These 10 must-read books set in Santa Fe include novels, mystery series, biographies, and women’s fiction. Travel to The City Different with these books that take place in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

1. Red Sky at Morning by Richard Bradford

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“Hailed by the Washington Post Book World as ‘a sort of Catcher in the Rye out West,’ Richard Bradford’s Red Sky at Morning is the classic coming-of-age story set during World War II about the enduring spirit of youth and the values in life that count.”

2. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

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“In 1851 Father Jean Marie Latour comes to serve as the Apostolic Vicar to New Mexico. What he finds is a vast territory of red hills and tortuous arroyos, American by law but Mexican and Indian in custom and belief. In the almost forty years that follow, Latour spreads his faith in the only way he knows–gently, all the while contending with an unforgiving landscape, derelict and sometimes openly rebellious priests, and his own loneliness. Out of these events, Cather gives us an indelible vision of life unfolding in a place where time itself seems suspended.”

3. Weekends with O’Keeffe by C.S. Merrill

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“In 1973 Georgia O’Keeffe employed C. S. Merrill to catalog her library for her estate. Merrill, a poet who was a graduate student at the University of New Mexico, was twenty-six years old and O’Keeffe was eighty-five, almost blind, but still painting. Over seven years, Merrill was called upon for secretarial assistance, cooking, and personal care for the artist. Merrill’s journals reveal details of the daily life of a genius.”

4. Under the Color of Law by Michael McGarrity

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“Newly-installed Santa Fe police chief Kevin Kerney receives a deadly welcome when a U.S. ambassador’s ex-wife is brutally stabbed to death in her home. But before Kerney can begin to investigate, the FBI closes the case with trumped-up evidence. And the harder Kerney hunts for the truth, the more he knows that he may not survive the chase.”

5. Finding Casey by Jo-Ann Mapson

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“Glory Vigil, newly married, unexpectedly pregnant at forty-one, is nesting in the home she and her husband, Joseph, have just moved to in Santa Fe, a house that unbeknownst to them is rumored to have a resident ghost. Their adopted daughter, Juniper, is home from college for Thanksgiving and in love for the very first time, quickly learning how a relationship changes everything. But Juniper has a tiny arrow lodged in her heart, a leftover shard from the day eight years earlier when her sister, Casey, disappeared-in a time before she’d ever met Glory and Joseph. When a fieldwork course takes Juniper to a pueblo only a few hours away, she finds herself right back in the past she thought she’d finally buried.”

6. Santa Fe Rules by Stuart Woods

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“Successful movie producer Wolf Willett is stunned when he sees his own death reported in a major newspaper. It says he was a victim in a triple homicide during a sordid tryst with his wife and a friend. But who is the unidentified corpse? Why can’t Wolf remember anything about the night in question? And who wants him dead?

“Wolf had the means and motive—and his inexplicable memory loss seems far too suspicious to suit Sante Fe’s crusading D.A., who promptly has Wolf arrested. And when another murder complicates the scenario, he turns to hot-shot criminal attorney Ed Eagle to help clear his name—and stop a killer who’s determined to finish the job.”

7. Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow

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“A deeply moving portrait of a girl in a world that owes her nothing, and has taken so much, and the journey she undergoes to put herself back together. Kathleen Glasgow’s debut is heartbreakingly real and unflinchingly honest. It’s a story you won’t be able to look away from.”

8. The Gravity of Birds by Tracy Guzeman

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“Forty-four years after the brilliant young painter, Thomas Bayber, first meets Alice and Natalie Kessler, Bayber unveils a never-before-seen work, Kessler Sisters—a provocative painting depicting the young Thomas, Alice, and Natalie. Bayber asks Dennis Finch, an art history professor, and Stephen Jameson, an eccentric young art authenticator, to sell the painting. But their task becomes more complicated when the artist requires that they first locate Alice and Natalie, who seem to have disappeared.”

9. The King’s Lizard: A Tale of Murder and Deception in Old Santa Fe by Pamela Christie

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“A romp of a mystery that takes place in 1782, in and around Santa Fe in the ancient Kingdom of New Mexico. Gangs of slavers scour the land, priests deal in captives and guns, and there’s a traitor deep within. Nando, inadvertent sleuth, gets drafted into Governor Anza’s spy network–young, uncertain, half Spanish gentry and half Ute slave, he is given the task of setting all to rights. Based on good historical bones, The King’s Lizard is a page-turner that plunges you into the excitement of an earlier era. Here’s a Time Machine you can hold in your hand.”

10. Mothers and Other Liars by Amy Bourret

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“Ten years ago, Ruby Leander was a drifting nineteen-year-old who made a split-second decision at an Oklahoma rest stop. Fast forward nine years: Ruby and her daughter Lark live in New Mexico. Lark is a precocious, animal loving imp, and Ruby has built a family for them with a wonderful community of friends and her boyfriend of three years. Life is good. Until the day Ruby reads a magazine article about parents searching for an infant kidnapped by car-jackers. Then Ruby faces a choice no mother should have to make. A choice that will change both her and Lark’s lives forever.”

Related: 10 Must-Read Books Set In New Mexico

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