CHIMNEY POND TALES: Yarns Told by Leroy Dudley, by Clayton Hall, Jane Thomas, and Elizabeth Harmon, Pamola Press, 114 pages, $9.95.

Leroy Dudley was a guide of some renown on Maine’s majestic Mount Katahdin during the late 19th century until his death in 1942. Ray, as he was called by all who knew him, spent his summers guiding and his winters trapping, and it was during those days that he would often recall the stories of his youth to all who relished hearing them at his own campsite on Chimney Pond.

How he could spin a yarn.

From tales of the Indian god of Thunder, Pamola, to stories of the mysterious reproduction of his frying pans, Dudley’s folklore has become a treasured part of Maine history.

Told through the labors of love of Beth Harmon and Jane Thomas, these tales are recounted here with such detail and precision that readers are bound to smell the tea brewing over an open fire and hear the kindling cracking and spitting from the hearth.

Dudley was a private man with a public purpose: To relay all the wonders of his beloved Mount Katahdin home.

In the early 1930s, Clayton Hall, a Yale Divinity School student, made the mountain trek to capture Dudley’s magic on an Edison dictating machine. Most of that project was lost, but because of Hall’s niece, Beth Harmon, and her friend, Jane Thomas, the tales were patched together with the same love and affection that had kept them fresh in the women’s minds from the time they first heard them as little girls.

This is Maine folklore at its best, and readers everywhere, especially those who have only known Mount Katahdin as a distant peak, will want to get up close and warm themselves by the delightful fire of friendship that will encompass them in “Chimney Pond Tales.”

CREATIVE SURVIVAL, by Sally K. Butcher, Old Bess Publishing Co., 201 pages.

Storytelling takes on a different form in the narrative history of Azel Adams, of The Forks.

Through the efforts of Sally K. Butcher, who serves as a guide of sorts of her own as she sifts through the wonderful life and times of Adams, we get a special local color version of life in Maine during a simpler time.

This was a time in the early part of the 20th century when men worked the land, too. But there’s no folklore here, mind you, just fact, sometimes hard and cold, about long, perilous winters, that challenged the strongest of souls, and long days of living off the land that could provide bountiful pleasures, despite those perils.

Adams’ tales paint a picture of a lifestyle long gone from most Maine towns, but nonetheless remaining as an integral part of any telling of the history that is uniquely Maine.

LITTLE PIECES, by Roger B. Farquhar, self-published, 100 pages, $5.99.

Farquhar’s brilliant career as a newspaperman is recounted in story form in his recently released “Little Pieces.”

The former Bangor Daily News staffer, who would go on to journalistic heights with The Boston Globe, the Montgomery County Sentinel, and The Washington Post, captures the real spirit of reporting in this delightful account of the many highlights in his 40-year newspaper career.

From lunch with President John F. Kennedy to Farquhar’s days as a World War II correspondent, this is storytelling from the eyes of a seasoned writer.

Regular people like you and me don’t think like reporters. We don’t sniff out the story. We don’t possess the timing for it nor the sense of the kill when it nears completion.

Readers will delight in the tales of The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward as he tracks down stories lesser men wouldn’t dare to pursue. They will marvel at the author’s sensitivity to a dying bird, a senseless victim of yet another oil spill. But Farquhar’s genius perhaps rests in his ability to tell a tale in a few simple words.

While others need to ramble and embellish, the author will type just what’s needed. Shorten the sentence, then tell the tale.

I’m glad I had the chance to meet him.

Ron Brown is a free-lance writer who resides in Bangor.