What the staff at Old Firehouse Books suggests for your next great read

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, staff from Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins recommend “Even Though I Knew the End,” “Liberation Day: Stories by George Saunders” and “White Horse.”

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From the publisher: An exiled augur who sold her soul to save her brother’s life is offered one last job before serving an eternity in hell. When she turns it down, her client sweetens the pot by offering up the one payment she can’t resist — the chance to have a future where she grows old with the woman she loves. To succeed, she is given three days to track down the White City Vampire, Chicago’s most notorious serial killer. If she fails, only hell and heartbreak await.

From Nicole, events and marketing: C.L. Polk is really, really good at aching romance, twisty mystery, and weaving the two together. With angels and demons clashing over magic in the grimy, glittering world of noir Chicago, this book is simply gorgeous. Even if you know the end of the story, letting Helen tell it all over again is worth every page, every word. There is so much love in this book. Also murder. So, you know, it’s perfect.

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From the publisher: The “best short-story writer in English” (Time) is back with a masterful collection that explores ideas of power, ethics, and justice and cuts to the very heart of what it means to live in community with our fellow humans. With his trademark prose — wickedly funny, unsentimental, and exquisitely tuned — Saunders continues to challenge and surprise: Here is a collection of prismatic, resonant stories that encompass joy and despair, oppression and revolution, bizarre fantasy and brutal reality.

From Kelvin, bookseller: It can be hard to classify Saunders’ short fiction: Are they speculative morality tales? Prescient depictions of alternate worlds? Or perhaps realities simmering beneath our more obvious everyday one?  Let’s just say they are all of the above, and like no one else’s.

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From the publisher: Erika T. Wurth’s “White Horse” is a gritty, vibrant debut novel about an Indigenous woman who must face her past when she discovers a bracelet haunted by her mother’s spirit. Kari James, Urban Native, is a fan of heavy metal, ripped jeans, Stephen King novels, and dive bars. She spends most of her time at her favorite spot in Denver, a bar called White Horse. There, she tries her best to ignore her past and the questions surrounding her mother who abandoned her. But soon after her cousin Debby brings her a traditional bracelet that once belonged to Kari’s mother, Kari starts seeing disturbing visions of her mother and a mysterious creature. When the visions refuse to go away, Kari must uncover what really happened to her mother all those years ago.

From Teresa, bookseller: Erika T. Wurth busts onto the writing scene like a wrecking ball and the destruction she leaves in her wake is a glorious story that explores family, roots and the hard things we must face in our lives. The book was just creepy enough (without being over the top) that the evenings I was reading it I tended to leave the lights on while constantly checking over my shoulders. Brilliant debut and I am so excited to see what Wurth will come out with next. Fans of Stephen Graham Jones’ “The Only Good Indians” will love this book.