"Death Clouds on Mt Baldy" by Cathy Hufault (Arizona Mountain Publications LLC, $22.95)
No Tucsonan who was here on that November weekend in 1958 can forget the heartbreaking story of the six Boy Scouts on a birthday celebratory hike in the Santa Rita Mountains. A freak winter storm took the lives of three of them.
The desperate search involved hundreds. Hufault, a former Oro Valley mayor, is the sister of one of the survivors, Ralph Coltrin, who encouraged her to write this book.
"The Ópatas: In Search of a Sonoran People" by David A. Yetman (University of Arizona Press, $39.95)
In addition to traveling the area extensively, ethnobotantist Yetman has consulted "more than 200 archival sources" in search of information on this now extinct group of Mexican indigenous people once considered the "largest, most technologically advanced indigenous group in northwest Mexico."
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Packed with detail, neither a fast nor an easy read, this book is a must for scholars of Mexico.
"I'm Alive. What Now? A Personal Journey Into Permanent Disability and Back Out Again" by Carol Savard. (King's Life Publishing, $14.95)
Savard's journals recount her determined, successful five-year struggle in rehabilitation after a terrible automobile accident.
"When Your School Bus Goes to Mexico - Cuando Tu Camino Escolar Se Va a Mexico" by M.S. Holm. (Great West Publishing, $17.95)
This charming tale in Spanish and English, involving a superannuated American school bus that had a varied and useful life in Mexico, is told by someone who knows it very well.
"Written in the Margins: Poems Touching the Essence of Life" by Alma Margaret Permar (Wheatmark, $17.95)
Love, loss, beliefs and personal relationships are core topics for writer, educator and businesswoman Permar.
"All the Faces I Have Been: An Actor's Notebook" by William Killian (Imago Press, $11)
The retired director of pastoral services at Tucson Medical Center writes that he is "an actor, poet, minister, and marriage and family therapist who loves the game of basketball," all of which are reflected in this thoughtful work of poetry.
"Rita the Bird Dog Travels the Great Plains" and "Saguaro, Sahuaro, Sah-wah-roh: Rita the Bird Dog Sonoran Desert Series" by Karla Lehmann (Geographic Tongue LLC, $9.95 each)
Color photography, rhymes, songs, history and culture - along with English, German and Spanish vocabularies - make up this children's nature and science series with Rita, an origami-style dog, leading the way. The book is intended for preschoolers and the early elementary grades.
"Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge: A Photographer's and Visitor's Guide" by Ralph H. Wetmore II (self-published, $29.95)
Accomplished lightning photographer Wetmore turns his camera on wildlife.
"Before Noon!?" by Charles A. and Teresita L. McGinley (Lulu, $15)
The McGinleys subtitle their book "Stories From the Lighter Side of Diplomacy." It is a chronological record of McGinley's years in the U.S. Information Agency (most of them shared by his wife, Teresita) from 1951 to 1980, including postings in Asia, Africa and Australia.
"In the Wake of a Dream" by Lisa M. Hopper (HC Visions LLC, $17.95)
The story of World Care, a Tucson-based international charity ("Recycling for Humanity First") founded in 1996 by radiologist Hopper and successfully developed with determination and sustained by a series of remarkable dreams.
"The Brightness: Secrets of the Third Angel, and the Bridge at Kino Springs" by SM Nona (Trafford, $24.50)
In this combination of physics and metaphysics, Dr. Fo, short for Lloyd Man Foglesby, an astrophysicist, has discovered the "elusive solution to the Unified Theory," a problem Albert Einstein struggled with. Nona, as an observer, relates how the charismatic Dr. Fo confronts his critics and wins a Nobel Prize.
"Murder by Electrocution: A Novel" by David V. MacCollum (MacCollum Books, $20)
Sierra Vista resident MacCollum, the author of several nonfiction books on safety of construction-industry equipment, has decided to spread the word to a general audience using fiction.
Sam Montgomery was operating a crane involved in building a freeway overpass when its arm struck an electrical wire and burned him alive. This is the story of the court trial that followed, the process and the people involved. It is an eye-opener.
"Hunting Seasons" by Lang Gore (Unrelenting Press, $12)
In a cover letter, Gore identifies his work as "a novel-length alliterative poem about doomed love … in the Pacific Northwest." Characters' lives spin out of control in a busy account of violence, drugs and philosophy in that area's forest and wood-products industry.
If you are an author and live in Southern Arizona and would like your book to be included in this column, please send a copy to: J.C. Martin, P.O. Box 65388, Tucson, AZ 85728-5388. State the price and give the name of someone who can be reached in case additional information is needed. After the titles appear in this column, they go to the Pima Community College West Campus library.
