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READING THE WEST
from Mountains & Plains
Read!
Exceptional new books and authors
from the Mountains & Plains region.
Relax!
Titles have been chosen with care by
independent booksellers in the region.
Refresh!
New selections will be introduced
at regular intervals
throughout the year.
OTHER SELECTIONS
Click here for June 2009 Selections
Click here for October 2009 Selections
Click here for December 2009 Selections
BOOKSTORE DISPLAY
Please click here or the image above
to view the Reading the West bookstore
display at Maria's Bookshop in
Durango, Colorado.
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by Matt Phelan
Published by Candlewick Press
Tall tale. Thriller. Gripping historical fiction.
This artful, sparely told graphic novel—a tale of a boy in Dust Bowl America—will resonate with young readers today. In Kansas in the year 1937, eleven-year-old Jack Clark faces his share of ordinary challenges: local bullies, his father’s failed expectations, a little sister with an eye for trouble. But he also has to deal with the effects of the Dust Bowl, including rising tensions in his small town and the spread of a shadowy illness. Certainly a case of "dust dementia" would explain who (or what) Jack has glimpsed in the Talbot’s abandoned barn—a sinister figure with a face like rain. In a land where it never rains, it’s hard to trust what you see with your own eyes—and harder still to take heart and be a hero when the time comes.
With phenomenal pacing, sensitivity, and a sure command of suspense, Matt Phelan ushers us into a world where desperation is transformed by unexpected courage.
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by Maile Meloy
Published by Penguin Group USA
Knowing, sly, and bittersweet.
Eleven unforgettable new stories demonstrate the emotional power and the clean, assured style that have earned award-winning author Maile Meloy praise from critics and devotion from readers. Propelled by a terrific instinct for storytelling, and concerned with the convolutions of modern love and the importance of place, this collection is about the battlefields—and fields of victory—that exist in seemingly harmless spaces, in kitchens and living rooms and cars. Set mostly in the American West, the stories feature small-town lawyers, ranchers, doctors, parents, and children, and explore the moral quandaries of love, family, and friendship. A ranch hand falls for a recent law school graduate who appears unexpectedly— and reluctantly—in his remote Montana town. A young father opens his door to find his dead grandmother standing on the front step. Two women weigh love and betrayal during an early snow. Throughout the book, Meloy examines the tensions between having and wanting, as her characters try to keep hold of opposing forces in their lives: innocence and experience, risk and stability, fidelity and desire.
Award-winning author Maile Meloy's lean, controlled prose, full of insight and unexpected poignancy, is the perfect complement to her powerfully moving storytelling. This extraordinary new work explores complex lives in an austere landscape with the clear-sightedness that first endeared the author to readers.
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