in the wilderness to know when something isn't right. And beneath the waters of the lake near his new home, something is definitely off. Nate King and his family can see it, too - waves without any wind to create them, a huge force that pulls a fishing pole right from Evelyn King's hands, something malevolent out there...watching them. Shakespeare knows it's just a matter of time before the creature hurts someone. But he's not going to wait around. He's going to go after it himself, even knowing he might not come back.

When Nate King and his family hold a cabin raising for new neighbors in their remote valley, they come face-to-face with a new kind of enemy — one that strikes terror into their hearts.

In the 1880s, Stanislas (Stas) Tarkowski, a 14-year-old Polish boy, and Nell Rawlinson, an eight-year-old English girl, live in Port Said, Egypt, while their widowed fathers work as engineers on the Suez Canal. When their fathers are away, Stas and Nell are kidnapped by Arabs as part of a rebellion against British rule. Once captured, the children are forced to travel through the Sahara Desert, and they face all manner of obstacles, from heat and hunger to disease and deadly animals.

After a long winter in the remote Teton Mountains, Anna Porter is convinced that she's not cut out for wilderness living. Her heart yearns for a place where she'll feel at home, and she's ready to continue the journey she started a year ago along the Oregon Trail. Without an escort, she may be forced to marry a stranger out of necessity, until the least likely man agrees to accompany her.

Though living on the frontier was deadly, the reward for the hardy souls brave enough to take the risk was unlimited freedom—freedom that murderous renegades would steal for a few pieces of gold. When mountain man Nathaniel King and his family were threatened by a band of slavers, they faced enemies like none they'd ever battled.

Strong mountain men like Nate King risked everything to carve a new world from the frontier, and they weren't about to give it up without a fight. But when some friendly Crows asked Nate to help them rescue a missing girl from a band of murderous Lakota, he set off on a journey that would take him to the end of the trail - and possibly the end of his life.

When Nate King comes along a pair of green would-be trappers from New York, he is only too glad to risk his life to save them from a Piegan war party. It's only after he takes them into his own cabin that he realizes that they would repay his kindness with betrayal.

Gold Dust Fever! Penniless old trapper Ben Frazier is just about ready to pack it all in when an Arapaho warrior takes pity on him and shows him where to find the elusive gold that white men value so greatly. His problems seem to be over, but then another band of trappers finds out about the gold and force Ben to lead them to it. It’s up to Zach King to save the old man, but can he survive a fight against a gang of gold-crazed mountain men?

The unforgiving wilderness of the Rocky Mountains forced a boy to grow up fast, so Nate King taught his son, Zach, how to survive the constant hazards and hardships--and he taught him well. With an Indian war party on the prowl and a marauding grizzly on the loose, young Zach was about to face the test of his life, with no room for failure. But there was one danger Nate hadn't prepared Zach for--a beautiful girl with blue eyes.