A thrilling, artfully told chronicle of the mostly 19th-century adventurers, madmen and explorers who quested after the North Pole. A marvelous storyteller, Fergus (who also wrote Barrow's Boys and Killing Dragons) interweaves journal excerpts with his own account of the often fateful exploits of Robert Peary, Frederick Cook. Elisha Kent Kane and other Arctic explorers. Though all the starvation, cold, braggadocio and lies, Fleming communicates with grace, clarity and wit the magnetic attraction of what historian Pierre Berton has called the Arctic Grail.  (ARC124, $15.00)