In Charlie Quimby‘s follow-up to his debut novel Monument Road, he returns to his native western Colorado and the city of Grand Junction, a town built at the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. And it is at the river where Quimby’s story begins. The river banks, covered in the invasive tamarisk, have become […]

El Paso is Winston Groom’s first work of fiction in almost 20 year since Forrest Gump. It is a brawny, sprawling novel, part legend, part history, of outlaws, revolutionaries, railroad tycoons, kidnappings, and daring rescues. While Europe plunges into the Great War, the Mexican Revolution intrudes on the still wild American southwest. When railroad tycoon […]

Inspired by  a true historical episode, Girl Waits with Gun, by Amy Stewart, starts with an automobile crashing into a buggy carrying the Kopp sisters.  It’s 1914 in Paterson, New Jersey, and the villainous Henry Kaufman, drunken and erratic son of a rich factory owner, refuses to pay for the damages.  He and his thugs soon begin […]

O, Ove, How I’ll miss closing my days with you. In Chapter 1 you tested my patience; I could laugh only because I wasn’t the one trying to explain the “computer that is not a computer” to you. In Chapter 2 you were so bitter and severe I almost walked away, but by Chapter 5 […]

We don’t often talk about spin-offs in book form, but there is one novel that has a surprising number of published sequels or retellings or just plain knock-offs.  At Mesa County Library, we have at least 25 different titles that are based on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen.   Some are sequels that tell […]

Childhood friends Gordon Walker and Leigh Ransom plan to attend college together in the fall, but over the summer, unsettling events in the dying Colorado plains town of Lions ruin those plans. Businesses close and residents leave for a better life elsewhere. The derelict sugar beet factory and the rusted grain elevator prompt the few […]

Nina Borg was doing a favor for a friend, just retrieving a suitcase from a Copenhagen train station.  “You’re always so keen on saving people, aren’t you? Well, here’s your chance.”    Inside the suitcase was a small, drugged, naked boy, and Nina panics.  Soon she’s on the run with the boy, being pursued by the thugs […]

Larry Watson’s stunning novel of the Sidey family is set in the turbulent sixties in the prairie town of Gladstone, Montana. Crusty old Calvin lives off the grid outside of town, staying away from anyone who might remember his mix-up with the law. Calvin’s son Bill runs the family real estate business. Despite their precarious […]

If you are a road tripper who always wants to stop at historical markers, you must read 50 Great American Places by Brent D. Glass.  Mr Glass is the Director Emeritus of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, colloquially known as America’s Attic.  His book is more than a list of travel destinations.  Rather, […]