Southwest Books of the Year 2015: Top PicksLike this list

11 items

• All the Wild That Remains

  Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West

  Gessner, David, 1961-

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  David Gessner brings alive writers Edward Abbey and Wallace Stegner in this personal, literary, road trip meditation on the state of the American West. ALL THE WILD THAT REMAINS visits locations that influenced the work of Stegner and…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• American Ghost

  a Family's Haunted Past in the Desert Southwest

  Nordhaus, Hannah

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  All families have their ghosts, but few are as fascinating and worth knowing as Nordhaus’s great-great-grandmother, Julia Staab, whose spirit is rumored to haunt her former home, today’s La Posada hotel in Santa Fe. Curious about her…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Chasing Arizona

  One Man's Yearlong Obsession With the Grand Canyon State

  Lamberton, Ken, 1958-

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  In a boldly ambitious book, Ken Lamberton sets out to visit Arizona’s every county and Indian nation, see every state symbol, taste the state’s many ethnic foods, and see the highest peaks and deepest valleys—all in one year. —Bill…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Detained and Deported

  Stories of Immigrant Families Under Fire

  Regan, Margaret, 1952-

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  His face is pressed between rusting steel bars; her arms, from the other side, envelop both the bars and his shoulders and neck. The couple embracing on the dust jacket of Margaret Regan’s new border book is nothing if not emblematic of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Epitaph

  a Novel of the O.K. Corral

  Russell, Mary Doria, 1950-

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  Russell breathes new life into an often-told story in this epic retelling of the 1881 face-off between the Earp brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons and McLaurys on a windswept street in Tombstone, AZ. —Bruce Dinges (Also selected by…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Jaguar's Children

  Vaillant, John

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  You and your best friend Cesar have paid a smuggler to take you north across the dangerous Mexican border inside the empty tank of a water truck. The truck breaks down, the smugglers flee with your money, and now you’re trapped inside.…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Night at the Fiestas

  Stories

  Quade, Kirstin Valdez

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  Quade explores the treacherous terrain of the human heart in these remarkable stories set mostly in northern New Mexico. A broken man seeks redemption playing the role of Jesus in a penitente ceremony. A small-town girl meets a mysterious…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Sonoran Strange

  Phillips, Logan

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  Tucson treasure, poet, and performer Logan Phillips penned a protest song, cautionary tale and love song in his tribute to the Sonoran Desert. Layered with early and contemporary voices, these powerful verses decry the march of…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Unprocessed

  My City-dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food

  Kimble, Megan

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  Eating simply can be a complicated business. This is what Megan Kimball discovered when she opted to spend a year eating off the grid, bypassing all things frozen, enriched or shrink-wrapped in favor of locally-sourced food that was…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• The Water Knife

  Bacigalupi, Paolo

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  The prognosis isn’t pretty for the Southwest when the taps run dry. People are literally dying of thirst in Bacigalupi’s dystopian Phoenix, where water is wealth and powerful cartels fight to the death to control it. Bacigalupi’s thriller…Read moreRead more of this annotation

• Southwest Books of the Year

  View on pima.gov

  Find Southwest Books past and present here.