This Face You sit in a glass-walled officeat the morgue in Mexico City,studying a cadaver photographof a face you love. You are tryingto convince the coroneryou know this face,this young man who was smilingthe last time you saw him.In your face she has glimpseda blankness, a momentaryrefusal to acknowledgethat the photograph depictsyour son. You barely […]
excerpts
Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit
Sunlit Excerpt: “Saving Yellowstone” views an iconic landscape through lens of Reconstruction, national expansion
Prologue Lost The Cut, Montana Territory. October 1870. The dog stopped along the trail ahead of him, growling. Yellowstone Jack Baronett reined in his horse and dismounted, taking his gun from the saddle. He soon saw what had captured the dog’s attention: an animal was dragging itself slowly up the side of the Cut, a […]
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SunLit Excerpt: “Pieces of Everyone, Everywhere” digs deep, but carefully, into Denver history
Excerpted from “Pieces of Everyone, Everywhere” by Cynthia Swanson, copyright 2022 by Cynthia Swanson, included in the anthology “Denver Noir ” edited by Cynthia Swanson. Used with permission of the author and Akashic Books (akashicbooks.com). “Denver Noir” is available May 3. Cheesman Park Digging graves is straightforward labor, involving little more than brute strength and a sufficiently […]
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SunLit Excerpt: “Grand Mal” introduces one man’s story of late onset epilepsy
Unbeknownst to me, the mosquito bite I failed to avoid had given me a case of encephalitis, a viral infection that causes inflammation of the brain. Though I recovered quite soon from a presentation of flu-like symptoms of the condition, the disease left residual damage to my brain. That damage was the cause of my […]
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SunLit Excerpt: “Gone to Darkness” begins with a fog-shrouded mystery by the tracks
Chapter 1 To hell with their laws and restrictions. You have a great and wise heart, Sydney Rose. And that makes for a much better guide to what’s wrong and what’s right. —Effie “Grams” Parnell. Private conversation. My first official homicide investigation began without a corpse. An actual body is what triggers a murder case. […]
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SunLit Special Edition: “Tell Me Everything” combines an investigation with personal memoir
My first few cases, I had no idea what I was doing. Grayson sent me to a women’s triathlon where a personal injury client had gotten run over by a bicycle the previous year. His instructions were rushed—for lawyers, every minute is worth dollars—so I wasn’t sure how to find witnesses to talk to. During […]
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SunLit Excerpt: “The Mervin Gardens Murders” — mystery among an older demographic
The elderly occupants of an independent living luxury complex in Denver are dying at an unusually high rate. When Leah Lamont’s gentleman friend, Sidney Luft, is found dead after leaving her apartment, she fears a killer is at large. Sidney Luft was not a vain man, but he allowed himself a modest measure of satisfaction […]
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SunLit Excerpt: “Hanging Falls” begins with the requisite body, but also veers into family matters
Friday morning, mid-July A stitch in her side plagued Deputy Mattie Cobb as she jogged uphill, telling her that her level of anxiety and this form of exercise didn’t mix. Running in the Colorado high country around Timber Creek had soothed her for years, but not today. Her mind kept jumping back to the one […]
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SunLit Excerpt: “Gods of the Bay” speak to protagonist Katie Russo in a climate-change narrative
Nicky and Zoe flew back to Denver the day after we finished the campus tours. By some miracle, I was able to talk Nicky into letting me have a few more days here by myself. The fact that I didn’t push him to see the old neighborhood probably helped. The day after they left, I […]
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SunLit Excerpt: In “Custodian of the Spirits,” a hopeful widow heads West
“Custodian of the Spirits” is the first book in the Valley of Heart’s Delight series. Set in 1857, it tells the story of Fiona Lenihan, a recently widowed mother traveling west with 8-year-old Caleb and 3-year-old Maggie. They’re part of a wagon train led by Kier Moran headed for the Valley of Heart’s Delight, known […]