“The Tin Men,” by Nelson DeMille and Alex DeMille (Simon & Schuster, 2025)
In this fast-paced novel, two Army Criminal Investigation Division (CID) special agents are assigned to investigate a death at a military camp in the California desert. They discover that the sole purpose of the Army Rangers and researchers at this sparsely populated, isolated camp is to test a new tool designed to change the future of warfare: the lethal autonomous weapon, a 7-foot-tall, titanium robot with supposedly limited artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities. The more the CID agents learn, the more horrified they become. This robot killed the victim in their investigation. Weaponizing code has been hidden inside the robots’ application code, but by whom? The CID agents don’t know whom to trust. The robots’ AI learning suddenly has outpaced expectations, and these so-called “tin men” are bent on destroying all the humans in the camp and possibly beyond. Can they be stopped? — 3 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver
“Theo of Golden,” by Allen Levi (Atria, 2025)
Enigmatic Theo, 86, chooses Golden, Ga., as the locale for his particular sort of altruism. This popular comfort read glows with stories of the varied characters Theo meets and the lives he transforms. It’s a novel prescription for a cold, wintry day — or a chilled heart. You’ll need a few tissues. (Note: Levi self-published the novel in 2023 before it was picked up by a publisher; it has since become a best-seller.) — 3 stars (out of 4); Neva Gronert, Parker
“The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches from an Ancient Landscape,” by James Rebanks (Flatiron, 2015)
As a child, James Rebanks hated school. Every minute he spent confined within its walls took him away from his family’s sheep farm in England’s Lake District. Threatened by tourists, large-scale farming, and the changing modern world, the farm needs every family member on deck. Luckily for us, his mother instilled in James a love of books, and eventually he attended Oxford and turned his talent for writing into a richly detailed description of that farm and the sense of belonging and purpose he found there.
Rebanks separates the memoir into four parts, one for each season of the year: the season of bringing the sheep down from the fells, of sheep shearing, of lambing, and of showing. The black-and-white photographs scattered throughout lend a sense of realness and solidity, as does the author’s certainty that this kind of existence, where one has some freedom and control over the world versus being “uprooted, anonymous, and pushed about,” has been and continues to be the best. (A New York Times bestseller.) — 3 stars (out of 4); Michelle Nelson, Littleton
“Let Us Descend,” by Jesmyn Ward (Scribner, 2023)
This novel is all it’s cracked up to be: a wonder of writing, poignant and painful. Annis is an enslaved woman, sold south to a Louisiana sugarcane plantation. The descriptions of slavery are excruciating. Annis is often visited by an ancestor spirit, Mama Aza, who seeks to guide her, sometimes supportively, sometimes possessively. In the end, Annis saves herself. The spirit and the symbolism were, at times, undecipherable. But the novel is beautiful, and Jesmyn Ward is amazing. (Ward is a two-time National Book Award winner, for “Salvage the Bones” and “Sing, Unburied, Sing.”) — 4 stars (out of 4); Jo Calhoun, Denver
“Wreck,” by Catherine Newman (Harper, 2025)
Newman revisits the characters from her earlier novel, “Sandwich,” now at home in western Massachusetts, in a small slice of time. Rachel/Rocky, the narrator, a sort of uncentered Earth mother figure, now sits at the center of a multigenerational family and she strives, against all odds, to satisfy each of her family members’ immediate needs without complaint. She becomes obsessed with a local, fatal train-car collision that appears to touch her family only tangentially — or does it? She also struggles with an unclear medical condition and the exasperating and often contradictory regulations of medical and health insurance behemoths. By the end of the novel, several of Rachel’s family are moving on, independently. But Rachel isn’t sad. Her take is: Do your best, love fiercely and carpe diem! You never know when a train will be bearing down on you. (A “Good Morning America” Book Club pick.) — 2 1/2 stars (out of 4); Kathleen Lance, Denver