Editor’s note: The opinions of the smart, well-read women in my Denver book club mean a lot, and often determine what the rest of us choose to pile onto our bedside tables. So we asked them, and all Denver Post readers, to share their mini-reviews with you. Have any to offer? Email bellis@denverpost.com. – Barbara Ellis
‘Heartwood,’ by Amity Gaige (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
A 42-year-old woman hiker goes missing from the Appalachian Trail in Maine. Was it a simple case of getting lost or foul play? The narrative in this literary thriller follows the woman warden leading the search-and-rescue team, the hiker herself, and an unlikely sleuth. Each discovers her own heartwood, her durable, solid core, along the way. (A Read with Jenna Book Club selection.) — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
‘Tough Luck,’ by Sandra Dallas (St. Martin’s Press, 2025)
Haidie Richards has all the grit you could desire for a 14-year-old girl in 1863. With her little brother, Boots, she journeys by wagon from Illinois to Colorado, seeking her elusive father. All the Western character types you can imagine are present in this adventuresome tale — stereotypes firmly in place — but the period detail and the building action compensate for the pervasive tropes and the occasional man calling people “pilgrim.” Sandra Dallas fans will be sure to make this a best-seller here in her home state of Colorado. — 2 1/2 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker
‘The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World,’ by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Scribner, 2025)
Environmental biologist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s 2020 work “Braiding Sweetgrass” is a quiet book with a big impact. Now, she has written a smaller book, advocating we move from reliance on an economy of accumulation to an economy of giving, “where wealth and security come from the quality of our relationships, not from the illusion of self-sufficiency.” Beautifully illustrated with drawings by John Burgoyne, “Serviceberry” proffers an extended analogy of a tree that shares its delicious berries, supporting and supportive of all life around it. Kimmerer builds a strong case for using “incremental change and creative disruption … as agents of cultural transformation.” She inspires, but doesn’t truly tell us how. That’s up to us. — 3 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker
‘Kills Well with Others,’ by Deanna Raybourn (Berkley, 2025)
If you liked the film series “Reds” or the book series “The Thursday Murder Club,” then here’s a new series for you. This is the sequel to Raybourn’s 2022 novel “Killers of a Certain Age,” and it follows four retired professional assassins, all adept and somewhat sassy women, who are drawn back into their lethal work. The intrigue and pursuit pull them across multiple, glamorous European locations to an unexpected denouement in Montenegro. I’m looking forward to the third one in the series. — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
‘Orbital,’ by Samantha Harvey (Grove Atlantic, 2023)
Samantha Harvey — who has written nearly a handbook on how to get into space and stay alive — has little background in science or space travel. She must be a helluva technical writer, however, because the reader won’t notice any errors, as six astronauts circle the Earth and handle all the duties. The plot purports to be 24 hours or so on an international space station, within the realm of reality for today’s technology. There’s plenty of time for internal musings of each person, but unfortunately not enough for actions, conscious or subconscious, to create an interesting plot. The author calls the work a “space pastoral,” focusing on what really goes on in space and the ethereal beauty of long-distance viewing rather than the hypothetical nature of speculative fiction, resembling a combination of a textbook with a poem. it contains lots of philosophical musings, but no fistfights. (Winner of the Booker Prize for English language novel in 2024.) — 2 1/2 stars (out of 4); Bonnie McCune, Denver (bonniemccune.com)
