Books of local interest

Massena native Marc Spicer has brought back the Patriot, who was the subject of seven comic books created by Massena Comics in the 1990s.

The Patriot is now the subject of "Saviors Among Us: Situation Critical,” a full-length self-published novel.

The novel uses the Massena Comics comic books as a loose history. In the novel, “The Patriot has no choice but to form, and learn to rely on, a new team of young heroes” after a nemesis returns, according to a press release.

Mr. Spicer said the book, which sells for $16.95, can be ordered at any Borders or Waldenbooks store or by going to the book’s Web site: at www.saviorsamongus.com. It can be downloaded for $8 at www.lulu.com.

Mr. Spicer is a seventh-grade teacher of English/language arts in Malone.

Former Watertown resident Susan Peterson Gateley, now of Wolcott, Wayne County, has self-published, through Whiskey Hill Press, “Twinkle Toes and the Riddle of the Lake.”

The book concerns “a crabby cat named Twinkle Toes, a lousy navigator, and an old wooden boat” as they journey across Lake Ontario to Canada to find answers to a mysterious disappearance.

Along the way, the characters learn a lot about Lake Ontario in a fact-based narrative the author says is written for the young and young at heart. It also contains historical information about the area. It sells for $15.95 and is available through barnesandnoble.com and at several independent bookstores between Rochester and Syracuse, including River’s End bookstore in Oswego.

“The Water in Between — A Photographic Celebration of Lake Champlain,” a coffee table book focusing on Lake Champlain and the Lake Champlain basin, has been released by Huntington Graphics, Burlington, Vt.

The book features 120 color photos of Lake Champlain and the surrounding region, including the Vermont and New York sides of the lake as well as images from Quebec and the Richelieu River.

The book concludes with a 12-page narrative on the history and geography of the region. More than 35 photographers from Vermont, New York and Québec are represented.

The book retails for $29.95 and is available at area bookstores and at online retailers.

Arcadia Publishing, as part of its Postcard History Series, has published a collection titled “The Thousand Islands.”

The postcards in the book are from the late collector Bronson A. Quackenbush.

“Few other regions of North America have ever attracted the level of interest by card publishers, and rightly so,” Fred H. Rollins wrote in the book’s introduction.

The images focus on scenes “decades before the motocar” when trains and steamships brought scores of tourists and summer residents to the Thousand Islands.

The $21.99 book is available at local retailers and on the publisher’s Web site atwww.arcadiapublishing.com.

Also available from the same retailers is a collection of 15 postcards featuring images in the book, which sells for $7.99.

Compiled by Times staff writer Chris Brock