This intense novel spans the Americas, but Tucson, Arizona, is one of its key locations. Leslie Marmon Silko connects diverse characters, among them Lecha, who guards sacred tribal texts. Her home is a hub for people planning revolution.
You’ll find stories about crime, Indigenous resistance, ancient prophecies, and the deep history of colonization conflict across these pages.
Tony Hillerman introduces the unforgettable Joe Leaphorn, a Navajo Tribal Police lieutenant, in this book. A baffling death occurs out on the vast, empty reservation land.
Leaphorn must carefully work through the puzzle, a place where traditional Navajo beliefs and practices meet modern crime. The stark beauty and spiritual weight of the Arizona landscape are almost characters themselves.
Another great one from Tony Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee series. Officer Jim Chee investigates the shocking murder of another policeman. The investigation quickly points to an old, unassuming Navajo shaman.
Joe Leaphorn joins Chee, and together they unravel a complex case full of Navajo traditions, hidden motives, and personal histories against the backdrop of the Southwest.
In Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, Codi returns to her small Arizona hometown, Grace, to look after her father, who is unwell. She reconnects with her past, discovers long-buried family secrets, and gets involved in local efforts to protect the town’s river and environment.
It’s a thoughtful story about how our sense of self is tied to family, community, and the land itself.
Emily Nemens captures the unique world of baseball spring training in Scottsdale, Arizona. The story revolves around a veteran star outfielder whose life seems to be coming apart. You meet a whole cast connected to the team – players, coaches, fans, agents, and locals.
Their lives, ambitions, and problems play out under the desert sun during this short, intense season.
George Hayduke, the legendary eco-warrior from Edward Abbey’s earlier work, wasn’t dead after all! In this follow-up, Hayduke returns to the Arizona desert and beyond.
He aims to continue his passionate fight against the huge machines and corporations he sees destroying the wilderness. Expect Abbey’s signature blend of rowdy humor, anarchist spirit, and love for the Southwest’s wild places.
Téa Obreht takes us to the Arizona Territory in 1893. The story follows two main characters. Nora is a resilient frontierswoman whose husband and sons are missing, and she holds down the homestead during a drought.
Lurie is a former outlaw from the Balkans, now wandering the West and haunted by ghosts. Their paths converge in surprising ways across the harsh, mystical landscape. Keep an eye out for the camels!
This classic Newbery Medal winner tells the story of Younger Brother, a Navajo boy destined to become a medicine man. Laura Adams Armer offers a sensitive look into Navajo life and spirituality in early 20th-century Arizona.
Younger Brother learns the traditions, songs, and deep connection his people have with the beautiful, demanding land around the Painted Desert and Cedar Ridge.
Step into the fictional community of La Maravilla, near Buckeye, Arizona, in the 1950s. Alfredo Véa Jr. tells the story through the eyes of young Beto. His caretakers are his grandmother, an Apache healer, and his grandfather, a Yaqui-Spanish wanderer.
The town itself is full of unforgettable characters from many backgrounds. Beto observes their intertwined lives, secrets, traditions, and struggles for identity in this unique desert setting.
Paolo Bacigalupi presents a frighteningly plausible near-future Arizona. Water is desperately scarce, and states battle for control of the Colorado River. Angel Velasquez is a “water knife,” essentially a spy and enforcer.
He cuts deals and breaks bodies to secure water rights for Las Vegas. It’s a tough, fast-paced story about survival, greed, and the consequences of climate change in Phoenix and the surrounding desert.
Taylor Greer flees her rural Kentucky home. She hopes for a new life and drives west until her car gives out in Tucson, Arizona. Along the way, she unexpectedly becomes the caretaker for a quiet, traumatized Cherokee child she names Turtle.
Barbara Kingsolver writes with warmth about finding chosen family, friendship, and resilience in unexpected places, all under the Arizona sky.
Marguerite Henry based this beloved children’s book on a real-life burro who lived in the Grand Canyon around the turn of the 20th century. Brighty is a free spirit.
He helps an old prospector, makes friends with visitors like Theodore Roosevelt, and knows the canyon’s trails better than anyone. It’s an adventure story that really brings the majesty and ruggedness of the Grand Canyon to life.
This strange and wonderful fantasy unfolds when a mysterious circus appears overnight in the fictional town of Abalone, Arizona. Charles G. Finney introduces the enigmatic Dr. Lao and his bizarre menagerie.
It includes creatures straight out of myth – a sphinx, a medusa, a satyr. The townsfolk visit, and the exhibits seem to hold up a mirror to their own hidden desires and flaws.
Jeannette Walls tells the story of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith, a woman of incredible grit and spirit. Lily grew up on the frontier in the early 1900s.
She learned to break horses, traveled hundreds of miles alone on horseback for a teaching job at age fifteen, and eventually ran a ranch in Arizona. Walls calls it a “true-life novel,” and it captures Lily’s resilience against the harsh realities of the West.
Mark Poirier focuses on two residents of a suburban Arizona town near Tucson. Pella is a teenage girl who navigates a difficult home situation and longs to get away. Everett is an older man who feels trapped in his routine life.
Their separate stories paint a picture of quiet struggles and the search for connection or escape within the sprawling desert landscape.
Imagine Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881, right before the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Now, add a hidden layer of magic. Emma Bull weaves historical figures like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday into a fantasy story.
Jesse Fox, a newcomer skilled with horses and perhaps something more, gets caught in the rising tensions between the Earps and the Cowboys. It’s the Old West with a supernatural twist.
Edward Abbey offers a bleak vision of the future in this novel. After societal collapse, Phoenix, Arizona, is a ruined city. Small pockets of survivors try to live freely in the surrounding wilderness.
They clash with a power-hungry warlord who wants to impose his own brutal order. It’s a story about resistance, freedom, and survival in a harsh, changed landscape.
Sixteen-year-old Billy spends a summer away from home in Tucson, Arizona. He stays with his Uncle Wes, who is gay and works at a horse race track. Billy gets a job there too and meets Cara, a sharp, outspoken girl.
Ron Koertge writes an honest, funny, and touching story about Billy’s experiences with work, first love, understanding different kinds of relationships, and growing up.
Ellis lives an unusual life in Tucson, Arizona, with his new-age mother and her flaky boyfriend. His main companion is Goat Man, a laid-back guy who tends goats, grows marijuana, and offers Ellis offbeat guidance.
Mark Poirier tells the story of Ellis preparing to leave this eccentric home for a boarding school back East. It’s a humorous and sometimes touching look at unconventional families in the desert.
This gritty crime novel features Rodeo Grace Garnet, a former bounty hunter living a quiet life in southern Arizona. He gets pulled back into trouble when asked to look into the murder of a young Tohono O’odham girl near the border. C.B. McKenzie creates a tense atmosphere.
Rodeo confronts dangerous secrets in the close-knit community and his own difficult past amid the harsh beauty of the Sonoran Desert.
Deep in the Arizona desert, scientists build the world’s most powerful particle accelerator inside a remote mesa. Their goal is to recreate the moment of the Big Bang. Things quickly become dangerous and strange.
Douglas Preston mixes high-tech science, ancient Navajo beliefs, a fiery televangelist determined to stop the project, and government secrets into a thrilling story. The isolated desert setting heightens the suspense.
Nancy Drew heads to Arizona in this classic mystery! Nancy, Bess, and George visit friends near Phoenix. They soon get involved in a puzzle surrounding valuable, stolen Kachina dolls, sacred items to the Hopi people.
Carolyn Keene sends the famous girl detective exploring rugged landscapes, mysterious caves, and ancient cliff dwellings to find the truth behind the theft.
Zane Grey tells the tale of “Nevada,” a man known as a fearsome gunman who wants to escape his reputation and violent past. He takes a job as a ranch hand in Arizona under an assumed name, Jim Lacy. He finds hard work, loyalty, danger from old enemies, and a chance at love.
It’s a Western adventure full of action, honor, and the challenges of life in the Arizona wilderness.
Robert B. Parker’s detective Spenser travels west to the isolated town of Potshot, Arizona. He’s hired to find out who murdered a wealthy woman’s husband. The town seems completely controlled by a shadowy figure known as The Preacher and his gang, the Dell.
Spenser calls in some tough allies, Hawk among them, to break the gang’s hold and uncover the town’s secrets.
In Adam Niswander’s horror novel, archaeologists digging in the Arizona desert unearth artifacts that hint at a terrifying, forgotten history. They accidentally awaken an ancient evil connected to these relics.
A team of experts must then battle monstrous forces and dark rituals tied to lost civilizations. The vast, empty desert becomes a place of primal fear.
Another Arizona adventure for Nancy Drew! She visits Shadow Ranch for a vacation. Instead of relaxing, she finds herself investigating a local legend about a phantom horse and searching for hidden treasure. Carolyn Keene delivers mystery and suspense.
Nancy must decipher clues related to the ranch’s past and face danger to solve the secret.
Zane Grey based this dramatic Western on a real, bloody feud between families in Arizona’s Tonto Basin. Jean Isbel returns home and gets drawn into the violent conflict between the Isbels and the Jorths.
The story is packed with action, loyalty, and vengeance set against the rugged Rimrock country. Jean also finds himself falling for Ellen Jorth, a woman from the enemy family.
This moving historical novel follows Sumiko, a young Japanese-American girl, after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Her family is uprooted from their California home and sent to the Poston War Relocation Center, an internment camp located on the Colorado River Indian Reservation in the Arizona desert. Cynthia Kadohata explores Sumiko’s struggles with loss, prejudice, and finding her identity.
She forms an unexpected friendship with a local Mojave boy in this harsh environment.