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
“Remarkably Bright Creatures,” by Shelby Van Pelt (Ecco, 2022)
This novel has a remarkably unusual central character: a giant Pacific octopus, Marcellus, who is living at the aquarium in the fictional town of Sowell Bay, Wash. Somehow, he’s able to pry open his tank and scoot around the building for a limited amount of time. His foil, Tova, a 70-something widow, gets a night job cleaning the facility. The two are simpatico and can tell what the other is thinking. Enter a young man searching for meaning in his life. In this complex stew, intricate relationships develop to solve a mystery with inhuman means, with one life well-lived but ending. (Netflix is scheduled to release a film based on the novel in 2026, starring Sally Field.) — 4 stars (out of 4); Bonnie McCune, Denver (bonniemccune.com)
“Head Cases,” by John McMahon (Minotaur Books, 2025)
This new crime thriller series focuses on a team of FBI analysts and agents comprised of misfits and flameouts, but each member has a unique talent or skill. (Think “Big Bang Theory” meets “CSI.”) The team is disparagingly referred to as “the Head Cases,” yet they are the ones brought in to solve the impossible cases. Inexplicably, they are now threatened with being disbanded. Still, they persevere and solve the latest impossible case, despite all efforts to taunt and thwart them. Best of all, they survive to solve more cases in the next installment. I can hardly wait. — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“The Mirador: Dreamed Memories of Irene Nemirovsky by Her Daughter,” by Elisabeth Gille (New York Review of Books, 2011)
When I read “Suite Francaise,” Irene Nemirovsky’s novel about France’s invasion and occupation by the Nazis, the most affecting part was the appendices, notes that Nemirovsky wrote about her plans for finishing “Suite Francaise” and letters she wrote before her arrest by the Gestapo in 1942. I was haunted by the two young daughters she had to leave behind, who hid and managed to survive the war but never saw their parents again. So, I was intrigued to find “The Mirador,” written by the younger of the two daughters who remembered almost nothing about her mother. When she wrote these “dreamed memories” of her mother’s life, Gille was over 50 and had edited and translated other writers for years. She wrote in the first person, as if she were the great novelist herself, and it was a genius stroke. Clearly, Gille inherited her mother’s talent for writing, because in vivid and powerful detail she captures the privileged but unhappy childhood in Kyiv and St. Petersburg, the turmoil during World War I, the heartbreak of the Russian Revolution that forced her family to flee to France and then, 13 years later, the fight against Nazi persecution. — 4 stars (out of 4); Michelle Nelson, Littleton
“Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books,” by Kirsten Miller (William Morrow, 2024)
A fun, satirical read about Lula Dean’s attempt to ban books in her small Southern town to “protect” the town’s children. As a prank, a young woman replaces the “proper” books in Lula’s little library with banned books (disguised within the book jackets of Lula’s original books). When Lula and her nemesis Beverly Underwood both run for mayor, the town takes sides. Miller roasts her Southern heritage with a bit of love. Lots of discussion possibilities. (Selected by the city of Fort Collins for its citywide read this year.) — 3 stars (out of 4); Jo Calhoun, Denver
“Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen,” by Jose Antonio Vargas (Dey Street Books, 2025)
Part memoir, part history lesson, the author describes his life and sense of self as an immigrant in the United States. Vargas was sent from his home in the Philippines as a 12-year-old boy to be raised by his grandparents in California. He later learns that his papers were falsified, leading to more lies to protect both himself and his grandparents. As a young immigrant boy, he could never quite fit in. As an adult, he had to conceal his status from employers and even potential friends. Lying, passing, hiding. Yet, Vargas contends that his book is not about immigration politics, but about homelessness, “the unsettled, unmoored psychological state that undocumented immigrants like me experience.” It also highlights the random acts of kindness that allowed him to succeed in a system geared to ensure his failure. — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver