New Books for the Pueblo Chieftain: December 13, 2021

"Lou, a young Black woman, wakes up in an alley in 1930s Los Angeles, nearly naked and with no memory of how she got there or where she's from, only a fleeting sense that this isn't the first time she's found herself in similar circumstances. Taken in by a caring foster family, Lou dedicates herself to her education while trying to put her mysterious origins behind her. She'll go on to become the first Black female journalist at the Los Angeles Times,...

"The New York Times bestselling author of The Wicked Deep weaves a richly atmospheric adult debut following three residents of a secluded, seemingly peaceful commune as they investigate the disappearances of two outsiders. Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James-a well-known...

"From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things and The Book of Two Ways comes a deeply moving novel about the resilience of the human spirit in a moment of crisis. Diana O'Toole is perfectly on track. She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She's an associate specialist at Sotheby's...

"Just weeks after graduating from the Dean's List from Tennessee State University, Keeda Haynes became an inmate at Alderson Federal Prison Camp, all for a crime she didn't commit. This was never meant to be her story. Her childhood was spent in church, band practice, and Girl Scouts meetings, and when she enrolled at TSU, the path ahead had seemed bright. Then one day her boyfriend had asked for a simple favor, to sign to receive some FedEx packages-packages...

"Art historian Catherine McCormack challenges how culture teaches us to see and value women, their bodies, and their lives. Cultural archetypes have long been used to subjugate women, binding them within the restrictive roles of Venus, bride, wife, mother, and monster. These portrayals echo throughout the paintings and sculptures of western art-Titian, Botticelli, and Giambologna-and more contemporaneously in fashion photographs, ads, and across social...

A man mourning his alcoholic father faces a paradox: to pay tribute, lay scorn upon, or pour a drink. A wrenching, dazzling, revelatory debut. Weaving between the preparations for his father's funeral and memories of life on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, Obed Silva chronicles his father's lifelong battle with alcoholism and the havoc it wreaked on his family. Silva and his mother had come north across the border to escape his father's violent,...