I love when a book takes me somewhere specific, and Colorado offers such a fantastic setting for stories. From the vast plains to the rugged mountains, writers have found endless inspiration here.
If you feel the same way, here are some novels where Colorado isn’t just a location, but almost a character itself.
This book is huge, in the best way! Michener takes you from the dinosaurs roaming Colorado all the way to the 1970s.
You meet Arapaho tribes, follow the Pasquinel family of traders, see the rise of cattle ranches near the fictional town of Centennial, and watch how the land shapes everyone who comes there. It’s a whole history lesson wrapped in a story.
Haruf writes about Holt, a small town on the eastern Colorado plains. Life seems quiet, but so much happens beneath the surface.
A high school teacher deals with his wife leaving, two old bachelor brothers, the McPherons, awkwardly take in a pregnant teenager named Victoria Roubideaux, and kids navigate their own dramas. People find connections when they least expect it.
This story follows Thea Kronborg from Moonstone, a little Colorado town. She has a big voice and dreams of opera. Cather shows Thea’s journey as she grows, pursues her art, and deals with the expectations of others.
The Colorado landscape, especially places like Panther Canyon, deeply influences her path toward becoming an artist.
Lyman Ward, a historian who uses a wheelchair, decides to write about his grandparents. His grandmother, Susan Burling Ward, was an artist and writer from back East who followed her engineer husband to rough mining camps in places like Leadville, Colorado, in the late 1800s.
The story shifts between her letters about frontier life and Lyman’s own present-day difficulties. It really makes you think about adaptation and sacrifice.
Imagine Colorado after a super-flu wipes out most people. Hig lives in an old airport hangar near the mountains with his loyal dog, Jasper, and a survivalist neighbor named Bangley. He flies his small Cessna plane, fishes, and guards against threats.
Then, a random radio call makes him fly out to see if anyone else is out there. It’s about survival, loss, and that spark of hope.
Set during the Depression in Rocklin, Colorado, this book centers on the Bandini family. Arturo is a teenager caught between his Italian heritage and American life. His father, Svevo, is a bricklayer struggling through a harsh winter without work.
The story captures the family’s poverty, faith, and desires with raw honesty.
Bella the dog gets separated from her human, Lucas, in Colorado. This story is her incredible 400-mile journey across the wilderness to get back to him. Along the way she faces dangers, meets other animals, and even forms a bond with a cougar cub.
It shows the amazing loyalty pets can have. Yes, this is the book that the movie with Bryce Dallas Howard was based on.
This is a classic Western adventure. Dave Baxter arrives in a Colorado mining town called High Vermilion. He finds himself caught in the middle of a fight over gold claims.
Expect shootouts, tough choices, and the gritty atmosphere of a boomtown where fortunes and lives hang in the balance. Short really knew how to write action in that Old West setting.
Brother and sister Ralph and Molly Fawcett spend summers away from their California home at their uncle’s Colorado ranch. Molly is thoughtful and bookish; Ralph loves the ranch life and wants to be tough like his uncle.
The story focuses on their intense bond and how it changes as they grow up and face the sometimes harsh realities of the adult world and the mountain landscape.
The Torrance family heads to the isolated Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains. Jack Torrance takes the job as winter caretaker.
His young son, Danny, has psychic abilities—the “shining”—and senses the hotel’s dark history and the spirits within it, like the creepy woman in Room 237. The hotel’s isolation and influence work on Jack, putting his family in terrifying danger.
Stanley Kubrick’s film is famous, but the book has its own chilling details.
This collection includes the title story, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider.” It’s set in Denver during the terrible 1918 flu pandemic, shadowed by World War I. A newspaper woman named Miranda falls for a soldier named Adam.
Their brief time together is intense because illness and war loom over everything. Porter captures that fragile, uncertain feeling of the era beautifully.
This one mixes everyday reality with fantasy right in Denver. Victoria is a musician battling her personal demons. Her life takes a strange turn when she discovers elves living hidden in the city. They become part of her journey toward healing and rediscovering her music.
It’s an unusual blend of urban life and magic.
Will Andrews drops out of Harvard in the 1870s and heads west for an authentic experience. He ends up in a small Kansas town and funds a massive buffalo hunt deep into the Colorado Rockies. The expedition pushes the hunters to their limits.
Williams shows the raw, brutal side of the hunt and the obsession that drives the men, without romanticizing the West.
Mason LaVerle belongs to a tiny, isolated religious sect in Montana that practices unusual beliefs. Their community is shrinking, so Mason is sent out into the wider world—including places like Vail, Colorado—to find converts.
His encounters with modern American life, from technology to social customs, are often funny and highlight the clash between his sheltered past and the complex present.
Sandra Foster is a researcher in Boulder who studies fads – how they start and spread. Her work gets tangled with chaos theory, misdelivered sheep, and a disorganized office assistant named Bennett.
It’s a witty story that looks at trends, communication mishaps, and how unpredictable human behavior can be, especially in a corporate research setting.
This classic beat generation novel follows Sal Paradise and his energetic friend Dean Moriarty (based on Neal Cassady, who grew up in Denver) on frantic cross-country trips. Their journeys buzz with jazz, poetry, and a search for meaning.
Denver is a key stop where they meet friends, party, and feel the vastness of America. Colorado’s landscape provides a backdrop for their restless quest.
Crime reporter Jack McEvoy investigates the supposed suicide of his homicide detective brother in Denver. Jack doesn’t believe the official story. His investigation uncovers a pattern of similar deaths across the country, all linked by quotes from Edgar Allan Poe.
He finds himself hunting a brilliant and ruthless serial killer who targets homicide detectives.
This mystery features Cameryn Mahoney, a seventeen-year-old who lives in Silverton and works as her father’s assistant at the county coroner’s office. When a friend is murdered, Cameryn uses her forensic knowledge to help find the killer.
The story gives a look at forensic science through her eyes as she deals with the emotional toll of the case.
Joe Bonham is a young American soldier from Shale City, Colorado, who gets catastrophically injured in World War I. He wakes in a hospital bed without arms, legs, eyes, ears, or a mouth—a prisoner in his own body. The novel takes place entirely in his mind.
He remembers his life in Colorado, his family, his love, and desperately tries to communicate with the outside world. It’s a powerful statement about the human cost of war.
An apocalyptic story where a superflu called “Captain Trips” kills almost everyone. The survivors are drawn into a conflict between good and evil. Many of the 'good' characters gather in Boulder, Colorado, led by the benevolent Mother Abagail.
The 'bad' follow the menacing Randall Flagg in Las Vegas. Colorado becomes a central battleground for the future of humanity in this epic tale.
This novella is a lighter, funnier story. Aliens have landed near a Colorado mall around Christmas, but they just stand there silently. A reporter teams up with a local choir director.
They accidentally discover the aliens only seem to respond when traditional Christmas carols are sung, but not just any carols! It’s a quirky mix of holiday spirit and first contact confusion.
Denver detective Win Bear investigates a murder in a bleak, authoritarian United States. He accidentally triggers an experimental device and finds himself in a parallel universe.
In this alternate timeline, the U.S. became a libertarian society after a different outcome to the Whiskey Rebellion.
He lands in the Denver Confederacy, part of the North American Confederacy, a place with personal freedom but its own set of problems, including the murder he’s still trying to solve.
Parts of this massive philosophical novel happen in Colorado. It’s where the brilliant inventors and industrialists, who are disappearing from a decaying world, retreat to a hidden valley called Galt’s Gulch.
This refuge in the Colorado mountains symbolizes their independence and innovation. Characters like railroad executive Dagny Taggart travel through Colorado as they witness society collapsing under collectivist policies.
Set in Boulder, this book looks at the lives of two divorced friends, Margo and B.B., as they handle careers, children, and new relationships in middle age. Their friendship is tested, and they confront past decisions and future possibilities.
Blume explores the complexities of love, family dynamics, and finding your way after major life changes.