100 books like The Arctic

Since reading Jack London’s stories as a child I have been addicted to the far north. I have spent a good chunk of my life exploring the Arctic, including the seven years my wife and I lived in Greenland. I worked as a teacher in remote settlements. Jane worked in medical centres and small hospitals. We experienced life in Greenland from all angles. While in Greenland, I read for a Master of Arts in Professional Writing. Since returning to Denmark I draw on my experiences to shape crime and thriller stories through which I hope to bring Greenland to life. I am English. I often pretend to be Danish.

Since reading Jack London’s stories as a child I have been addicted to the far north. I have spent a good chunk of my life exploring the Arctic, including the seven years my wife and I lived in Greenland. I worked as a teacher in remote settlements. Jane worked in medical centres and small hospitals. We experienced life in Greenland from all angles. While in Greenland, I read for a Master of Arts in Professional Writing. Since returning to Denmark I draw on my experiences to shape crime and thriller stories through which I hope to bring Greenland to life. I am English. I often pretend to be Danish.

Since reading Jack London’s stories as a child I have been addicted to the far north. I have spent a good chunk of my life exploring the Arctic, including the seven years my wife and I lived in Greenland. I worked as a teacher in remote settlements. Jane worked in medical centres and small hospitals. We experienced life in Greenland from all angles. While in Greenland, I read for a Master of Arts in Professional Writing. Since returning to Denmark I draw on my experiences to shape crime and thriller stories through which I hope to bring Greenland to life. I am English. I often pretend to be Danish.

As a retired psychotherapist, I love a good book with complex characters that stand up to analysis. As a moody introvert, I especially enjoy untangling a set of clues in an atmosphere of suspense. Given that I live in a remote, wild area with plenty of snow and extreme weather, I am a good judge of stories about people being pitted against the elements. Finally, I am always curious to learn more about indigenous cultures since I live near more tribal land than anywhere in the US except Alaska. And, of course, I’m a mystery writer!

I grew up in Los Angeles, California, which is frequently imagined as well as experienced. As a child, we lived by the beach and in the foothills of Angeles National Forest. The leaps of faith you make in this landscape were always clear: earthquakes, wildfires, and mudslides occur regularly. The question asked often about the Arctic: “why on earth do people live there?” applies also to California: life in beautiful landscapes and seascapes is risky. Then, I made my first trip to Iceland alone in 1995, and have now been to Iceland ten times, Greenland twice, and Nayan Mar, above the Russian Arctic Circle, each time with fascination.

As a thriller writer, I have a simple goal: I want to entertain. I'm not the kind of writer whose name is coupled with the Pulitzer Prize or the National Book Award. I write the kind of stories people read to divert themselves on a rainy afternoon or on the beach or on airplanes. My hope is that I can divert and delight my readers. Help them forget the real world for a while. Give them an enjoyable reading break. If people have fun while reading my thrillers, I've done my job.

I have always been interested in the environment, ever since I studied Human Ecology under Professor Roger Revelle at Harvard. Several summer jobs in the Arctic with the Geological Survey of Canada gave me an early appreciation of what climate change meant for the polar region, and a more recent visit to Greenland brought the environmental devastation there more into focus. Also, having escaped from Communist Hungary in 1956, I have keenly followed Russia and its superpower ambitions, so it was natural for me to combine these two areas of interest into an environmental thriller. I am now writing a sequel, Arctic Inferno.

I’ve spent my life journey so far in the outdoors of northern Ontario, Canada. Before I became a conservation officer, I worked for twelve years in a wilderness park as a canoe ranger. I also had eighteen sled dogs and taught dogsledding and winter survival. I’ve always been drawn to reading adventure stories, so when I finally became an author (in my forties. It’s never too late), I naturally wrote the kind of books that I grew up reading. Now I love that I get to share my passions with readers.  I hope you find some books of interest on this list and join me on a journey into a new adventure.

Some look through the glass and admire what lies beyond. I look beyond the glass and imagine what's ahead. What is an adventure? It's an encounter with the unexpected, an exquisite moment in time that can never be repeated, those memorable chapters in our personal story that cause us to go to the attic and lift the lid of the trunk. I've lived the experiences in my books because I walked the beaten paths where those stories were born and embraced the culture that colors the pages. I'm an intrepid traveler and adventurer with still a few personal chapters to write. As I look beyond the glass, I wonder… Will my trunk ever be full?

As a mom of young kids who love animals, I know firsthand the benefit of finding fun books that are also easy to read, fun to look at, and short enough not to make you flinch when your kids pull them off the shelves during those later bedtime nights.