about

North Arrow Press is an independent publisher of fiction shaped by geography, history, and economic and technological change.

Flagship author Mark James is a critically acclaimed novelist, geographer, and Navy veteran whose interconnected geopolitical novels form the expanding Wartmann Universe. The series examines how global crises unfold across governments, militaries, institutions, communities, and individual lives.

James's novel Friendship Games earned a Kirkus Star and a Bronze Medal from the Military Writers Society of America. Set during a rapidly escalating war between the United States and Iran, the novel follows political leaders, military personnel, and civilians on both sides as a regional conflict spins beyond anyone's control.

Its sequel, The Compass Room, expands the Wartmann Universe as the consequences of that war reach Washington and destabilize the international order. The novel received positive reviews from Kirkus Reviews, Midwest Book Review, BookLife by Publishers Weekly, and the Military Writers Society of America.

Alter Road, the novel that began it all, is available in a newly revised second edition. Set in an America weakened by decades of deindustrialization and widening economic inequality, this standalone Wartmann Universe story follows Detroit's descent into unrest, organized violence, military intervention, and international crisis. Its events lay the foundation for Friendship Games and the wider series.

All North Arrow Press titles are available in paperback, Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and audiobook editions.

Paperback editions are available to bookstores and libraries through Ingram distribution.

flagship author
Mark James

Mark James is a novelist, geographer, and U.S. Navy veteran.

His critically acclaimed novel Friendship Games reimagines the USS Maine incident that helped spark the Spanish–American War of 1898. This time, it is a U.S. aircraft carrier sinking in the Persian Gulf and plunging America into crisis. The novel earned a Kirkus Star, was selected as one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of the Year, and received a Bronze Medal from the Military Writers Society of America.

Friendship Games launched the Wartmann Series, which continues in The Compass Room. Together, the novels explore the political, military, and human consequences of a changing world order. James's debut novel, Alter Road—designated A Wartmann Universe Story—is a standalone account of unrest in Detroit after decades of deindustrialization, economic decline, and corporate indifference.

James served in the U.S. Navy during the final years of the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, with assignments in the Philippines, Japan, Guam, the Aleutian Islands, and Hawaii. He later earned a PhD in Geography from the University of Cincinnati and has taught political, economic, and urban geography for more than twenty-five years.

He lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore and is currently dreaming up the next novel in the Wartmann Series.