Colorado Books

A sly fictional account of the good queen's holiday in Jamaica and her improbable adventures there. Lavishly illustrated with whimsical drawings of the black-clad queen kicking up her heels. A delight.

I was intrigued to read an obituary of Routh in the Economist (June 17th, 2008) and wasn't surprised to learn of his reputation as a eternal prankster. He was, it seems, star of the British version of Candid Camera in the UK. In later years he moved to Jamaica and took up painting. The Economist obit described his style thus:

"He painted nuns driving racing cars and flying balloons, the pope windsurfing, Mona Lisa naked or smoking. His favourite subject was the aged Queen Victoria, on an imaginary trip to Jamaica in 1871, doing the hula-hoop or the limbo dance, riding a zebra and driving dodgem cars. He could have found a more prosaic explanation for the missing three months of her reign. But he preferred, as ever, the shock of the absurd, and the sense of the detached voyeur intruding on private space."

Endearing illustrations of a tiny, white veiled Queen Victoria cavorting with courtiers the color of midnight accompany a tongue-in-cheek description of a monarch on a risque holiday adventure. This charming picture book is a wonderful addition for anyone who collects memorabilia from Jamaica.

The second edition of Day Hikes From The River is great! The maps are the biggest change. Though still packed with the same info (and more), the clarity really helps. Thanks Tom for doing this. We used Day Hikes to hike up Vishnu Creek and Kanab Creek to Whispering Falls. Worked great! The resource tips were helpful and not too overbearing. This book is getting real close to a real river guide. The other "guides" give river miles and that's about it. This book ties it all together. I'd sure recommend it for anyone headed down Big Red. The only drawback is that this book is NOT waterproof! I learned the hard way....

We just finished the river trip of our dreams. 18 days to Diamond Creek, my buddy Jim waited 12 years to get his permit. Day Hikes from the River was a must book to have on our trip! We stopped at "Shiver Grotto", Nautiloid Canyon, Nankoweep, Clear Creek, got water at Phantom (easy to find), Shinumo, Elves Chasm, Stone Creek, managed the Thunder River-Deer Creek loop, got aced out at Havasu and thanks to Day Hikes, and had a great time at Tuckup. What a resource. The maps are really clear, and the easy to follow directions made it all work out. Thanks for the great guide!

Deadly Gold is a classic mystery that encompasses romance, nature, and greed. I flew through the pages, always yearning to know what Simmons would throw in next.

Hal Simmons knows how to keep a reader short on sleep. This tale of betrayal, murder and courage overcoming all is clearly based on serious research. I used to work in the mining industry, and my husband and I now explore old mine as a hobby, so I ought to know! The end was so great I cried with happiness.

Death of a Dustbunny was the first book I have read by Christine Jorgensen but it certainly won't be the last! Witty, whimsical and a bit of "woo-woo" (as Stella calls her psychic abilities) woven together to make a wonderful mystery.

While this is not the first book in the Stella the Stargazer series it certainly allows you to read it first and not feel like a stranger. Unlike other series it also doesn't reiterate everything from the pervious novels which I found refreshing.

At the start Stella, who writes a column at her local paper, is upset because her friend and student Elena has not shown up after leaving a particularly disturbing message for Stella. Once Stella begins to worry and have a few psychic interludes she realizes that Elena is not merely late but in trouble and she sets off to find her.

She calls the Holman house where Elena is a housekeeper and nanny to a disturbed little boy Steven, whose mother has died and will only reach out to Elena. Steven is also obsessed with the idea that a vampire has taken Elena and is equally terrified that one will get him as well. Then Stella calls the Dustbunnies, the service that Holman has hired Elena through to no avail.

The owner of the Dustbunnies begs Stella to look after Steven until Elena or a replacement can be found as Steven likes her. She accepts the position to look into Elena's disappearance. Little does she know that no one will help her. Holman and the Dustbunnies refuse to place a missing person's report, the police can't do anything because Elena supposedly left a note and Holman and his friends refuse to answer any questions.

Is this the end for Elena? Can Stella sniff out where she has gone? You can be sure that this book will have a satisfying ending. This was a very quick read but a good one. I guess it is true - good things do come in small packages!

Stella the Stargazer, who writes a weekly astrology column for the Denver Daily Orion, is worried when her friend Elena Ruiz is reported missing by her employer, the Dustbunnies housekeeping and nanny service. Elena was working as the nanny and housekeeper in the home of Grant Holman. Stella believes something nasty happened to Elena. She convinces the owner of Dustbunnies to allow her to replace the missing woman.

At the Holman home, she meets Steven Holman, a frightened child, who firmly believes that Elena has been abducted by vampires. Stella begins to investigate the disappearance of her friend and soon has several viable suspects if foul play has occurred. However, trying to obtain information is difficult amidst Elena's Mexican community and Stella does not yet realize how much danger she has placed herself in from someone who does not want any amateur sleuth to find out the truth.

DEATH OF A DUSTBUNNY is a fun to read cozy that includes bumps in the night elements. Stella and the support cast are an eccentric enough ensemble that readers will take pleasure in their exploits. Though Christine T. Jorgensen's story line is a bit weak (Stella needs to add logic to her repertoire), fans of American cozies with a pinch of woo-woo will relish the latest Stella the Stargazer story.

Harriet Klausner

I was really pleased with this book. It covers everything you can think of and is easy to use. I recommend it.

Wonderful photography and witty editorial. I highly recommend this book for both newcomers and long time residents. It's a great way to get to get to know or become reacquainted with the city of Denver

Sally Keith's first collection presents the reader with the rare--ever too rare--treat of finding in your own mind the vision of her honest poetic eye. It is an eye that searches through nature for knowledge--not the type of knowledge that one walks away from with the profit of fact, but rather, that humble knowledge of finding yourself always involved and complicated by the world she's gazing at. Each poem feels a step into a snow-covered field, and rather than glorify the act by noticing the footprint, she notices instead how the horizon retreats a step further away as she nears. Keith innately senses that the eye atuned to the natural is also nature's eye. And yet, as a lover to the beloved, the poet longs for the distance by which to behold and see truly that which she loves. (I can even sense the unexpected solution: how the world gazes back, lovingly, at her.)

She is a poet of humble audacity--any serious reader will count him or herself lucky for the conversation of reading.

St. Anselm's motto (I believe that I may understand) centers the sharp movements, the honest ontological concerns, of this knockout first book. Intense observation stained by a giving over of the subjective to landscape, to the pool of the moment, allow Sally Keith to operate a voice at once omnicient and stunningly interior. The forms here are open and accomplished. At times a tense dimeter-driven line is packed with sense data and the metaphysic (not the Post-postmodern) interruption:

"Mid-morning's wrens/ wrap my house (frantic/ fealty) in chords of flight// ephemeral--voiced./ Branched things (I/ stretched too far)"

She also exhibits, in more discursive poems, a hard-earned understanding of white space. In her composition, she indulges no arbitrary or purely visual placements, but uses space as a genuine extension of perception and mode--terribly rare among poets of any age group. To say how these forms engage the book's large ambitions, and how enjoyable that engagement is, would take a review too lengthy for digestion. In my mind, this book places the poet among a handful (if that) of genuine artists in the craft under the age of thirty-five. This is not a debut, but a revelation.

This carefully researched and well written book will be appreciated by anyone with an interest in the history of the American west, the desert Southwest, the old emigrant trails, or historic Route 66. Beale's Wagon Road, which followed the route that was later to become the famous Route 66 across the Southwest (generally followed now by Interstate 40), was actually a faster and safer route to California than the much more popular Gila Trail to the south through Apache territory --- but it was avoided by most emigrant parties after news spread of the tragedy that befell the first party that attempted to follow it. Although almost forgotten now, the disaster was so notorious at the time that it wasn't until the opening of a railroad along the route, followed by the development of the automobile, that this historic road became widely used.

That ill-fated journey by the Rose-Baley wagon party is the subject of this book, along with useful background information on the Hualapai and Mojave Indians, the Santa Fe Trail, and the Sitgreaves, Whipple, Aubry, and Beale surveying expeditions across northern Arizona in the 1850s. This is a pioneering work on an important but largely forgotten event in the history of the westward migration in the 19th century, and it is surely the definitive work on the subject to this point.

This book is beginning to attract quite a bit of attention from historians, history buffs, and general readers alike. While there are a multitude of books recounting the history of the California, Santa Fe, Mormon and other historic trails, surprisingly little has been done on a little known Trail that originated in Ft. Smith, Ark., traversed southern Oklahoma, crossed the northern tip of Texas into New Mexico and Arizona and ended at the Colorado River crossing on the California-Arizona border. I predict it is the first of a flurry of studies looking at an amazing story this is largely untold.
In 1857 the War Department, eager to find an alternative route to the main California Trail that was considered risky given the mounting pressure to subdue Mormons in Utah, and the lengthy Southern Route that ran through Apache territory, commissioned a survey that resulted in the Beale Wagon Road. It was to be the first federally funded interstate road to traverse the rugged southwest desert, canyons, and rocky terrain obtained from Mexico at the end of the Mexican-American War in 1848. Edward Fitzgerald Beale, a retired Navy Lieutenant, was chosed to survey and construct a road that was to attract emigrant wagon trains and save an estimated 200 miles and thirteen days of travel. Not only was the mission unique but also his crew of 50 men traveled with a most unusual contingent of pack animals: 22 camels from the Middle East were used to carry the supplies and equipment for the expedition.
The book traces the history of the Beale Road in general terms and specifically recounts the experiences of the first emigrant wagon train to attempt the crossing in 1858. The story of what came to be known as the Rose-Baley wagon train, comprised of a group of Missouri and Iowa emigrants that met in Albuquerque, is an exciting and tragic account of an effort to arrive in California and the "land of plenty." To say the attempt was a disaster is perhaps charitable. The road was not as passable as the civic leaders in Albuquerque stated; water was much more scarce as originally thought; the so-called experienced guide was lacking in knowledge and directional aptitude; the peaceful Hualapais Indians were more hostile than advertised; and the reception encountered at the Colorado River crossing, instigated by the Mojave Indians, was deadly.
In a highly readable, narrative style Baley recounts the story and reviews its aftermath and legacy not only for the Rose-Baley emigrant party but also for the Mojave's and Beale's Wagon Road. There is an index, bibliography, appendix, extensive endnotes, and helpful maps and photos. This is a major contribution about the first emigrants attempt to traverse what was then known as the 35th paralled. Most now know it as old Route 66 and I-40. Highly recommended.

In all practical aspects, the Dominguez and Escalante expedition was a failure. The two Spanish fathers were unable to locate an overland route between the Spanish colonies of Santa Fe, New Mexico and Monterrey, California, and in 1776 it seemed that all the two men had done was wander aimlessly in the north for six months. The lasting impact these two men have had on history (and particularly Utah's history), however, are far greater than they could have known.

The expedition made a map, but it is basically worthless in its inaccuracy. Still, the description they left of their route, and most notably that of Utah Valley, was later a great resource for subsequent explorers of Utah, especially John C. Fremont. Their expedition, failed though it was, nevertheless is important as the first written record of the territory that would later become Utah. In addition, the journal did not outlive its usefulness in 1844, when the second of Fremont's expeditions was completed, or even later when Stansbury, Gunnison, and others surveyed the territory. This journal is important even today, because it provides us with a natural look at the Native Americans of the area, before they were disturbed and corrupted by hordes of encroaching whites. This journal is a great document in Utah's history, both as the first written account and as a fascinating look at Utah more than 75 years before it would be settled by the whites.

Even if this book sucked, I couldn't rate it lower than five stars, if for no other reason than that this book is IT.
It's the only record of this particular part part of the Southwest from before the area was overrun by Spanish and Anglo settlers. It's the book that guided decades of explorers and missionaries, and that has mercifully survived to offer us hints of what life in the West could be like BACK THEN.
It's the story of Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, two Spanish friars, who were tasked in 1776 with the goal of forging a route from a mission in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to a mission in Monterrey, California, and of locating sites for new missions along the way-to convert Indian "heathens," "barbarians," and "infidels."
Domínguez was in his mid-thirties, but Escalante was only about twenty-five years old. The two, with a small group of others, decided to avoid a northern route--out of fear of an Indian tribe rumored to eat light-skinned travelers--and as a result were among the very first to make maps and to record details of the Southwest's rivers and mesas. Their group started late in the year though, a sudden blizzard soon made progress impossible, and when they reached north-central Utah, they decided to head south and work their way back to New Mexico. They ran out of food, lived by eating their horses, and suffered unbearable cold, rebellious group members, and severe, frequent thirst. They reached the Colorado River around present-day Lees Ferry, southwest of where Glen Canyon Dam is now, and worked their way north along the river, looking for a way across.
They passed the often-photographed Castle Rock and Gunsight Butte, chipped steps into the slickrock to allow their pack animals to get down to the shore, lowered their belongings over a cliff with ropes, and after some scouting, found an ancient Ute Indian river crossing, where the water was slow and shallow enough to ride across. That place became known as the Crossing of the Fathers, and is right around where Lake Powell's Padre Bay is now.
Their trip made an approximately two thousand-mile-long circle through mostly unexplored terrain, took nearly six-and-a-half months, and explored more undocumented, unknown land than Lewis and Clark would later in their over two-year-long journey. When the fathers got back to Santa Fe, however, only their failure to reach California mattered much to anyone, along with their apparent waste of funds, horses, and supplies.
Escalante was practically exiled, and died within five years as the result of bad health obtained from his trials in the desert.
Domínguez was demoted, his possibilities of advancement destroyed, and he died anonymously as an old man, never recognized for what he'd done.
If you are interested in the West, or the Colorado Plateau, or Glen Canyon, you need to read this. There's just no way around that. It contains information you will find nowhere else, and it's actually a fairly enjoyable read. (I never would have thought Spanish priests could be so SARCASTIC....)

I love the creative table settings and the variety of menus (including vegetarian options). This book has inspired me to do more entertaining. I also enjoyed the photographs and local Colorado history.

Ricky's book is inspirational, well written, and breaks with the crowd of table setting books that teach you how the ancients think you should set a table. Ricky understands the humanistic power of thematic and meaning design concepts. Her technique is to decorate the table or pickup truck bed or whatever serving surface with items that mean something to her, Ralph, and their guests. She has drilled deep into local history and ranching to find items with meaning and to display them in creative ways that add interest and passion to her settings.

You can follow her thinking and process to design your own meaningful table settings. Ricky tells what she has done and how but this isn't a guidebook. You have to find your own local meaning and do your own designs.

Once you have dined with such table settings you will never go all the way back to the typical tedious aesthetic designs. Be creative! Start with this book.

- Jim Preston, CEO
Intiri Designs

As a young teen, this book introduced me to the world of fantasy and dragon loving.

15-year-old Alys is falsely accused of witchcraft by a greedy shop owner who wants her deceased father's property. She is left out as dragon's bait and is convinced she's going to be eaten, but then the dragon decides on a whim to help her get revenge. Selendrile, as he calls himself in human form, helps Alys ruin the lives of the people who ruined hers. But in the end, she starts wondering if revenge is all it's cracked up to be.

This book has a great message about revenge and is highly entertaining. Just watching Selendrile trying to fit in with humans is reason enough to pick up this great fantasy story. I read it when I was 11 and almost ten years later I still go back and reread it. You won't regret buying this book!

It is so psychadelic! it's like the most freakyest but still awsome book i've read. It inspired most of my stories!