Fifteen Must-Read Books About Colorado

Mon Dec 29 09:39:00 GMT 2025

Looking for a starter set of must-read books about Colorado before this state turns 150 in 2026? You can grab a new release by a local author for some great vacation reading, or check one of the available compendiums, like The Colorado Book and Reading Colorado, for more ideas.

Then again, you can just check our list below for fifteen must-read books about Colorado (thanks to Alan Prendergast, Tom Noel, Habitat Library, Teague Bohlen and a host of others for their ideas…and blurbs):

Fifteen Books You Should Read Now About Colorado

Angle of Repose
Wallace Stegner
While Leadville is only one of several locations that this sprawling Pulitzer-winning novel covers, the trip across the history of the West is more than worth the time. The novel follows wheelchair-bound historian and academic Lyman Ward, who has lost connection with his son and living family and decides to write about his frontier-era grandparents. Such remains the reputation of Stegner’s novel, which the Modern Library ranked at 82 on its 1998 list of the 100 best English-language novels of the twentieth century.

Butcher’s Crossing
John Williams
For decades, John Williams taught at the University of Denver

Centennial
James Michener
Does James Michener play a little fast and loose with the facts in this doorstop-sized classic? Sure – it’s historical fiction, not a textbook, which he created to mark the state’s centennial. But the sprawling epic portrays some of Colorado’s most dramatic history (the Sand Creek Massacre, for example) while telling the story of the fictional titular city in Weld County from the late 1700s all the way through the 1970s. And if the sheer length of the novel seems a little daunting, a gorgeously over-dramatic and star-studded mini-series of it was made in 1978. Both the book and the mini-series are worth experiencing, for very different reasons.

The Dog Stars
Peter Heller
Peter Heller has written a handful of novels, most of which have some Colorado connection – but none so direct as The Dog Stars, his debut, a post-apocalyptic story set in our state following a (yikes) worldwide viral disaster. It’s an enthralling and suspense-filled yarn that Playboy praised as “one of the most powerful reads in years.”

Eclipse
Dalton Trumbo
Later-to-be-blacklisted Dalton Trumbo wrote Eclipse in 1935 about the Colorado town of Shale City, based on