The Bookies Bookstore suggests titles for both kids and adults

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 The Bookies Bookstore in Denver recommends NAMES OF BOOKS HERE.

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From the publisher: Inside one of America’s most troubled periods of economic crisis, “The Road From Nowhere,” from master storyteller and Newbery medalist Avi, is both a tightly plotted adventure and a big-hearted tale of boyhood that explores what it means to put a name to the feelings we’re taught to push down far into the earth.

There’s one road in Gatchett’s Gluch—population 45 —a silver mining town in the high Colorado desert. That means there’s only one way in and one way out.

Fourteen-year-old Ollie feels trapped and restless, desperate to find his own lode of silver, so he can gain riches and get his family out of the town. As the man of the house, he feels that’s his job, just as his younger brother Gus’s job is to ask question after question. Though Ollie is unwilling to admit it, he doesn’t have all the answers. He can’t even read, unlike Alys, the only girl and only friend he has outside of Gus.

Meanwhile, a man who calls himself a geologist has arrived in town. So when Ollie, Gus, and Alys stumble upon a cave rich with silver and form a friendship with that geologist, the future suddenly looks good. The problem: Elijah Gatchett runs the Gulch and claims all its silver.

The kids are desperate to find an answer. It may lie in that dark cave. How Ollie, Gus, and Alys navigate all this — with a surprising ending — is an old West adventure that has never been told before.

From Midge, bookseller: We are so lucky to have Avi live in Colorado. He captures our history through beautifully crafted and thoroughly researched sentences. This is a book every kid and teacher (and adult) should read. It is that good! Colorado history comes alive as the pages are turned!

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From the publisher: Below the streets of London, a secret network of magical bookshops has existed for millennia. But they’re slowly disappearing, and no one knows why. Only one dishonored bookseller can uncover the truth and rewrite her story — in this spellbinding standalone fantasy novel from the author of “The City of Stardust.” 

If you want a story that will change your life, Chiron’s bookshop is where you go. For those lucky enough to grace its doors, it’s a glimpse into a world of powerful bargains and deadly ink magic. For Cassandra Fairfax, it’s a reminder of everything she lost, when Chiron kicked her out and all but shuttered the shop. Since then, she’s used her skills in less ethical ways, trading stolen books and magical readings to wealthy playboys and unscrupulous collectors. 

Then Chiron dies under mysterious circumstances. And if Cassandra knows anything, it’s this: the bookshop must always have an owner.

But she’s not the only one interested. There’s Lowell Sharpe, a dark-eyed, regrettably handsome bookseller she can’t seem to stop bumping into; rival owners who threaten Cassandra from the shadows; and, of course, Chiron’s murderer, who is still on the loose. As Cassandra tries to uncover the secrets her mentor left behind, a sinister force threatens to unravel the world of the magical bookshops entirely.

From Krista, store manager: This book may be about magical bookshops and booksellers that can read magic into the world, but as a bookseller in a mundane bookstore, I felt the River while reading this book. Sweet and tense and magical, this book hooked me deeply and the void it will leave now that I’m finished reading is palpable. I loved every minute!

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From the publisher: Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.

She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?

“Vigil” transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.

From Rene, adult book buyer: I really loved this book! It’s funny, thought-provoking, and deeply affecting. With a touch of science fiction, a pinch of dark humor, and Saunders’s sharp, compassionate prose, it had me raving and immediately searching for more of his work. Beneath the wit is a quiet emotional weight that sneaks up on you. It leaves you introspective, imagining what your own deathbed conversations and final reflections might look like.

Type of Story: Review

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