MPIBA Booksellers Favorites

La Ranfla and Other New Mexico Stories Martha Egan's collection of seven short stories transcends the limits of regionalism. In "Carnales," a grudge lasting generations ends with a standoff in a village cemetery. The unruly dog in "Mutt" helps a young silversmith learn to stand her ground. In "Time Circles" a trip to a ceremonial in Navajo Country encourages a woman to open both a new business and her heart. The veterinarian in "Guapo" rescues a dog that changes her life forever. A pair of newly arrived hippies learn to play by New Mexico's rules in "La Ranfla." A broken down MGB strands a college boy in a border town in "Granny," where local life proves to be unexpectedly seductive.

The Farmer's Daughter
Jim Harrison's fifteen works of fiction have established him as one of the most beloved and popular authors in American fiction. His last novel, The English Major, was a National Indie Bestseller, a New York Times Book Review notable, and a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year. Harrison's latest collection of novellas, The Farmer's Daughter, finds him writing at the height of his powers, and in fresh and audacious new directions. The three stories are as different as they are unforgettable. Written in the voice of a home-schooled fifteen-year-old girl in rural Montana, the title novella is an uncompromising, beautiful tale of an extraordinary character whose youth intersects with unexpected brutality, and the reserves she must draw on to make herself whole. In another, Harrison's beloved recurring character Brown Dog, still looking for love, escapes from Canada back to the States on the tour bus of an Indian rock band called Thunderskins. And finally, a retired werewolf, misdiagnosed with a rare blood disorder brought on by the bite of a Mexican hummingbird, attempts to lead a normal life but is nevertheless plagued by hazy, feverish episodes of epic lust, physical appetite, athletic exertions, and outbursts of violence under the full moon. The Farmer's Daughter is a memorable portrait of three decidedly unconventional American lives. With wit, poignancy, and an unbounded love for his characters, Jim Harrison has again reminded us why he is one of the most cherished and important authors at work today.

A Glass of Water
Poet Baca's blistering novel takes to task the treatment of Mexican migrant workers in the US. When a young Mexican couple, Casimiro and Nopal, cross the border in 1984, their new life begins promisingly: they find work on a Texas farm and build a stable home for their two sons, Lorenzo and Vito. But before the boys reach adulthood, Nopal is murdered and her killer escapes. The family struggles to go on, with Lorenzo eventually taking over his father's farm duties and settling into domestic bliss with Carmen, a college student studying migrant workers. Vito's restless spirit leads him to fight in amateur boxing matches and to everyone's surprise, he shows a tantalizing level of talent and considers a serious fighting career. But even as the brothers find their own measures of success, they are haunted by the injustice of Nopal's murder. Interspersed with Lorenzo and Vito's lives are glimpses of Casimiro's youth and even Nopal's thoughts from the world beyond. A general sense of social and political unrest permeates the story, often to the point of distraction. But the sheer passion that drives Baca's novel is undeniable. (Publisher's Weekly)

Wolf Hall
England in the 1520s is a heartbeat from disaster. If the king dies without a male heir, the country could be destroyed by civil war. Henry VIII wants to annul his marriage of twenty years and marry Anne Boleyn. The pope and most of Europe opposes him. Into this impasse steps Thomas Cromwell: a wholly original man, a charmer and a bully, both idealist and opportunist, astute in reading people, and implacable in his ambition. But Henry is volatile: one day tender, one day murderous. Cromwell helps him break the opposition, but what will be the price of his triumph?

Stitches
One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together like a bloody boot, the fourteen-year-old boy had not been told that he had cancer and was expected to die. In Stitches, Small, the award-winning children's illustrator and author, re-creates this terrifying event in a life story that might have been imagined by Kafka. As the images painfully tumble out, one by one, we gain a ringside seat at a gothic family drama where David--a highly anxious yet supremely talented child--all too often became the unwitting object of his parents' buried frustration and rage. Believing that they were trying to do their best, David's parents did just the reverse. Edward Small, a Detroit physician, who vented his own anger by hitting a punching bag, was convinced that he could cure his young son's respiratory problems with heavy doses of radiation, possibly causing David's cancer. Elizabeth, David's mother, tyrannically stingy and excessively scolding, ran the Small household under a cone of silence where emotions, especially her own, were hidden. Depicting this coming-of-age story with dazzling, kaleidoscopic images that turn nightmare into fairy tale, Small tells us of his journey from sickly child to cancer patient, to the troubled teen whose risky decision to run away from home at sixteen--with nothing more than the dream of becoming an artist--will resonate as the ultimate survival statement. A silent movie masquerading as a book, Stitches renders a broken world suddenly seamless and beautiful again.


Tom Horn: Blood on the Moon
Horn was a death sentence to rustlers and the devil incarnate to homesteaders in late nineteenth-century Wyoming. The most notorious of the range detectives and the pre-eminent name in Wyoming history, he operated unchecked until he was arrested for the 1901 murder of the fourteen-year-old son of a sheep-ranching settler. The murder and questionable nature of Horn's conviction still ignite firestorms of controversy among historians and Wyomingites in general.

With findings never before published, author Chip Carlson's monumental research draws the reader into questioning whether Tom Horn was actually railroaded for a murder he did not commit -- but could have. In this, Carlson's third book on events surrounding Tom Horn, he points to the probable killer of Willie Nickell.

Many photographs and documents enhance this new book. Cover and interior artwork have been provided by Wyoming artist Larry Edgar. A foreword by Larry D. Ball, Ph.D., places the events in perspective.

Before he was hanged Horn said, "I have lived about fifteen ordinary lives. I would like to have had somebody who saw my past and could picture it to the public. It would be the most god damn interesting reading in the country." Now author Chip Carlson provides that reading.