Arctic Worlds

NOMINATED FOR THE 2026 MILITARY HISTORY BOOK AWARDS No campaign during World War Two contained more spinetingling drama, outstanding courage and heartbreaking tragedy than the Arctic convoys. Yet they – and the multifaceted Battle of the Arctic that had to be fought to get them through to...

From internationally bestselling historian Giles Milton comes a gripping tale of exploration, survival, and geopolitical power in the Arctic Circle. The year was 1913. Charismatic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson was obsessed with a frozen speck of land in the Siberian Arctic: Wrangel Island...

July 1942. Convoy PQ-17 is being hunted across the Arctic. German bombers, U-boats, and surface raiders are tearing apart the scattered merchant ships bound for the Soviet Union. Sailors are freezing in lifeboats. Cargo meant for the Eastern Front is burning in the Norwegian Sea. The Luftwaffe expects another massacre. Then the USS Gerald R. Ford appears where no ship like her should exist. A modern American carrier strike group has been thrown back into World War II with no warning, no explanation, and no way to replace the missiles, aircraft, fuel, and technology it spends. Rear Admiral ...

The Great Polar Fraud explores the history of the three men who claimed the pole, their claims, and the subsequent doubts of those claims, effectively rewriting the history of polar exploration and putting Amundsen center stage as the rightful conqueror of both poles.

From the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author comes the spellbinding, fiercely told story of the deadly Arctic campaign of World War II. Battle of the Arctic is a wonderfully evocative history and largely unknown saga of World War II. As the Soviet Union played its role in the conflict, Ally...

The future has entered World War II—and the enemy is learning how to fight it. After the USS Gerald R. Ford was thrown back into 1942, Rear Admiral Diane Kessler used the most powerful carrier strike group on Earth to change the course of the war. But every victory has revealed something. Germany is no longer reacting blindly. A secret intelligence staff is studying American radio traffic, recovered technology, captured equipment, and every weapon the Ford has fired. New traps are being designed for aircraft that should not exist. The enemy now understands that the carrier’s missiles ...

Roald Amundsen was the most successful polar explorer of his era using sledges, dogs, skis, and ships. He is mainly remembered for being the first man to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911. What is less often remembered is that he was also the first man to reach the North Pole on May 12, 1926, as the leader of the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile expedition in the airship Norge.

THEY SURVIVED THE CRASH. NOW SOMEONE HAD TO REACH THEM. Across Greenland’s immense ice cap, an aircraft could disappear within minutes. A whiteout erased the horizon. Hidden crevasses swallowed vehicles and men. Engines froze, radios weakened, and wreckage vanished beneath snow that hardened into moving glacial ice. For stranded airmen, surviving the crash was only the beginning. For the rescuers sent after them, the mission could become another disaster. Frozen Rescue tells the true story of the pilots, radiomen, medics, mechanics, sailors, sled drivers, and ground teams who risked their...

They thought the cold would kill whatever was on that plane. They were wrong. When a distress signal crackles through the radio, Bram Keller and his small crew at a remote Arctic station are ordered to respond. What they find isn't wreckage—it's a massacre. The pilots are dead… but still...

In a different 1990… The Soviet/Warsaw Pact offensive against NATO almost succeeded save for a last ditch defense by NATO forces in the epic Battle of the Weser River. But with the communist advance halted tough decisions lie ahead for NATO. Prime Minister Thatcher and Chancellor Kohl want to counterattack, while the Bush Administration worries about the effects of further war. As NATO deliberates, the United States and Royal Navies gather in the North Sea for a massive offensive against Soviet occupied Norway. In the Soviet Union the Politburo is split between the hawks and doves, and ...

The Last Viking unravels the life of the man who stands head and shoulders above all those who raced to map the last corners of the world. In 1900, the four great geographical mysteries - the Northwest Passage, the Northeast Passage, the South Pole, and the North Pole - remained blank spots on the globe. Within twenty years Roald Amundsen would claim all four prizes.

As World War II raged across the Russian steppes, in Africa and especially in the skies over Europe, elite German and Soviet forces fought a bitter battle in an isolated northern corner of Europe. Here, the battle was for control of the ice-free port of Murmansk, where the Soviet Union received convoy after convoy loaded with British and American tanks, guns, fuel, small arms, food and aircraft. Supplies from the Allied convoys kept the Soviet Union alive at a critical time during the early stages of the war, and Hitler therefore tried every means to stop the convoys.

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST NOVELLA Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost. 2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and...

In the bestselling tradition of Hampton Sides’s In the Kingdom of Ice, a “gripping adventure tale” (The Boston Globe) recounting Dutch polar explorer William Barents’ three harrowing Arctic expeditions—the last of which resulted in a relentlessly challenging year-long fight for...

In this riveting follow-up to The Blood Gospel, the first book in the thrilling and atmospheric Order of the Sanguine series, New York Times bestselling authors James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell deliver a tale of international adventure, intrigue, suspense, and supernatural mystery involving a...

Vilhjálmur Stefánsson left New York in April 1908 to begin his journey northwards and into the Arctic Circle. For the next two years, he made his way northwards to Victoria Island to study an isolated group of Inuit who still used primitive tools and had strong Caucasian features, and whom some believed were descended from Vikings. The journey into these remote areas was incredibly tough and being delayed by blizzards Stefánsson, along with his companions, were forced to eat the tongue of a beached whale that had been dead for at least four years.

Dive into the urgent environmental science and high-stakes geopolitics transforming the frozen frontiers of the north. As rising temperatures shatter seasonal norms and melt ancient permafrost, this immersive exploration brings you to the front lines of climate change. Whether you need a...

In 1743, a Russian ship was blown off course and trapped in ice off the coast of Svalbard (Spitzbergen), a barren Arctic island. Four sailors went ashore with only two days' supplies, and only twenty pounds of flour for food. Upon return they found the ship had vanished, apparently crushed and...

Barrow's Boys is a spellbinding account of perilous journeys to uncharted areas under the most challenging conditions. Fergus Fleming captures the passion for exploration that led a band of men into situations that would humble today's bravest adventurers.

Mawson's Will is the dramatic story of what Sir Edmund Hillary calls "the most outstanding solo journey ever recorded in Antarctic history." For weeks in Antarctica, Douglas Mawson faced some of the most daunting conditions ever known to man: blistering wind, snow, and cold; loss of his companion, his dogs and supplies, the skin on his hands and the soles of his feet; thirst, starvation, disease, snowblindness - and he survived.