Books by Spike Walker

A Malaysian cargo ship on its way from Seattle, Washington to China ran aground off the coast of western Alaska's Aleutian Islands on December 8, 2004 during a brutal storm, leading to one of the most incredible Coast Guard rescue missions. This title offers an account of survival and death in the unforgiving Alaskan waters.

A true-life glimpse of the dangerous work regularly performed by the US Coast Guard Search and Rescue service. This is an account of the rescue of the fishing crew from the "La Conte" as it sank off the coast of Alaska in 90-foot seas, one January night in 1998.

Nights of Ice is a critically acclaimed account of the dangerous and harrowing job of fishing off of the treacherous, subzero Alaskan coastline.Spike Walker has spent more than a decade fishing in the subzero hell of Alaska's coastal waters. This collection--coming on the heels of his classic memoir Working on the Edge--is a testament to the courage of those who brave nature's wrath each fishing season, and to the uncontrolled power of nature herself. The crewmen in Nights of Ice face a constant onslaught of roaring waves, stories-high swells, and life-stealing ice. Tested by the elements, these seamen battle for their vessels and their lives, on every page evincing a level of courage and a will to live seldom found elsewhere in modern society.

In a breathtaking, action-packed account that combines his personal story with the stories of survivors of the industry's most harrowing disasters, Spike Walker's Working on the Edge re-creates the boom years of Alaskan crab fishing and the crash that followed.No profession pits man against nature more brutally than king crab fishing in the frigid, unpredictable waters of the Bering Sea. The yearly death toll is staggering (forty-two men in 1988 alone); the conditions are beyond most imaginations (90-mph Arctic winds, 25-foot seas, and super-human stretches of on-deck labor); but the payback, if one survives can be tens of thousands of dollars for a month-long season. Walker rivetingly depicts the modern-day gold rush that drew hundreds of fortune-and adventure-hunters to Alaska's dangerous waters.