Each week, as part of Sunlit – the Sun literature section – we present recommendations for the staff of the Colorado bookstores. This week, the staff of Old Firehouse Books in Fort Collins recommends a scary mystery, a letter of rupture of an immigrant to the West and a speculative fiction on astronauts.
A cold killing
By Kate Alice Marshall
Books of Flatiron
$ 28.99
February 2025
Purchase
Publisher: When Theodora Scott met Connor – healthy, charming and member of the powerful Dalton family – she fell in love in an instant. Six months later, he brought it to Idlewood, the isolated winter retirement from his family, to win his skeptical parents.
Log from Connor Dalton away. Theo has tried to ignore threatening messages on her phone, but she cannot ignore footprints in the snow outside the cabin window or the strange feeling of familiarity that she has about this place. Then, in an abandoned cabin, Theo finds something impossible: a photo of herself when she was a child. A photo taken at Idlewood. Theo has almost no memories of his first years, but now she begins to reconstruct the fragments of his memories. Someone here has a shocking secret that he will do everything to keep hidden, and Theo is in terrible danger. Because the daultons do not lose and discover what happened on Idlewood can cost Theo.
De Revati, store director: It was exactly the mystery / thriller, I was looking for! Rich family with secrets? Check. Distant and snowy frame? Check. A protagonist with his own secrets? Check. I loved that there are enough clues to assemble pieces but also unexpected twists and turns.
One day, everyone has always been against it
By Omar El Akkad
KNOPF publication group
$ 28
February 2025
Purchase
Publisher: On October 25, 2023, after only three weeks of Gaza bombing, Omar El Akkad published a tweet: “One day, when he is sure, when there is no personal drawback to call something what it is, when it is too late to hold someone responsible, everyone will have always been against it.” This tweet has been seen more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad thought he promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past 20 years, the war on the war against terrorism, Ferguson, climate change, the Matter Black Lives demonstrations, and even more, and looking at the slaughter not attenuated in Gaza, El Akkad has reached the conclusion that a large part of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be whole groups of human beings, he never intended to treat as fully human – not only Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the limits of privilege. These are the non-fiction beginnings of El Akkad, his raw and vulnerable work to date, a letter of breakup with the West.
De Teresa, accountant: The first time reading El Akkad and this book was so dense and breaking the heart at the same time. I devoured this book, I read it in one session and when I finished it, I had to sit and think … a lot. To date, I always think of this book and I know that I will think of this book for the rest of my life.
I would recommend it to anyone in my life and I can’t wait to discuss it with them. I can’t really say what this book made me feel, but I can say with conviction that this book has forever changed the way I see certain things in politics, the world but especially how I see the United States
The calculative stars: a novel by Lady Astronaut
By Mary Kowal Tobinet
Tor books
$ 18.99
July 2018
Purchase
Publisher: By a cold spring night in 1952, a huge meteorite fell on earth and erased a large part of the east coast of the United States, notably Washington DC, the climatic cataclysm that followed will soon make the inhospitable earth for humanity, as the last meteorite of this type did for dinosaurs. This imminent threat calls a radically accelerated effort to colonize space and requires a much more important part of humanity to participate in the process.
Elma York’s experience as a wasp pilot and mathematician wins him in the attempts of the international aerospace coalition to put man on the moon, as a calculator. But with so many qualified and experienced women and scientists involved in the program, it takes long before Erma begins to wonder why they cannot go to space too. Elma’s desire to become the first lady astronaut is so strong that even the most expensive conventions in society may not have a chance against her.
De Simon, bookseller: The Lady Astronaut series takes place in a chronology where a meteor changes the trajectory of world history in the 1950s. The Elma York driver is an incredible candidate for the now hasty space program, but prejudices against women and the POC in STEM remain on the way. I also recommend audio books specifically – find out what’s going on when an author with theatrical training tells of his own series!
This week’s book came from:
Books of the old barracks
232 Walnut St., Fort Collins
As part of Colorado Sun’s Literature section – Sunlit – We present personnel choices in bookstores through the State. Learn more.