Staff Picks

Immerse yourself in the lush and rugged Colorado wilderness on a sweeping epic of love and fate. Using local history and personal narratives, Colorado author Shelly Read tells the story of a woman from the now-flooded town of Iola, CO, and follows her in her quest for truth and answers.

 

Publisher description:

Seventeen-year-old Victoria Nash runs the household on her family's peach farm in the small ranch town of Iola, Colorado--the sole surviving female in a family of troubled men. Wilson Moon is a young drifter with a mysterious past, displaced from his tribal land and determined to live as he chooses. Victoria encounters Wil by chance on a street corner, a meeting that profoundly alters both of their young lives, unknowingly igniting as much passion as danger. When tragedy strikes, Victoria leaves the only life she has ever known. She flees into the surrounding mountains where she struggles to survive in the wilderness with no clear notion of what her future will bring.

 

Find Go as a River in our online catalog

Last year, Colorado author Vauhini Vara's debut novel The Immortal King Rao captivated readers and became a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Hear her speak this Friday at JLF Colorado, then don't miss her haunting new story collection coming next week. Publisher's Weekly gives it a starred review, saying, "Vara invigorates with emotional insights, whimsy, and a precision with language. It’s a remarkable achievement."

 

Publisher's description:

Pushing intimacy to its limits in prose of unearthly beauty, Vauhini Vara explores the nature of being a child, parent, friend, sibling, neighbor, or lover, and the relationships between self and others. A young girl reads the encyclopedia to her elderly neighbor, who is descending into dementia. A pair of teenagers seek intimacy as phone-sex operators. A competitive sibling tries to rise above the drunken mess of her own life to become a loving aunt. One sister consumes the ashes of another. And, in the title story, an experimental artist takes on his most ambitious project yet: constructing a life-size ark according to the Bible's specifications. In a world defined by estrangement, where is communion to be found? The characters in This Is Salvaged, unmoored in turbulence, are searching fervently for meaning, through one another.

 

Only in Boulder can you find such interesting subjects for photos. Jacot has really captured the spirit of Boulder. Join in the fun and see how many photos you recognize--maybe that's your wish that your dogs could talk, or your pink flamingoed yard. And nothing says "Boulder" more than the "Free Range Children" sign. Take a few minutes to enjoy the joy that is our city.

 

Publisher's description: 

Take a walk through the City of Boulder with photographer Karen Jacot. Whether you’re a first time visitor or a longtime local, you’ll discover things that surprise and delight you. Jacot’s eye for the “extra” in the everyday ordinary tells the story of Boulderites’ lives and the ways in which we’re all connected through streets and strides.

 

Kali Fajardo-Anstine's Woman of Light is an intergenerational saga that spans the late 1800s in the Lost Territories of the southwest to the 1930s in Denver. The main protagonist Luz endeavors to understand how her Indigenous Chicano family thrived and how they were threatened.

 

Publisher's description:

1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of an arroyo, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidre's fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show. 1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family.

 

I was completely drawn in by Fajardo-Anstine's rich story that captures the joys and sorrows of love and life. Woman of Light beautifully and hauntingly explores family systems over four generations, friendships, classism, racism, and the divine, all set in Denver and The Lost Territory of Colorado.

 

Publisher's description: 

1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of an arroyo, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidre's fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show. 1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family.

Find Woman of Light in our online catalog. 

Primarily focusing on a character named Luz Lopez in 1930's Denver, Woman of Light depicts a Denver that is eerily similar to our own. Facing police brutality, class and racial tensions, set against the backdrop of a worldwide recession, young Luz and her family do their best to survive in this hostile world. With flashbacks to the Lost Territory in the late 19th and early 20th century, we see how the Lopez family's way of life has become disrupted with the immigration of Anglos to Colorado. Like Sandra Cisneros before her, Fajardo-Anstine does an absolutely incredible job depicting the universal joys and pains of Chicana womanhood. Despite taking place nearly 100 years ago, the lives of Luz, Lizette, and Maria Josie still ring familiar to audiences today. With just two books under her belt, I feel confident in saying that Fajardo-Anstine is one of my generation's great Chicana authors.

Publisher's description:

1890: When Desiderya Lopez, The Sleepy Prophet, finds an abandoned infant on the banks of an arroyo, she recognizes something in his spirit and brings him home. Pidre will go on to become a famous showman in the Anglo West whose main act, Simodecea, is Pidre's fearless, sharpshooting wife, who wrangles bears as part of his show. 1935: Luz "Little Light" Lopez and her brother Diego work the carnival circuit in downtown Denver. Luz, is a tea leaf reader, and Diego is a snake charmer. One day, a pale-faced woman in white fur asks Luz for a reading, calling her by a name that only her brother knows. Later that night at a party downtown, Luz sees Diego dancing with this pale-faced woman, which results in a brawl with the local white supremacist group. Diego leaves town for cover and Luz is left trying to get justice for her brother and family.

 

A highlight of the summer for Colorado readers, Denver author Kali Fajardo-Anstine returns with a full length novel to follow the incredible success of her story collection Sabrina & Corina, a finalist for the National Book Award. This moving family saga will appeal to readers who enjoyed Kristin Valdez Quade's The Five Wounds and Luis Alberto Urrea's The House of Broken Angels.

 

Publisher's Description:

There is one every generation, a seer who keeps the stories.

Luz "Little Light" Lopez, a tea leaf reader and laundress, is left to fend for herself after her older brother, Diego, a snake charmer and factory worker, is run out of town by a violent white mob. As Luz navigates 1930s Denver, she begins to have visions that transport her to her Indigenous homeland in the nearby Lost Territory. Luz recollects her ancestors' origins, how her family flourished, and how they were threatened. She bears witness to the sinister forces that have devastated her people and their homelands for generations. In the end, it is up to Luz to save her family stories from disappearing into oblivion.

Written in Kali Fajardo-Anstine's singular voice, the wildly entertaining and complex lives of the Lopez family fill the pages of this multigenerational western saga. Woman of Light is a transfixing novel about survival, family secrets, and love--filled with an unforgettable cast of characters, all of whom are just as special, memorable, and complicated as our beloved heroine, Luz.

Find Woman of Light in our online catalog.

I found this to be an enjoyable read. Peter Heller, a local author, writes beautifully about natural places in the West, which adds to the enjoyment of this book. The book's namesake, Celine, was a formidable woman in her prime, and now at 68, she still offers up many surprises--even to her husband, Pete. As a private investigator unearthing missing persons, her past and abilities are the stuff of fantastical legends (think James Bond packaged in an older Nancy Drew). Celine is also a delight. The way she takes time for a cup of tea, faces off with a biker gang, or just the special rhythm she has with her husband make her a pleasure to follow. It feels like Peter Heller had fun with this one.

 

Publisher's description:
Working out of her jewel box of an apartment at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, Celine has made a career of tracking down missing persons, and she has a better record at it than the FBI. But when a young woman, Gabriela, asks for her help, a world of mystery and sorrow opens up. Gabriela's father was a photographer who went missing on the border of Montana and Wyoming. He was assumed to have died from a grizzly mauling, but his body was never found. Now, as Celine and her partner head to Yellowstone National Park, investigating a trail gone cold, it becomes clear that they are being followed.

 

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The author, a former CU Journalism professor, has researched the 1920s in Denver, especially the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in the city of Denver and state elected offices. The heroine, a theology professor in Chicago, returns to her hometown to solve the mysterious death of her father and runs into several individuals who have benefitted from keeping dirty secrets about government and society leaders. Learn about Five Points in the Twenties compared to your knowledge of that Denver neighborhood today.

 

Publisher description:

In the winter of 1923, Professor Annalee Spain--a daring but overworked theologian at a small Chicago Bible college--receives a cryptic telegram calling her home to Denver to solve the mystery of the murder of her beloved but estranged father. For a young Black woman, searching for answers in a city ruled by the KKK could mean real danger. Still, with her literary hero Sherlock Holmes as inspiration, Annalee launches her hunt for clues, attracting two surprising allies: Eddie, a relentless young white boy searching for his missing father, and Jack, a handsome Black pastor who loves nightclub dancing and rides in his sporty car, awakening Annalee's heart to the surprising highs and lows of romantic love. With their help, Annalee follows clues that land her among Denver's powerful elite. But when their sleuthing unravels sinister motives and deep secrets, Annalee confronts the dangerous truths and beliefs that could make her a victim too.

 

Alison Ames' debut novel To Break a Covenant is one of the scarier books I've read in a long time! A cozy beginning of friendships and sisterhood makes the reader comfortable and engaged...until all hell breaks loose (literally?!). Set in a coal-mining town in Colorado, something wicked is playing mind games with the local residents, drawing them into an insidious mine where an explosion killed miners. None of their bodies were found. Dark tourism is common in the town of Moon Basin, and the book has several recordings of residents' experiences throughout, making this one hard to put down! When one of the girls' dads goes missing in the mine, our quartet of characters travel to the depths together but will they survive? Whatever you do, don't read this before bed.

 

Publisher's description:

Moon Basin has been haunted for as long as anyone can remember. It started when an explosion in the mine killed sixteen people. The disaster made it impossible to live in town, with underground fires spewing ash into the sky. But life in New Basin is just as fraught. The ex-mining town relies on its haunted reputation to bring in tourists, but there's more truth to the rumors than most are willing to admit, and the mine still has a hold on everyone who lives there.

Clem and Nina form a perfect loop--best friends forever, and perhaps something more. Their circle opens up for a strange girl named Lisey with a knack for training crows, and Piper, whose father is fascinated with the mine in a way that's anything but ordinary. The people of New Basin start experiencing strange phenomena--sleepwalking, night terrors, voices that only they can hear. And no matter how many vans of ghost hunters roll through, nobody can get to the bottom of what's really going on. Which is why the girls decide to enter the mine themselves.

Find To Break a Covenant in our online catalog.