New Mexico Books: The Best Books Set in the Land of Enchantment

Book Summary

Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of splitting the atom for the first time in 1938 Berlin. However, she’s also a Jewish woman living under the Third Reich. She knows that the energy created by her discovery has the power to change the world – for the good through energy creation or for the bad through mass destruction. While her research is originally belittled, it’s eventually stolen by German colleagues.

Seven years later, in New Mexico, Major Jack Delaney arrives in town to catch a spy. Someone at Los Alamos has been leaking secrets to Hilter’s scientists. Jack’s top suspect is Hannah, an exiled physicist working on J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mission.

Book Summary

The small New Mexico town of Entrada de la Luna has a lot of challenges, from poverty and poor healthcare to broken marriages. It’s the kind of town that kids strive to leave when they grow up. This is why Miguel Torres jumps at the chance when he sees an ad for a position caring for two small boys in a different town. But he never expected to end up working for a woman like Rachel Rothstein.

Rachel is a frustrated artist from New York. She was hoping that New Mexico would give her a fresh start, but it has yet to solve any of her problems. As he learns about the Jewish faith from Rachel’s family, Miguel recognizes many of the traditions from his own Catholic community.

Through historical vignettes dating back to the Spanish Inquisition, a story unfolds about a community of “Crypto Jews” – Catholics who, in the 1990s present-day setting of the novel, observe these Jewish traditions without knowing anything about the origin of the traditions or their own Jewish ancestry.

Book Summary

Rita’s skill as a forensic photographer for the Albuquerque police, and her talent has helped solve many cases. She doesn’t tell anyone else that she’s so good because she sees the ghosts of crime victims who point her toward the clues.

However, these ghosts also nag her in her sleep and sabotage her personal life. They drove her away from her Navajo Nation home where she grew up with her grandmother and have isolated her from friends.

Now, she’s been latched onto by a victim who supposedly committed suicide on a highway overpass. But the victim was actually murdered and she won’t give up until Rita helps solve the case. This investigation puts her in the crosshairs of one of Albuquerque’s most dangerous cartels.

Book Summary

The small town of Del Sol, New Mexico, has always been known for its fry-an-egg-on-cement summers and strong cups of coffee. Newly elected Sheriff Sunshine Vicram recently returned to town after her parents nominated her for the role. Historically, the biggest crime wave in town involved an elderly flasher named Doug, so Sunshine certainly never expected the town to become the focal point of a nationwide manhunt.

A teenage girl is missing, and a kidnapper is on the loose. In addition to a major crime to solve, there is trouble at Sunshine’s daughter’s new school, not to mention a kidnapped prized rooster named Puff Daddy. And now the manhunt has brought a sexy US Marshall named Levi to town, making it even harder for Sunshine to keep her cool.

Book Summary

Luna McGraw lives in the sun-baked hills of New Mexico. She also lives with many regrets. She is struggling to overcome the alcoholism that destroyed her marriage and caused her to lose custody of her teenage daughter. She desperately wants to rebuild a relationship with her daughter, all the while being haunted by childhood memories of the father she barely knows.

Thomas Coyote and Luna have seen each other around town for years, but have never spoken until a chance meeting on the night that Thomas’s grandmother nearly set her house on fire. Like Luna, Thomas has plenty of baggage of his own.

Book Summary

After spending years in academia, Jodi Luna left Boston and returned home to New Mexico to take a position as a game warden. Determined to protect the land her family has called home for generations, she nabs poachers in her first week on the job.

Things quickly take a dangerous turn when the poacher retaliates by stalking Jodi and her teenage daughter. The cat-and-mouse game through rugged New Mexico leads Jodi to a terrorist group of white supremacists. Their new recruits are kidnapping women of color to prove their mettle to the leader of the organization.

When she can’t get any cooperation from the local sheriff, Jodi teams up with a young deputy named Ashley. Together, they are determined to use their knowledge of the land and their commitment to its people to take down the terrorist network.

Book Summary

A middle school summer should involve pool parties and sleepovers, but instead, twelve-year-old Carolina is in New Mexico with her parents. They are moving her grandfather, whom she hadn’t met before, into a home for seniors with dementia. He has a prickly personality, so Carol avoids him at first, but then she’s drawn into his crazy stories.

As he shares tales about a healing tree, a green-glass lake, and the bees that will bring back the rain to end a hundred years of drought, she finds herself in the blurred line between fantasy and reality.

Book Summary

Anna’s artist husband, Henry, is mild and predictable and would never hurt a fly. Or so she thought until he called her and confessed to a murder. And then, the police find his body washed up on the banks of the Rio Grande River.

Desperate to make sense of it all, Anna checks into The Sycamores, the run-down motel turned apartment outside of Sante Fe where Henry rented space to use as his art studio. As she gathers gossip from the eclectic mix of residents around the motel pool, she begins to see a very different picture of Henry than the man she married.

It also seems that Henry wasn’t the only one with secrets. The more Anna learns, the more determined Cass, the motel manager, is to keep her in the dark.

When she begins receiving threatening letters, Anna has to decide whether she’s more interested in the truth or in her own safety.

Book Summary

Gabby’s dad abandoned her and her mother when she was just a baby. Twenty-nine years later, the last thing she expects is to meet him on the day of her mother’s funeral. Not only does he show up wanting to get to know her – he also wants to give her a house. Gabby is not ready to forgive him, but she really needs the money, so she accepts the house under two conditions. The first is that she can sell it whenever she wants. The second is that accepting the house doesn’t mean she accepts him.

Gabby hires a contractor to help her prepare the house for a quick sale, but things quickly get more complicated. As she becomes acquainted with the town and with these two new men in her life, she begins to learn more about herself than she thought possible.

Book Summary

We first meet the Eapen family in 1979 when Thomas visits his mother’s home in India. She tries to convince him to stay in India with his young family, but Thomas, a surgeon, has already built a new life for himself in New Mexico. His wife, Kamala, however, would love to stay in India.

In 1998, Thomas’ now grown daughter is a photographer living in Seattle. She learns from her mother that her dad is sitting on the porch talking to dead relatives, but she assumes her mom is exaggerating. When she returns home, the situation is much more complicated than her mother lets on. To help her father, they’ll all have to come to terms with the family’s painful past.

Book Summary

Stevie feels trapped in her life, but she’s also literally trapped on the dusty outskirts of the New Mexico desert in an eating disorder treatment center.

She has no privacy and is watched every moment she eats and even in the bathroom. While her dad registered her for 60 days, Stevie has no plans to stay that long. In 27 days, she’ll reach the anniversary of her brother’s death. So, she only plans to live another 27 days.

Book Summary

When Archaeologist Leah explores a Native American cliff dwelling that had been abandoned for 800 years, she finds a previously undiscovered massacre. With the human remains, she finds rare, brilliantly colored granite crystals. These crystals are only known to exist in a frozen mountain range in central Antarctica, so how did they end up in New Mexico?

Leah’s estranged husband is a hiking guide and the only person who can help her unravel the mystery. But, when they make a major discovery in Antarctica that impacts both science and history, governments get involved.

Book Summary

Thirty-three-year-old unemployed Amadeo is preparing to play the role of Jesus in the Good Friday procession. While he practices and hopes for personal redemption, his fifteen-year-old daughter Angel shows up on his doorstep pregnant. She only has a few weeks to go before her baby is born, and has fled her mother’s turbulent home. 

The book shows the baby’s first year through five members of the Padilla family, which also includes Amadeo’s mother, Angel’s mother, and a disapproving uncle. Each person has expectations that Amadeo fears he cannot live up to.