En pointe before Black ballerinas were recognized
The Swans of Harlem, accomplished classical dancers, come to light
Welcome to Rocky Mountain Reader! We’re here because we value books and authors and the freedom to exchange ideas and explore new worlds through reading. We’re here to highlight the vast and varied landscape of literary arts in our home state of Colorado.
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The Swans of Harlem, accomplished classical dancers, come to light
Pleasure, principled: an antidote to the lure of the smartphone
Picture book celebrates multiculturalism, human dedication to conservation
A review of Jennie Marts’ newest novel
Novel explores humanity under siege in a post-apocalyptic U.S.
A review of Front Range poet Stefanie Kirby’s award-winning chapbook, Fruitful
Cyclist’s Guide mystery series kicks off in the south of France with pastry and murder afoot
Good to the last drop—author Alan Prendergast on the pleasures of reading Georges Simenon’s 75 Inspector Maigret novels
Fort Collins-based author-wizard Ramona Ausubel’s most recent novel, The Last Animal, released in 2023 and out now in paperback, makes leaps of imagination across continents and millennia seem perfectly plausible. The story involves single mother Jane, a frustrated grad student in paleobiology, recently widowed; and her two teenage daughters, Eve and Vera, The Last Animal opens with this codependent family unit on a scientific expedition to Siberia where the girls, on a typically boredom-filled afternoon, stumble upon the bones of a 4,000-year old woolly mammoth. That’s just the beginning. Mother and daughters, through a series of subterfuge-fueled moves, end up at an exotic animal farm in Italy where the DNA of their fossil is implanted into an elephant with the goal of resurrecting an extinct species. What happens beyond that is a series of tender, hilarious, heart-rending and suspenseful moments that testify to the unbreakable ties of family, for better or worse, alongside the loneliness and impossibility of thriving without connection. Smart, beguiling, touching and entertaining, The Last Animal peers into our shared animal souls, at once raising pertinent questions about the limits of bioengineering and taking the reader on a helluva good ride. — Kathryn Eastburn