Every week as a part of SunLit — The Solar’s literature part — we function workers suggestions from guide shops throughout Colorado. This week, the workers from Out West Books in Grand Junction recommends three novels that includes tales wherein characters’ lives are modified by literary icons.
Austen at Sea
By Natalie Jenner
St. Martin’s Press
$29
Could 2025
Purchase
From the writer: Two pairs of siblings, devotees of Jane Austen, discover their lives reworked by a go to to England and Sir Francis Austen, her brother and keeper of her reminiscences and surviving artifacts.
The Stevenson sisters sneak away with out a chaperone to sail to England. On their ship are Nelson brothers, author Louisa Could Alcott, Sara-Beth Gleason—rich daughter of state senator along with her eye on the Nelson brothers, and a would-be last-minute chaperone to the Stevenson sisters, Justice Thomas Nash.
It’s a voyage and journey that transforms every of their lives in methods which are unexpected, with the transformative spirit of the love of literature and that of Jane Austen herself.
From Didi Herald, bookseller: The vivid historic setting felt so genuine one might think about they have been there. The journey involving the sisters stealing away from residence to comply with their Austen ardour and the shipboard life the place they meet Louisa Could Alcott and grow to be concerned with different vacationers is transportive. The guide discussions by the Massachusetts Supreme Courtroom justices was surprising and pleasing. Because the story slides from journey to romance and on to courtroom drama, fascinating points of girls’s lives and rights in 1865 are revealed. I had learn and liked Jane Austen’s books way back however had not identified about her household and the posthumous burning of her correspondence by her sister Charlotte. With the 2025 PBS miniseries about Charlotte, this novel is kind of well timed.
The Queens of Crime
By Marie Benedict
St. Martin’s Press
$29
February 2025
Purchase
From the writer: London, 1930. The 5 biggest girls crime writers have banded collectively to kind a secret society with a single aim: to indicate they’re now not keen to be handled as second class residents by their male counterparts within the legendary Detection Membership. Led by the formidable Dorothy L. Sayers, the group consists of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and Baroness Emma Orczy. They name themselves the Queens of Crime. Their plan? Clear up an precise homicide, that of a younger girl discovered strangled in a park in France.
From Didi Herald, bookseller: This paean to the enduring girls writers of the Golden Age of detective fiction made me need to go search for their novels and gorge on their tales. The thriller of what occurred to Could Daniels was so compelling I needed to search for what was really historic and what was fiction along with trying into the lives of the sleuthing creator characters within the guide. Benedict made this little chunk of historical past and the ladies writers of the Golden Age come alive.
The Misplaced Guide of First Loves
By RaeAnne Thayne
Canary Road Press
$18.99
June 2025
Purchase
From the writer: Raised by her literary icon father Carson Wells, Alison Wells all the time felt liked, despite the fact that her mom died when she was a teen. However when she takes a DNA check on a whim and discovers she has a sister she by no means knew about, it’s clear there are issues her father didn’t inform her earlier than he died.
Juniper Connolly has all the time been extremely wholesome…till she wakes up within the hospital after experiencing cardiac arrest, along with her new—and just lately fired—intern to thank for saving her life. It’s clear June must de-stress her life a bit, so when Ali provides her using her household’s cabin in a small Wyoming city, June has no cause to not go. However when she arrives, her life won’t ever be the identical.
From Didi Herald, bookseller: Thayne has mastered the artwork of girls’s fiction, all the time writing compelling tales of relationships, of household and associates with conflicts and romance. What actually struck me about this story coping with the grownup youngsters of a fictional lifeless literary icon was how essential books are in folks’s lives. June, a excessive powered government who believed her father had died when she was solely months previous, has treasured the guide Carson had signed for the mom she misplaced as a teen. As she recuperates in Carson’s cabin, stored busy organizing his journals and papers, she involves the conclusion he should have written a guide that was by no means revealed and she or he doggedly pursues a quest to search out it and why it was stored secret. Very entertaining and heartfelt.
As a part of The Colorado Solar’s literature part — SunLit — we’re that includes workers picks from guide shops throughout the state. Read more.
