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 a twisting tale of adoption, a mystery about wolf introduction and a novel set in a fictional Colorado town.
From the publisher: India Allwood grew up wanting to be an actor. Armed with a stack of index cards (for research/line memorization/make-shift confetti), she goes from awkward 16-year-old to Broadway ingenue to TV superhero.
Her new movie is a prestige picture about adoption, but its spin is the same old tired story of tragedy. India is an adoptive mom in real life though. She wants everyone to know there’s more to her family than pain and regret. So she does something you should never do—she tells a journalist the truth: it’s a bad movie.
Soon she’s at the center of a media storm, battling accusations from the press and the paparazzi, from protesters on the right and advocates on the left. Her twin 10-year-olds know they need help, and who better to call than family? But that’s where it gets really messy because India’s not just an adoptive mother…
From Marianne McKiernon, non-book receiver: I’ve been a Frankel fan after reading “This is How It Always Is” and “One Two Three,” so I gleefully read her newest as soon as I could get my hands on it. “Family Family” is an adoption story like no other. India Allwood, world-renowned actress, gets in deep trouble with her fans, the general public, and her publicist when she essentially trashes her most recent film. Along the way we meet her children (adopted), her other children (placed for adoption), ex-boyfriends, a journalist, and her best friend. A roller coaster of a story, with humor, warmth, and memorable characters.
Once There Were Wolves: A Novel
By Charlotte McConaghy
Flatiron Books
$17.99 (paperback)
May 2022
Purchase
From the publisher: Inti Flynn arrives in Scotland with her twin sister, Aggie, to lead a team of biologists tasked with reintroducing 14 gray wolves into the remote Highlands. She hopes to heal not only the dying landscape, but Aggie, too, unmade by the terrible secrets that drove the sisters out of Alaska.
Inti is not the woman she once was, either, changed by the harm she’s witnessed — inflicted by humans on both the wild and each other. Yet as the wolves surprise everyone by thriving, Inti begins to let her guard down, even opening herself up to the possibility of love. But when a farmer is found dead, Inti knows where the town will lay blame. Unable to accept her wolves could be responsible, Inti makes a reckless decision to protect them. But if the wolves didn’t make the kill, then who did? And what will Inti do when the man she is falling for seems to be the prime suspect?
From Jeanne Boudreau, bookseller: Takes place in Scotland and gives a powerful explanation of how reintroducing wolves or other predators can heal the ecosystem. You will learn a great deal about wolves and their family structure as well as the opposing side of farmers and ranchers. There is also a murder mystery. Good read.
The Gifted School
By Bruce Holsinger
Penguin Publishing Group
$15.30 (paperback)
June 2020
Purchase
From the publisher: Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, “The Gifted School” is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. Seen through the lens of four families who’ve been a part of one another’s lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group’s children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate. It’s a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.
From Bess Maher, event liaison: A fun, darkly funny novel that occasionally hits a little too close to home, in the best of ways. The author taught at the University of Colorado Boulder for a time and put his ample talent with words and powers of observation to good use in this novel. I really enjoyed it!
THIS WEEK’S BOOK RECS COME FROM:
The Bookies Bookstore
2085 S. Holly Street
Denver, CO 80222
As part of The Colorado Sun’s literature section — SunLit — we’re featuring staff picks from book stores across the state. Read more.