The newspaper industry was a very different animal when Howard Weaver started his career in the Anchorage Daily News of the 1970s. Mr. Weaver seemed to embody the ideal journalist -- at once cynical and idealistic, determined to get the story. Weaver's book puts the reader right into the mileau. You're with him when tries to follow a group of mobsters in his old VW Beetle. You're with him when he confronts the industrial king-pins if 1970s Alaska. And you're with him when he earns Alaska's first Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

 Fireside Books is proud to host Howard Weaver in this celebration of his first book. Come meet the man who helped remake Alaskan journalism

Write Hard, Die Free: Dispatches from the Battlefields & Barrooms of the Great Alaska Newspaper War (Paperback)

By Howard Weaver

$14.95

ISBN-13: 9781935347194
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Epicenter Press, 4/2012

Howard Weaver advanced from foot soldier to field marshal in the Alaska Newspaper War, but he never left the fight. He spent time with small-town hoodlums and big-time politicians, crossed swords with Big Oil and Big Labor, and edited the "Anchorage Daily News "to the most unlikely David and Goliath upset in American journalism history and helped his newspaper win two Pulitzer Prizes along the way. Weaver cared passionately and fought fiercely in every political struggle of his era, from oil development to Native sovereignty, from park land designations to environmental activism. The "Anchorage Daily News "pulled no punches in telling Alaska's story, and Weaver has pulled none in this account of a fierce, take-no-prisoners battle to the death between his newspaper and the "Anchorage Times. "

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Ms. Romano-Lax has developed a reputation for hauntingly beautiful novels. We can't wait to delve into her newest work, called "The Detour."

The Detour (Hardcover)

By Andromeda Romano-Lax

$25.00

ISBN-13: 9781616950491
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Soho Press, 2/2012

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In 1938, a lonely young German man is sent on a governmental errand to Italy, but he soon ends up on a mission of romance and self-discovery

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The Spanish Bow (Paperback)

By Andromeda Romano-Lax

$15.00

ISBN-13: 9780156034098
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Mariner Books, 9/2008

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The accidental bequest of a cello bow from his dead father sets Feliu on the unlikely course of becoming a musician. When he is compelled to flee to anarchist Barcelona, his education in music, life, and politics begins. But it isn't until he arrives in Madrid that passion enters the composition.

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UPDATE: Well, we breezed through the first 350 400 500 copies in three days. We've got another shipment on the way, but they're moving fast! Be sure to reserve your copy right away! The book release party was fantastic. Check back for some great photos!

Our very own Eowyn Ivey is getting international attention for her new novel, "The Snow Child." She's been interviewed on BBC and NPR. The Christian Science Monitor counts her book as #1 on their list of six new books to read in 2012.

The Snow Child is on sale in Europe now. In fact, it was on the Norwegian bestseller list for quite some time. Eowyn will have had her book release party at The Colony Inn right here in Downtown Palmer.

The Snow Child (Hardcover)

By Eowyn Ivey

$24.99

ISBN-13: 9780316175678
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Reagan Arthur Books, 2/2012

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Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.

About the Author

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Eowyn LeMay Ivey was raised in Alaska and continues to live there with her husband and two daughters. She received her BA in journalism and minor in creative writing through the honors program at Western Washington University, studied creative nonfiction at the University of Alaska Anchorage graduate program, and worked for nearly 10 years as an award-winning reporter at the Frontiersman newspaper. This is her first novel.

Praise for The Snow Child…

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"If Willa Cather and Gabriel Garcia Marquez had collaborated on a book, THE SNOW CHILD would be it. It is a remarkable accomplishment -- a combination of the most delicate, ethereal, fairytale magic and the harsh realities of homesteading in the Alaskan wilderness in 1918. Stunningly conceived, beautifully told, this story has the intricate fragility of a snowflake and the natural honesty of the dirt beneath your feet, the unnerving reality of a dream in the night. It fascinates, it touches the heart. It gallops along even as it takes time to pause at the wonder of life and the world in which we live. And it will stir you up and stay with you for a long, long time."
-Robert Goolrick, New York Times bestselling author of A Reliable Wife

"THE SNOW CHILD is enchanting from beginning to end. Ivey breathes life into an old tale and makes it as fresh as the season' s first snow. Simply lovely."
-Keith Donohue, New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child

"A transporting tale . . . an amazing achievement."
-Sena Jeter Naslund, New York Times bestselling author of Ahab's Wife

"THE SNOW CHILD is a vivid story of isolation and hope on the Alaska frontier, a narrative of struggle with the elements and the elemental conflict between one's inner demons and dreams, and the miracle of human connection and community in a spectacular, dangerous world. You will not soon forget this story of learning to accept the gifts that fate and love can bring."
-Robert Morgan, author of Gap Creek

"Eowyn Ivey's exquisite debut transports the reader away to a world almost out of time, into a fairytale destined to both chill and delight. Her portrayal of an untamed Alaska is so detailed you can feel the snowflakes on your own eyelashes, even as her characters' desperate quest for, and ultimate redemption by, love will warm your heart."
-Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been

"Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes."
-Andromeda Romano-Lax, author of The Spanish Bow

"This book is real magic, shot through from cover to cover with the cold, wild beauty of the Alaskan frontier. Eowyn Ivey writes with all the captivating delicacy of the snowfalls she so beautifully describes."
-Ali Shaw, author of The Girl with Glass Feet

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We'll be celebrating our 10th Year Anniversary all day Saturday! Stop by for door prizes, Fireside Books memories, and special guests!

Zoey is home where she belongs, safe with her Guardian Warrior, Stark, by her side--and preparing to face off against Neferet. Kalona has released his hold on Rephaim, and, through Nyx's gift of a human form, he and Stevie Rae are finally able to be together--if Rephaim can truly walk the path of the Goddess and stay free of his father's shadow. But is Zoey really safe? Does she truly know those who are closest to her? And will love win when it is tested by the very soul of Darkness?

In 2007, Paulo Coelho was named the "United Nations Messanger of Peace." Now the author of such thought-provoking novels as "The Alchemist," and "The Pilgramage" is out with a new novel: Aleph.

Aleph (Hardcover)

By Paulo Coelho

$24.95

ISBN-13: 9780307700186
Availability: Usually Ships in 1-5 days
Published: Knopf, 9/2011

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In his most personal novel to date, internationally best-selling author Paulo Coelho returns with a remarkable journey of self-discovery. Like the main character in his much-beloved The Alchemist, Paulo is facing a grave crisis of faith. As he seeks a path of spiritual renewal and growth, he decides to begin again: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the landscapes around him.

Setting off to Africa, and then to Europe and Asia via the Trans-Siberian Railway, he initiates a journey to revitalize his energy and passion. Even so, he never expects to meet Hilal. A gifted young violinist, she is the woman Paulo loved five hundred years before—and the woman he betrayed in an act of cowardice so far-reaching that it prevents him from finding real happiness in this life. Together they will initiate a mystical voyage through time and space, traveling a path that teaches love, forgiveness, and the courage to overcome life’s inevitable challenges. Beautiful and inspiring, Aleph invites us to consider the meaning of our own personal journeys: Are we where we want to be, doing what we want to do?

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The Alchemist (Paperback)

By Paulo Coelho

$14.99

ISBN-13: 9780061122415
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: HarperOne, 4/2006

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"My heart is afraid that it will have to suffer," the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky." Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams." Every few decades a book is published that changes the lives of its readers forever. The Alchemist is such a book. With over a million and a half copies sold around the world, The Alchemist has already established itself as a modern classic, universally admired. Paulo Coelho's charming fable, now available in English for the first time, will enchant and inspire an even wider audience of readers for generations to come. The Alchemist is the magical story of Santiago, an Andalusian shepherd boy who yearns to travel in search of a worldly treasure as extravagant as any ever found. From his home in Spain he journeys to the markets of Tangiers and across the Egyptian desert to a fateful encounter with the alchemist. The story of the treasures Santiago finds along the way teaches us, as only a few stories have done, about the essential wisdom of listening to our hearts, learning to read the omens strewn along life's path, and, above all, following our dreams.

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