Richard Walter's Prehistory of Mauke: An Ethnoarchaeological Report weaves together traditional stories about sites on the island with archaeological observations.Years of the Pooh-Bah: A Cook Islands History, by Dick Scott, is a recent and readable book, lavishly illustrated with historical photographs.Alphons MJ Kloosterman's Discoverers of the Cook Islands & the Names They Gave gives a brief history of each island, the early legends of each and a record of its European contact.History of Rarotonga, up to 1853, by Taira Rere, is a concise account of the arrival of Christianity in the Cook Islands, particularly in Rarotonga, with sketches of the various participants in the islands' history.If you can get past the pro-missionary slant, books like the Reverend William Gill's Gems of the Coral Islands and William Wyatt Gill's (no relation) Cook Islands Custom are interesting 19th century accounts island life.Paul Theroux's The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific has a chapter on a trip to Aitutaki.Robert Dean Frisbie wrote about living and trading in the Cooks in The Book of Puka-Puka and The Island of Desire.One of the best known residents has to be Tom Neale, who wrote of his life as the hermit of Suwarrow in An Island to Oneself.Cook Island Politics: The Inside Story anthologises 22 writers and their takes on the islands' intrigues and shenanigans up to the late 1970s.Local tales are recounted in Cook Island Legends and The Ghost at Tokatarava and Other Stories from the Cook Islands, both by local writer Jon Jonassen.The islands' famous quilts are examined in Lynnsay Rongokea's Tivaevae: Portraits of Cook Islands Quilting.