Fans pick 54 books like The Last Camel Charge

Jann Arrington Wolcott’s Brujo: Seduced by Evil features Lee Lindsay as the intrepid reporter. The action takes place in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After a co-worker is killed in a suspicious car crash, Lee is sent to complete his assignment. The man she meets in a remote village casts a spell over her. Flashbacks to a former life begin to haunt her as the brujo (male witch) stalks her and her family. As someone who knows Santa Fe well, I liked how Wolcott used Santa Fe locations and local color to enhance the narrative. Lee’s friendship with the artist who knew something about brujos was the best part for me; a true friend who risked it all.

Read this book along with the other handsomely published book, Hidden Scholars, and we have a pair that opens up the idealized Southwest and the ideology of White Supremacy behind it. Schemes and sufferings, deals and derring-do abounded in the territory that now boasts our U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Laguna Pueblo citizen Deb Haaland. Don Fowler and his wife Catherine Fowler are themselves archaeologists/ethnographers in the Southwest borderland, my longtime good friends and colleagues, with an eye for arresting details and a story-telling style that make this book a gripping account of how the Romantic Ruins and fascinating Pueblos were created out in America's desert.

This is a stunning debut novel about a woman who is a master wildlife tracker out to help save the Mexican wolf from extinction. There’s a lot more to the plot than that, but her relationship to animals and to the natural world is deeply satisfying. She allows them to “people” each scene, not only the wolf but her ranch animals, and her respect for other species shines through. This is a far cry from my pet peeve, which is a book with a dog, but the dog is a cardboard cutout who just holds up the end of the leash and makes us think his owner is nice. This is the opposite of that stereotype.

The Pot Thief Who Studied the Woman at Otowi Crossing (A Pot Thief Murder Mystery) is a fun, quick read. Our pot dealer (not the kind you smoke) owns a shop in Albuquerque's Old Town. "Hubie" as he is called, digs for pottery on public lands to sell in his shop. I enjoyed his university meetings and the hierarchy at the University of New Mexico. When things got heated among the profs, he dove into a book until the collegiate clashing was over. Fond of margaritas, and who isn't, I got a kick out of how much mystery solving he could do at this favorite bar. My characters share that trait by stopping by The Shed in Santa Fe with regularity.

The title of this marvelous group biography is a play on the title of the film and comic book series, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and suits the characters perfectly. Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright left their safe and secure lives and found a calling in the Southwest in the early 20th century. Along the way, they met important Hopi and Navajo leaders, as well as western enthusiasts like Theodore Roosevelt. This book is a marvelous read because the author weaves their lives together in ways that show how much they had in common, as well as how individual each woman was.

This beautiful nonfiction book is a chronicle of four seasons spent following the desert bighorn sheep who live throughout the Southwest.

Even if you’re thinking, “Hmm, I’m really not that interested in sheep,” this book transcends its subject, weaving together science, imaginative observation, and personal reflection. She probes deeper, contemplating how humans connect with the more wild creatures on the animal spectrum.

The late Ellen Meloy was a lyrical writer, and all of her books are worth a read, but I especially love this book. Here’s a quote to give you a taste of her writing: “Each time I look into the eye of an animal...I find myself staring into a mirror of my own imagination.” 

You would probably recognize the landscape of Monument Valley from classic Westerns and other films. Stagecoach, the HBO series Westworld, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Forrest Gump are just a few! But aside from a film set, this iconic setting is, first and foremost, the home of the Navajo people.

Based on extensive interviews with Navajo residents of Monument Valley, this book weaves together a portrait of the place and people, from Indigenous cultural traditions and the dawn of Hollywood to mining and the significance of the monuments themselves. 

This book is horror for adrenaline fiends, but it has emotional depths and a rich cast of well-developed characters to balance out its fast-paced thrills.

My favorite character in this book, and one of my favorites in the whole horror canon, is Nell Talbot, one half of the brother-sister duo of protagonists. Nell is a 100-proof disaster bisexual, surfing a wave of her own bad choices all the way to shore.

You know how a story is supposed to have an inciting incident? Nell Talbot is the inciting incident.

Rick Bass is an absolute American treasure and it’s difficult to choose between this book about Mexican gray wolf recovery or his equally enthralling book The Ninemile Wolves. The New Wolves covers a sometimes overlooked part of the story of wolf recovery in the US. More often than not, people think about Yellowstone and the return of gray wolves to Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho when they think about reintroduction efforts. The saga of Lobos in the Southwest is a poignant and important one to remember and Rick Bass’ skilled prose will stay with you too.

When I got divorced, I kept my ex-partner’s last name. It felt shameful in some ways, but it also felt like the best option financially and career-wise. I was so relieved to read a memoir of a woman who confidently and decisively kept her ex’s last name even as she blazed a brand-new path for herself while the relationships around her blew up.

From the outside, my life can look easy and happy. But, of course, I deal with challenges that feel unsurmountable at the time, with critics who make me second-guess my work and with the expectations of how a woman should look and speak. In this book Brianna breaks down her own journey of rebuilding a life that looked shiny on the outside but had major struggles that she could no longer ignore.

I’ve struggled at work, in marriage, and in my identity. To read a memoir from… show more.