The harsh and cold Arctic. Ice-bound seas, islands, archipelagos and shores, ships and ships that have not returned to their home port and are frozen in ice, villages covered in blizzards. An endless icy element hostile to humans. All over the Far North - in the tundra, on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, on ice-covered islands, in abandoned parking lots, there are memorial signs, crosses and tombstones - silent witnesses to the dedication and courage of the heroes who went to conquer the Arctic seas and deserts. The famous names of polar explorers - Roald Amundsen, Willem Barents, Vitus Bering, Ferdinand Wrangel, Semyon Dezhnev, T. DeLong, Dmitry and Khariton Laptev, Pyotr Pakhtusov, Fedot Popov, Vladimir Rusanov, Georgy Sedov, Eduard Toll, John Franklin, Semyon Chelyuskin - forever entered the history of the study of the North. A new book by the writer and journalist, captain 1st rank S. Kovalev tells about the secrets of the missing polar expeditions, the mysteries of the harsh Arctic.