Old Firehouse Books suggests titles featuring miracles, essays and horror

Each week as part of SunLit — The Sun’s literature section — we feature staff recommendations from book stores across Colorado. This week, the staff from Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins recommends titles featuring a miracle worker, essays on excess and a tale of vacation horror.

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From the publisher: In a shabby house, on a shabby street, in the new capital of Madrid, Luzia Cotado uses scraps of magic to get through her days of endless toil as a scullion. But when her scheming mistress discovers the lump of a servant cowering in the kitchen is actually hiding a talent for little miracles, she demands Luzia use those gifts to improve the family’s social position.

What begins as simple amusement for the nobility takes a perilous turn when Luzia garners the notice of Antonio Pérez, the disgraced secretary to Spain’s king. Still reeling from the defeat of his armada, the king is desperate for any advantage in the war against England’s heretic queen—and Pérez will stop at nothing to regain the king’s favor.

From Zane, bookseller: This is the first Leigh Bardugo book I’ve read (I’m sorry) and I’m still recommending it, so if your friend who is obsessed with “Ninth House” or “Hell Bent” or the “Grishaverse” says you should read this, just know that this one guy who works at this one bookstore who hasn’t read any of that also thinks so. Luzia is a conversa scullion in Golden Age Spain who can work miracles any wealthy man would kill for. In this violent age where women are deeply oppressed and the Inquisition will brutally punish anyone they determine has unholy power, hopefully those men won’t find out about her magic (oh no).

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From the publisher: Our embrace of minimalism has left us spiritually impoverished. We see it in our homes, where we bring in Marie Kondo to rid them of their idiosyncrasies and darknesses. We take up mindfulness to do the same thing to our heads, emptying them of the musings, thoughts, and obsessions that make us who we are. In the bedroom, a new wave of puritanism has drained sex of its unpredictability and therefore true eroticism. In our fictions, the quest for balance has given us protagonists who aspire only to excise their appetites. We have flipped our values, Rothfeld argues: While the gap between rich and poor yawns hideously wide, we strive to compensate with egalitarianism in art, erotics, and taste, where it does not belong and where it quashes wild experiments and exuberance.

From Dany, bookseller: Minimalism, fragment novels, the mindfulness industry, and desire. All these things seem at first a random string of topics, but are singularly connected by Becca Rothfeld and damn it! they are all just too small! With a plethora of unique and deep cut literary and film examples, Rothfeld presents her first collection of luscious essays which beg to be internalized and practiced by those who read them. With a personal flair, “All Things Are Too Small” is a genius exploration into our own souls. Stepping away from each essay one can’t help but utter: Wow, Becca
Rothfeld just gets me.

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From the publisher: Jennifer Thorne skewers all-too-familiar family dynamics in this sly, wickedly funny vacation-Gothic. Beautifully unhinged and deeply satisfying, “Diavola”is a sharp twist on the classic haunted house story, exploring loneliness, belonging, and the seemingly inescapable bonds of family mythology. (Warning: May invoke feelings of irritation, dread, and despair that come with large family gatherings.)

From Allison, bookbuyer: The only genuinely scary horror novel I read when I was on my fall 2023 horror binge. Kept me up til 2 a.m. trying to finish it and a little spooked by my bathroom mirror for a week. While on vacation at a villa in Tuscany, Anna and her family are given one instruction: “Don’t open the door to the tower.” But, of course they do. The ghost in this is a nasty piece of work (almost demonic), and the family drama is so uncomfortably realistic.

Type of Story: Review

An assessment or critique of a service, product, or creative endeavor such as art, literature or a performance.