The local literary scene has been busy this year, offering a wide array of books as dropping temps find us spending more time indoors. From the conclusion of a gripping slasher trilogy to a suspenseful trek through a dystopian landscape and a cozy mystery in the heart of the French countryside, here are six works by Colorado authors to check out this fall.
Tannery Bay
by Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle
Wondrous and haunting, Steven Dunn and Katie Jean Shinkle’s Tannery Bay hums with energy and lyricism. The pair met while pursuing creative writing degrees at the University of Denver, where they cooked up the plan to someday write a book together. Tannery Bay is that book.
Perhaps it’s because of the intimacy of the collaborative writing process — a departure from the stereotype of the author as a solitary shut-in — or maybe it can simply be chalked up to these seasoned authors’ formidable skills, but Dunn and Shinkle craft striking personal connections between the rich, lovable characters, which in turn deepen the reader’s own emotional engagement with them.
The setting is just as evocative: an eerie town shaped by memory, full of mystery and hellishly stuck in time. Nobody knows what year it is, but the date is July ’37 — then the calendar once more rolls over to July 2. Tannery Bay’s residents’ lives intertwine as they wrestle with the extraordinary events that creep into their world, leading them to form a joyful resistance to the entrenched powers that dominate the town.
Like Dunn’s previous novels, Tannery Bay perfectly achieves a surreal mix of humor and despair.
Read a Boulder Weekly interview with the authors of Tannery Bay
The Angel of Indian Lake
by Stephen Graham Jones
Lucky for enthusiasts of high-caliber horror writing, Boulder-based author and CU professor Stephen Graham Jones averages at least a new book a year. His latest, The Angel of Indian Lake,has been anxiously awaited by his devoted fans.
Following My Heart is a Chainsaw and Don’t Fear the Reaper, Jones’ new novel is the final installment of the much-lauded Indian Lake Trilogy. Bathed in chainsaw oil and blood, and spurred on by smoke and flame — someone has set fire to the forest surrounding Proofrock, Idaho — Jade Daniels must make her final stand against the curse of the Lake Witch, on Halloween of all nights.
Jones famously embraces beloved tropes of the slasher genre without limiting his stories or characters. That’s certainly the case in The Angel of Indian Lake, where the author builds on the mystery of the previous two novels, dropping clues and foreshadowing the horrors to come.
Deliver Me
by Elle Nash
Even though she now lives in Glasgow, Scotland, the Colorado literary community continues to claim Elle Nash as one of their own. After all, her debut, Animals Eat Each Other, takes place in her hometown of Colorado Springs and was published by the Boulder-based imprint Dzanc Books.
Deliver Me, Nash’s latest unsettling novel, offers an even bigger dose of the author’s trademark grittiness. The protagonist, Dee-Dee, works at a meatpacking plant in Missouri, where she helps to slaughter and butcher tens of thousands of chickens every shift. But in the relentless taking of life, her thoughts turn to the life she’s determined to bring into the world: after multiple miscarriages, she’s pregnant again.
The routines of her day-to-day might be savage and monotonous, but now there’s hope. Or at least there’s the gratification of the attention her pregnancy brings her. Dee-Dee’s boyfriend, a struggling ex-convict named “Daddy” who harbors a certain affinity for insects, along with her religious and judgemental mother, are finally treating her with the long-withheld respect and consideration she feels she deserves.
However, her magnetic friend Sloane reappears after a long absence, and she’s also pregnant. Dee-Dee won’t allow anything, no matter how horrific or tragic, to steal her thunder. Motherhood awaits, and she’ll get there by any means necessary.
Burn
by Peter Heller
The premise of Burn sounds something like Red Dawn meets Civil War. Add a dash of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but inspired by the relationships and nature of James Galvin’s The Meadow. Sound intense? It is.
Heavyweight Colorado author Peter Heller’s latest novel is set in a politically tumultuous Maine, where the talk of the town is secession from the rest of the Union. It’s also the place Jess and Storey have chosen to spend a week hunting, deep in the woods, completely off grid. They’re not too worried about the political stuff. They figure the talk is just that: talk.
But upon their return to civilization, they’re faced with a shocking sight. A bridge has been blown up and buildings razed; the burnt-out shells of bombed cars litter the road, abandoned. Disoriented by the sudden change in American reality as they know it, the friends start to make their long way home.
They survive as best they know how, by sticking to the back roads, scavenging supplies and trying to avoid violent combatants. But the pair make an alarming discovery, causing their journey to shift and the stakes to get higher. Burn is an example of what Heller does best: the combination of striking nature writing, riveting plotting and the subtleties of human relationships.
A Cyclist’s Guide to Crime and Croissants
by Anne Claire
The dark intensity of the other books on this list fits with some of the traditional themes of the harvest season, but let’s not forget the most important part of the cooling weather: getting cozy. It’s nearly time to throw on a warm sweater and curl up with a hot mug in one hand and a good mystery in the other.
In A Cyclist’s Guide to Crime and Croissants, Colorado novelist Anne Claire introduces us to Sadie Greene, an ex-Chicago office worker who’s given up her sensible career to purchase a bicycle tour company in the picturesque village of Sans-Souci-sur-Mer, France. She’s after a quiet, idyllic life, but the hectic stress from her past follows her when her friends — and her former boss, Dom — fly out for a visit.
Together, they bike between vineyards, villages and bakeries, but it’s not long before a tragedy puts the brakes on their good time. Dom is dead. Murdered. Desperate to protect her friends and save her business, which the incident has brought under heavy scrutiny, Sadie adds another job to her rapidly growing resume: amateur sleuth.
Set against the charming backdrop of the landscapes and gastronomy of French culture, Claire’s novel is a lighthearted whodunnit with a touch of continental flair.
Perris, California
by Rachel Stark
It might feel weird to see the word “California” in a title on a list of books by Colorado authors, but Stark is one of us now. After growing up in the SoCal community of Perris and studying creative writing at UC schools, she moved to the southern part of the Centennial State, where she now lives and writes. Her debut novel, however, calls back the setting of her past.
Perris, California examines the life of Tessa, a mother of two with one on the way. She’s 27 years old and living in a trailer on property owned by her mother-in-law. Things are stable, much more so than when she was growing up, but the circumstances of Tessa’s life are brought into question when she unexpectedly runs into her first love, a woman named Mel.
Mel’s unexpected return to the rural Inland Empire town pushes Tessa to confront the choices that have shaped her existence, as well as the realities of her former life marked by abuse, abandonment and a relentless will to survive. Drawing comparison to authors like Dorothy Allison, who is known for her raw depictions of small-town poverty and familial violence, Perris, California, is a literary tale of trauma and resilience.