AT A FICTIONAL MEDITATION CENTER near Taos, all is not Zen. A record snowstorm closes roads, people fall dead, and Sheriff Ulysses Walker suspects … murrderr. Dixon-based behavioral therapist C.R. Koons’s debut novel, Murder at Sleeping Tiger (Epicenter Press), immerses a whodunit in northern New Mexico’s Hispanic and Pueblo cultures, and brings in the region’s spirituality-seekers—Buddhists and Catholics alike. Questions of who will take over the center reveal a dark and corporate underbelly in what only seems like a simple meditation practice. Throughout, the snow lends the mystery a gripping and ethereal quality.
Read more: A photographic tale of New Mexico's past through architecture, history, and ghost towns.