How to find them …
It’s never a bad idea to support your local independent bookstore. Here are some tools for deciding the best way to buy:
NewPages Guide: List of Colorado independent bookstores
Bookshop.org: Searchable database of bookstores nationwide
From the “naughty” characters of a cold-blooded thriller to the “nice” of a warm, engaging romance, books gifted during the holiday season carry a special meaning — whether you’re giving or receiving them.
But how to sift through all the literary options? To ease the strain and provide gentle guidance toward a diverse array of possibilities, we asked this collection of Colorado Book Award winners and finalists to select two books from their chosen genre to help you land on that perfect gift (or keep-for-yourself title).
Of course, we also linked to the authors’ own prize-worthy books — many of which have been excerpted in The Colorado Sun for your sampling. Check them out at coloradosun.com/sunlit.
And this year, we are partnering with independent bookstores across the state whose recommendations you’ve seen on our site for the last several years. They’re graciously helping us get the word out about this guide and have stocked up on many of the titles. Some have even dedicated a table in their bricks-and-mortar stores to our Holiday Book Guide.
So thanks to The Bookies Bookstore in Denver, Out West Books in Grand Junction, Explore Books in Aspen, Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins and Poor Richard’s Books in Colorado Springs. You might consider paying them a visit. And if those aren’t in your neighborhood, check out the independent bookstores in your neck of the woods or click online to your favorite site.
In any event, celebrate the holidays with literature recommended by some of Colorado’s celebrated authors. And keep an eye on our SunLit feature for more excerpts and author interviews throughout the year.
Literary fiction
Melinda Moustakis, who was born in Alaska but lived in Colorado before migrating to Rhode Island, was a 2024 Colorado Book Award finalist for her novel “Homestead,” inspired by her maternal grandparents’ struggle to build a home and a marriage in the Alaskan frontier. Her abiding love for her home state prompted her to offer one recommendation that rewards readers on two levels.
“Moving Salmon Bay”
By Don Rearden (2025)
Don Rearden (author of “The Raven’s Gift”) is an Alaskan author who has generously donated his novel “Moving Salmon Bay” as an e-book for purchase to support communities in Alaska displaced by Typhoon Halong in October. The novel itself is about a rural village on the coast of the Bering Sea that has to face relocation due to a changing climate.
“Crooked Hallelujah”
By Kelli Jo Ford (2020)
This is an unforgettable multigenerational story of Cherokee women that spans from Oklahoma to Texas. Granny, Lula, Justine and Reney are the main voices in a tale of hard-earned love and survival and familial ties. These characters will stay with you long after you have finished reading the book.
Science fiction/fantasy
Ian Patterson’s “Transference,” the story of a world in which disease can be transferred to willing individuals for a price, won the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Science Fiction/Fantasy. He enthusiastically endorses these two for fans of the genre.
“Chain-Gang All-Stars”
By Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (2023)
It’s a modern classic of science fiction, and it’s hard for me to overstate how inspiring this book has been for my own writing. Adjei-Brenyah writes about a future dystopian America where the incarcerated are killed in a deadly sporting spectacle to the amusement of a modern audience. Alongside the story are footnotes citing America’s carceral system, policing practices, and all the nastiness that springs from it — racism, torture, sexual violence, chemical weapons used on civilians, so much inequality. It’s clear by the end that the horror of the book isn’t just in the imagined story, but in the real one that exists outside of it.
“Metal from Heaven”
By August Clarke (2024)
My time with “Metal from Heaven” was beautiful and raw. This dystopian, sapphic fever dream shows a world bled at the altar of ichorite production, a miracle metal that weaves its way into everything from the bullets used to break a worker strike to the impossibly tight dresses worn by robber barons and princesses. It’s a middle finger, a punch to the nose, an unexpected kiss on the mouth, and an ode to anarchy and that ethos that fueled all the young punks I’ve ever known. I cannot say enough about how lush and achingly poetic Clarke’s prose is.
Nonfiction
Sarah Scoles was a Colorado Book Award finalist in General Nonfiction for her book “Countdown: The Blinding Future of Nuclear Weapons,” that explored the modernization of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Here are two of her choices for nonfiction reading.
“Ends of the Earth: Journeys to the Polar Regions in Search of Life, the Cosmos, and Our Future”
By Neil Shubin (2025)
Readers who want to travel to the northern and southern extremes of the planet — without actually having to travel — should pick up Neil Shubin’s new book. From the changing icy environment to its intrepid biological inhabitants, the text journeys through the areas and brings readers along. The book also provides a human view of the scientists who’ve attempted, and are attempting, to make sense of this part of the world that can seem so foreign, but is intricately connected to our more temperate lives.
“Under a Metal Sky: A Journey Through Minerals, Greed, and Wonder”
By Philip Marsden (2025)
In Colorado, we’re used to thinking about how mining has shaped the state. The vestiges of the old boomtown days, and the wealth they brought some (and failed to bring others) are all around us — and resource extracting isn’t, of course, just a thing of the past but still a part of Coloradans’ present. “Under a Metal Sky” gives wider context to those ideas, looking at how humans’ desire for materials has played out over longtime scales and large geographic areas — an embiggening perspective that readers will connect with and that may spark new conversations the next time they pass defunct sluices by the interstate.
Historical fiction
Joel H. Morris won the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Historical Fiction for his work “All Our Yesterdays: A Novel of Lady Macbeth,” which dives into the backstory of the real-life woman who is one of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters. Here are his picks in the genre.
“Isola”
By Allegra Goodman (2025)
Roughly midway through Goodman’s captivating novel, the narrator Marguerite de la Roque observes a doe being chased by wolves. Stranded on an island in what is now Canada, Marguerite is out hunting, and catches sight of the doe as the wolves surround it: “She turned one way, and they cut her off. She turned another way, and they surrounded her.” Being cut off — from family, from society, from hope while surrounded by plotting men, by frigid waters, by others’ ambitions — are the forces that drive this compelling and often poetic exploration of isolation. I was absorbed by the stark beauty of the writing, by its descriptions of Marguerite’s coming-of-age quest for empowerment, by her self-actualization in a remote wilderness.
“The Buffalo Hunter Hunter”
By Stephen Graham Jones (2025)
A work of historical fiction, of horror fiction, but above all of literary fiction by Colorado-based Jones, this novel channels the narrative nesting of Gothic monster originators Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker to deliver a tale that is both supernaturally ghoulish and historically haunting. An aspiring academic, desperate for tenure, discovers her grandfather’s 1912 interviews with a Blackfeet named Good Stab, whose confessional tale seems too uncanny and too horrific to believe. The writing is astonishing, the story is propelling, and the reckoning with the past is graphic, gripping and devastating.
History
Rachel S. Gross won the 2025 Colorado Book Award for History with her book “Shopping All the Way to the Woods: How the Outdoor Industry Sold Nature to America,” a detailed look at the growth explosion of outdoor goods and services. She has some suggestions for history buffs.
“Born in Flames: The Business of Arson and the Remaking of the American City”
By Bench Ansfield (2025)
An urban core burned out by arsonists might seem like the start of a history book from a bygone era, but Bench Ansfield shows just how close the 1970s urban arson wave in the United States is to our own time. In this compellingly written work, Ansfield shows not just the violence of the decade but also how tenants fought back.
“By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land”
By Rebecca Nagle (2024)
History book as legal thriller? I was skeptical of that billing but Rebecca Nagle’s book more than lived up to it. Nagle’s page-turner explores the deep history of tribal lands in Oklahoma that even Supreme Court justices struggled to understand.
Thriller
Carter Wilson, a multiple CBA winner, was a finalist in 2025 for his book “Tell Me What You Did,” a tale entwined with the world of true crime podcasting. Here are some thrillers he thinks you might find particularly … thrilling.
“How to Survive a Horror Story”
By Mallory Arnold (2025)
A wicked blend of horror satire and psychological suspense, this novel turns the haunted house trope inside out. A group of horror writers are trapped in a haunted mansion where surviving means confronting the darkest chapters of their own lives. Imagine if Agatha Christie, Shirley Jackson and the ghost of a very pissed-off editor threw a party — and then murdered the guests one by one. It’s funny until it’s not, smart until it’s brutal, and deeply unsettling all the way through. Arnold’s voice is razor-sharp — darkly funny, emotionally devastating, and entirely her own. This is one hell of a debut.
“The Haunting of Emily Grace”
By Elena Taylor (2025)
Dread creeps like the rising tide in this spellbinding new suspense novel. Moody and atmospheric, this dark story lives in the space between grief and madness, reality and what we fear is real. As the waves crash against an isolated island home, so too do the buried traumas of its tortured inhabitants. At one point in the book one character assures another, “It will take you a while to regain your land legs”; this is really a message to all readers, who will find themselves unsteady and uneasy after being tossed about by a story that pulls you under and refuses to let go. Taylor doesn’t just conjure suspense — she dissects it, peeling back the fragile layers of identity, memory, and trust until nothing feels safe. Deeply unsettling in all the best ways.
Mystery
Barbara Nickless, whose novel “Play of Shadows” connects the author’s interest in both geopolitics and Greek mythology, won the 2025 CBA for Mystery. It’s no mystery why these books might appeal to fans of the genre.
“Listen for the Lie”
By Amy Tintera (2024)
Amy Tintera turns America’s true-crime obsession inside out, crafting a thriller that’s propulsive, sly, and often laugh-out-loud funny. The novel follows Lucy Chase back to the Texas town that has — in everything but law — convicted her of her best friend’s murder. When a popular true crime podcaster reopens the case, Lucy must decide if she really wants to know what happened the night her friend died. Tintera’s twist-filled story skewers small town secrets and our cultural hunger for scandal while keeping readers guessing until the last page.
“The Gone World”
By Tom Sweterlitsch (2018)
What if your investigation didn’t just solve a murder, but revealed the end of the world? “The Gone World” begins in 1997 with a brutal family killing, a missing daughter, and NCIS agent Shannon Moss on the case. Moss has a secret advantage: She has access to time travel technology created out of military experimentation and quantum theory. The result is a relentless, mind-bending thriller that fuses brilliant crime procedural precision with cosmic-scale suspense.
Romance
J.E. Birk, also known as Johanna Parkhurst, won the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Romance with her book “Forbidden in the Falls,” which examines grief and trauma with a touch of humor and hope. She has coauthored a couple of holiday romances she thinks fans might fall for: “ILYBSM” and “TMI.” But she also recommends these.
The Skyland Series
By Kennedy Ryan (2025 and earlier)
This third book in this series, “Can’t Get Enough,” was released this year to much acclaim. I can never get enough of Kennedy Ryan’s writing, but I also can’t get enough of the lush, rich world she creates for her books. Holiday parties and celebrations take place across this series, so you can get your fix of holiday feels while diving deep into the heads and the hearts of Kennedy’s vibrant characters.
“Time to Shine”
By Rachel Reid (2023)
Rachel Reid gets a lot of attention for her hockey romance “Heated Rivalry,” which has just been adapted into a television series by the Crave (Canadian TV) network. But “Time to Shine” is the hockey romance with all the holiday vibes I want this time of the year. This is a cozy read full of characters you’ll love, hockey banter, snow-splashed cabins in Banff, and some very special shoutouts for Christmas Cap’n Crunch.
Poetry
Mark Chartier, who teaches special education in southern Colorado, was a finalist for the 2025 Colorado Book Award for Poetry with his collection “Tell Me Something Good,” in which he dives into his own life as a person with disabilities who revels in the joys of teaching. He has some ideas for poetry fans.
“Dream of the Bird Tattoo”
By Juan J. Morales (2025)
In this poignant and rhythmic collection, Morales delivers lines of poetry that invoke lyricism, pace and time as bullseye characteristics that hit their intended mark every time. In memoriam of his late father, Morales takes readers on a sage, humorous, and individualized experience where humanity is celebrated, because, as he elegies, “’He knows where we have to go.’” And what an exquisite journey it is — as beautiful and as loving as its destination.
“FishWife”
By Alysse Kathleen McCanna (2024)
In “FishWife,” McCanna brings together a holistic synthesis of the spiritual, emotional, and physical cycles of a woman in today’s society, stamped with her unique and stark images that conjure a higher emotion than most are ready to feel or admit to on a surface level. Throughout this trailblazing collection, McCanna, who won the 2025 Colorado Book Award for this outstanding effort, champions the relatable walk of every woman driven to be more resilient than their challenges, breaking their path when “the world has lifted its skirt to (her).” And through it all, McCanna’s raw honesty rains down, recounting experiences redacted with hope, introspection and an energy that permits the old to seem new again after every read.
This story first appeared in Colorado Sunday, a premium magazine newsletter for members.
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