There are many books about Maine, both fiction and nonfiction. Some of the books that can be found at BookMarcs are self-published by authors. The BookMarcs staff wrote and published "The Story of Bangor: A Brief History of Maine's Queen City." This is the only narrative history of Bangor available. The price is $12.95. We also carry books by Maine publishers such as Down East Books, Tilbury House, Blackberry Press, and the University of Maine Press. You're invited to browse the new books below, which have joined our stock within the past few weeks, or see a list of our other Maine Books.

Leeman has been a fishing "addict" since childhood, when he looked into his father's fishing creel and saw it full of gorgeous brook trout. His main interest has been all facets of fly-fishing and fly-tying, as well as outdoor photography. For a number of years, he owned an operated Bob Leeman's Trout Shop in Brewer, Maine, and produced and directed a series of television fishing films for WLBZ-TV in Bangor, Maine. His articles have appeared in various national and local outdoors magazines and newspapers.

He has visited fishing sites all across Maine's vast waterway system and into Canada in pursuit of his avocations.

Illustrated throughout with Leeman's own maps and color & black-and-white photos.

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J.H. Hall has been fishing most of his life and fly-fishing Maine rivers and ponds for more than 37 years.

This book brings together some of his favorite fly-fishing experiences, using his fishing trips as the platform to introduce the reader to the people and the rivers that color Maine and his life, bringing all of us engaging life lessons and new experiences.
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Penobscot Bay is the jewel of mid-coast Maine, a landscape of close-knit communities and picturesque ports whose scenery is matched only by its rich history. Granite from the quarries on Vinalhaven has built bridges, banks, and monuments in twenty-three states. Ships launched in Searsport and Belfast have traveled the world.

Harry Gratwick explores these and other episodes in Penobscot Bay's past, from the first recorded solar eclipse in Islesboro in 1780 to a covert meeting between Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in 1941. He also recalls some of the region's most indelible characters and traditions, including Orrington's Earl "On The River" Morrill and the Vinalhaven-North Haven basketball rivalry.
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On April 30, 1911, a fire ignited in Frank Green's hay shed that changed the city of Bangor forever. From the ashes of the Great Fire, the logging and mill town emerged as a modernized metropolis.

In this collection of retrospective articles, Wayne E. Reilly takes a look at the town of Bangor in the years before the fire, when illegal barrooms and brothels were as rampant as the outbreaks of typhoid and smallpox. He explores Bangor in its boomtown days, when ice harvesting and logging were thriving industries, when steamboats ferried passengers between cities, and when a lively theatre scene drew audiences to the "Little Broadway in the Great North Woods."
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This is a two-volume, slip-cased, set of the illustrated history of the Asticou Azalea Garden and Thuya Garden in Northeast Harbor on Mount Desert Island, which are celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2009. This edition will be offered as a slip-cased set only through 2009, after which the books will be sold separately.

The Gardens are owned and operated by the Mount Desert Land and Garden Preserve, a non-profit organization formerly called the Island Foundation, founded by David and Peggy Rockefeller in 1971. The organization owns and oversees the operation of 140 acres of properties on Mount Desert Island, gardens and lands that are accessible to the public throughout the year.

The slipcover, pictured at left, protects the covers of the two individual books. To view their covers, use the links for each garden name in the text above.
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Carole Lambert's first book, Sea Glass Chronicles: Whispers from the Past, lead readers through the adventure of collecting and identifying glass and pottery shards from untold journeys – decades and centuries past.

Now, in A Passion for Sea Glass, she opens up homes and workshops of collectors who give new purpose to these shoreline finds. Here you’ll meet an artist who created a series of stained-glass windows made entirely of sea glass, a diver who brings up rare and valuable glass from the deep, designers of sea glass jewelry and hair ornaments, those who make mosaics, bird houses, and even gnome homes, all embellished with sea glass.

This volume is for not only those who are already passionate collectors of sea glass, but for new sea glass devotees – and devotes-to-be.
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Once upon a time, the skier’s paradise known as Sugarloaf consisted of just a single path, hand-cleared by a small group of avid skiers. They shared the dream of skiing down the mountain named for the wide-open snowfields that made it appear sugar coated well into the spring. In the summer of 1950 they devoted their weekends to carving out a ski slope on this special Maine mountain. That slope – which they named “Winter’s Way” – became the first attraction in a place that has grown into a four-season, multisport resort.

John Christie fell in love with the place in 1954 and he’s been a Sugarloafer ever since, even serving as general manager of SUGARLOAF/USA. In The Story of Sugarloaf, he tells all about the mountain’s ups and downs, including the resort’s explosive growth during the 1960s, the financial slide that followed, and finally Sugarloaf’s comeback and expansion. Knowledgeable about the sport and business of skiing, Christie is the inside source for the story of one magnificent mountain.
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Thomas Szelog's second book of remarkable photographs, after Our Point of View: Fourteen Years at a Maine Lighthouse, grew out of a challenge the Maine nature photographer set himself: find and photograph – within the confines of his 70-acre, fairly typical central Maine property – at least one interesting, surprising, beautiful, or memorable image every week for an entire year.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau found an abundance of things to ponder within a mile of one modest pond. A century and a half later, Thomas Szelog exercised equal patience and close observation along the shore of a small Maine river. The result is an evocative book that opens our eyes to how closely we live with nature even now, in this 21st century.
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The author, an 84-year-old retired surgeon, has seen a lot of advances in medical care in his day, but looking back over the decades, he wonders if all the movement has been forward. Gone are the days of doctor house calls. Going is the personal touch in the doctor/patient relationship.

This book is a collection of stories that, rather than being literal reminiscences, are a “fiction based on fact” that distills the essence of his experiences with patients during his long practice in Bangor, Maine.

Palmer's stories provide a glance backwards at the art of medicine, when there was time for the doctor/patient relationship to grow and blossom, when listening and caring for another human being in need was the satisfying essence of doctoring.
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Steve Tetreault’s true account of his time spent as a ranger in Maine’s Baxter State Park, a wilderness area of over 204,000 acres. In this collection of anecdotal stories, Tetreault describes his life as a new ranger in a strange place, meeting new people – and learning about his wild neighbors. If you are a lover of the outdoors in general, or Maine and Baxter State Park in particular, you will appreciate Steve’s depiction of a park ranger’s life from the point of view of a young and idealistic person.
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The authors have spent much of their lives researching and collecting log rules and documents of logging history. Butterworth's collection of Maine rule makers' wares is now on display at the Maine State museum. Whalen has coverred much of the rest of New England. The history of rule-making is covered from the earliest tables in the 1700s right up to the present era.

The book is abundantly illustrated with pictures of the tools and the men using them, including close shots of of marks and tables, and with documents and maps.
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Few regions in New England can equal the scenic beauty and rich history of the Blue Hill and Ellsworth region. Situated in Hancock County, in Maine's Down East, the area was settled in the 1760s by hearty settlers harvesting blueberry barrens and fishing the coastal waters. In the 19th century, summer tourists began arriving, and they built elaborate summer estates along Parker Point and Hancock Point. The vintage postcards in this book show scenes of towns around Blue Hill and Ellsworth, such as Franklin, Sullivan, Sorrento, and Lamoine, as well as rare views of the 1933 Ellsworth fire and 1923 flood, Blue Hill Fair, and George Stevens Academy.

Shaw's thirty-year passion for vintage postcard collecting has culminated in this book, which features postcards from his personal collection, as well as private collections, public libraries, and the Maine Historic Preservation Commission.
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The Civil War correspondence of Hezekiah Long.

When President Lincoln issued his call in 1862 for 300,000 more troops, 37-year-old Hezekiah Long of South Thomaston was among those to volunteer. He enlisted in September of 1862 as a private in the 20th Maine Infantry Regiment. Of inestimable value to modern Civil War historians and history buffs is the survival of 128 letters Long wrote to his wife, in which he recounts his wartime experiences and chronicles the major campaigns of the 20th Maine. On a more personal level, he writes home about the poor food, late pay, weather, poor living conditions, disease, and his own recurring battle with rheumatism.

The letters, whose existence has been unknown to historians until now, are published by permission of Charles Snowdale, a great-grandson of Hezekiah Long, and his wife Eleanor. They have been edited by Richardson's Civil War Round Table. The book is illustrated throughout with drawings, photographs, and maps.

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Back in print by popular demand, this updated, full-color edition of follows famed naturalist Henry David Thoreau's sojourns in Maine and offers modern commentary on how the route has changed. Drawing on Thoreau's faithfully recorded itineraries in his classic book The Maine Woods, author J. Parker Huber provides a comprehensive map and summaries of Thoreau's travels.

From Moosehead Lake to Katahdin, returning to Bangor down the Penobscot River, today's traveler can use the book's revised maps to retrace these routes for an hour, a day, or several weeks. Huber artfully organizes these excursions into a grand tour of Maine's most impressive scenery. Beautiful color photography by Bridget Besaw shows the remote areas readers can still explore. Pictures of local flora and fauna help readers identify local species which continue to thrive.

Thoreau was an early advocate for conservation, and his observations of people and places infuse The Wildest Country with his appreciation of his surroundings – his delight in the elusive laughing loons; his sampling of indigenous tea substitutes; and his pact with Penobscot guide Joe Polis to exchange every bit of knowledge each possessed within 11 days.

The Wildest Country is an exciting and memorable journey into Thoreau's, and our, Maine. It's an essential book for naturalists, travelers, and armchair adventurers who want a glimpse of the past – as well as a look at what we can still preserve for future generations of explorers.

Also, take a look at the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Map and Guide, a 17" by 28" wall map that shows all three of Thoreau's expeditions.
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The 20th Anniversary, Fifth Edition!

The definitive cruising reference to Maine's complex coast – its deep bays and rivers, its offshore islands, its secret gunkholes, and its fabled cruising harbors.

Additional coverage of New Brunswick's Fundy coast and the Saint John River.
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A vivid portrait of Maine life in the 19th Century, a time of great prosperity and grim poverty, of fortunes in lumber and real estate gained overnight and lost just as quickly.

In those turbulent times, three women – Maude Webber, Fanny Abbott Hogan, and Elizabeth Emerson – strove to overcome society's prejudices in order to survive and even win a measure of independence. Their lives suddenly collide in Bangor's notorious house with the pink chimneys.
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Miriam Colwell's Contentment Cove – her fourth novel set in Maine and her first in more than five decades – is a riveting story of class distinctions in a 1950s Down East coastal village during a time of cultural change. Meet Dot-Fran, Hilary, and Mina, three residents of a Maine coastal village in the 1950s. Dot-Fran, the youngest, is a native; she runs the town's drug store. Hilary, middle-aged, is a worldly artist. The wealthy Mina and her husband retired to the town after being enchanted with its charm during a one-night visit. Their disparate lives become entwined and eventually clash tragically.
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More than just lighthouses and lobster, Maine is a state with a rich history and a personality all its own. Maine Impressions is a lush portrait of this beloved state, with images from the coast, cities, and the interior. In addition to the iconic sites, the book features a peppering of festivals and locations that are loved by locals. Visitors will want to take home a bit of Maine culture – and Mainers will cherish this tribute to their state.
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According to historian Benjamin Band, the first record of a Jew in Maine concerns Susman Abrams, a tanner who resided in Union until his death at 87 in 1830. Historical records beginning in 1849 also tell of a small Bangor community that organized a synagogue and purchased a burial ground. But it was not until the late 19th century that Jewish communities grew large enough to establish multiple synagogues, Hebrew schools for boys, kosher butcher shops, and Jewish bakeries. Eventually there were Jewish charitable societies, community centers, and social clubs across the state. Now, 150 years later, Jews serve every Maine community in every possible capacity, free from the barriers of social or religious discrimination. This book honors the accomplishments of Maine's Jewish residents. Buy This Book