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High Fire Danger: Poems of Love and Nature
In High Fire Danger, Marie Zhuikov meditates on the transformative power of love and the magic and menace of nature. Written over the past thirty-eight years, Zhuikov’s enchanting poems offer unique insights and cutting humor. They take readers from her home in Minnesota to far-flung locales across the Great Lakes, Canada, Scotland, the Caribbean, and even to another planet. These accessible poems are filled with the heat and longing of romantic love, but also a deep love for family, community, and nature. They’ll scorch your soul like wildfire.
Publisher: Poetry Harbor, December 2025
ISBN: 978-1-886895-69-0
67 pages, soft cover, $15 retail
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The Path of Totality
A young man is mystified by why he can’t see an eclipse. A scammer falls for a woman he’s targeting. A nondescript gray house hides a secret from a curious woman walking her dog. A girl discovers a mummified Viking bog boy while on a birding tour. A college student gets trapped in a biosphere after hours. Hemingway’s stolen stories are found in New Jersey. Singing in the shower takes on a whole new meaning. And a librarian develops her own theories about the influence of trees. United by the power of appearances to deceive and captivate, Marie Zhuikov’s tales glisten with the magic and menace of everyday lives.
Publisher: Cornerstone Press, February 2025
ISBN: 978-1-960329-70-7
198 pages, soft cover, $24.95 retail
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Meander North
Midwest Book Silver Award-Winner, Nature Writing
Bite-sized memories and adventures written on a weekly basis come together in Meander North, a blog-memoir. Collected over nine years on Zhuikov’s “Marie’s Meanderings” blog, the 51 quirky essays are arranged by season, from an insider’s view of Duluth’s Christmas City of the North Parade, a spring cleaning trip to the local dump, a gleeful summer morning paddleboard on a cabin lake, to a meditative fall walk on woodland trail. The book finishes with other topics such as, “Brushes with Fame,” where Zhuikov describes close calls and meetings with famous (and not so famous) people, and “Bookish Adventures,” which detail her literary leanings and incidents that have occurred during book signings for her previous novels. Meander North is a celebration of Minnesota, its seasons and traditions.
Publisher: Nodin Press, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-947237-47-6
205 pages, soft cover, $19.95 retail
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E-book available through Kobo, Barnes and Noble and Amazon, prices vary.
Going Coastal
Honorable Mention, Northeast MN Book Awards
Marie’s short story, “Water Witch” is included in this anthology of Lake Superior-inspired short stories, which won honorable mention for fiction from the Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards for 2017. Like the horizon blurs between sky and water, reality and fantasy merge in these tales of human struggle on the edge of one of the world’s largest lakes. If you like lighthouses, ships, beaches, ghosts, road trips up the shore, history, storms, agates, islands, family drama, and the mystical power of water, you’ll enjoy this book. Proceeds from sales support Lake Superior Writers, a nonprofit group that fosters the artistic development of writers and a vibrant literary arts community in northeastern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin.
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68201-069-3
144 pages, soft cover, $15 retail
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Plover Landing
This sequel to Eye of the Wolf finds Melora St. James working to restore the piping plover, an endangered shorebird, to Lake Superior. When her former boyfriend Drew shows up, and they find a mysterious boy lost on the beach, the story takes a surprising turn. In helping the boy, Melora and Drew learn secrets about themselves, building community, and coming to terms with the past.
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., 2014
ISBN: 978-0-87839-727-3
225 pages, soft cover, $14.95 retail
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Eye of the Wolf
Due to isolation and inbreeding, Isle Royale’s wolves are dying out. The alpha wolves of the island’s largest pack know what will save their pack — they must escape from the island and mix their blood with other wolves. The only way to do this is by boat. They need the help of Drew Tamsen, a boat pilot for the island’s resort. In luring him into supernatural bondage as a werewolf, the wolves put a kink in Drew’s budding relationship with Melora St. James, a waitress. Melora tries to return Drew to his human state but must content with the scientists out to capture him, and a she-werewolf. The balance between survival and extinction for the wolves teeters back and forth. Will Melora succeed? Will the wolves survive?
Publisher: North Star Press of St. Cloud, Inc., 2011
ISBN: 978-0-87839-441-8
279 pages, soft cover, Retail price $14.95
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Marie's Meanderings 