Poor Richard’s Books Staff Curate Three Wild Reads for Colorado Springs

A $29.99 paperback about 100-year-old telescope errors is sitting on the same shelf as a $18.99 novel about women giving birth without men in 2049.

That is the current inventory at Poor Richard’s Books in Colorado Springs, and it tells you everything about where our cultural imagination is heading. The store’s staff, writing for the Colorado Sun’s SunLit section this week, recommend a mix of speculative fiction and historical weirdness that ranges from the deeply local to the interplanetary. If you are wondering what people in the valley are actually reading, or at least what a major retailer thinks we should be reading, look no further than these three picks.

Fruits of Our Labor by Ian Patterson is the first entry on the list. At $18.99, it is an accessible price point for a book that tackles some heavy lifting. The premise is straightforward: in 2049, American women have legally recognized human asexual reproduction. The publisher describes a protagonist named Samara who wants out of a dying relationship and into motherhood on her own terms. But the book doesn’t stop there. It jumps to 2062, following a character named Sierra who is one of the first "partho princesses" and faces relentless bullying as gender roles shift. Then it jumps again to 2085, the aftermath of a period called the "Days of Horror," where displaced men launch a violent backlash.

Jeffery Payne, assistant retail manager at Poor Richard’s Books, calls it a "compelling read." He notes that Patterson carries readers into the future while reminding us that societal attitudes toward misunderstood people remain "stubbornly familiar." That is a fair assessment. The book asks who reaps the rewards of autonomy and who pays for it. It is a science fiction story that reads like a political thriller, wrapped in a social commentary package. For the price of two coffees at a local shop, you get three distinct perspectives on a society that has fundamentally changed its reproductive rules.

Then there is The Martians by David Baron, published by Liveright at $29.99. This one takes us back to the early 1900s, when many Americans genuinely believed we had found intelligent life on Mars. The center of the story is Percival Lowell, a Boston Brahmin and Harvard scion who observed "canals" on the red planet. Lowell’s theory was that Mars hosted a utopian society building gargantuan ditches to funnel meltwater from polar icecaps to desert farms. The public loved him. They bought his books and attended his speeches.

Baron chronicles this "Mars mania" as a truly bizarre tale of a nation swept up in its own imagination. The publisher notes that today, the red planet still holds our grip on the public’s imagination, with many seeing it as civilization’s destiny. Baron argues that this tendency to project our hopes onto another world is not new; it has deep roots in American history. It is a historical drama that explains why we are so obsessed with Mars now, by showing us how obsessed we were then.

The third pick is a peek at the paranormal, though the specific title and author are cut off in the provided text. The Colorado Sun describes it as a "peek at the paranormal," rounding out a list that moves from gender politics to space history to the supernatural.

Let’s do the math on what this says about us. We are buying books that ask if men will become obsolete in 2049, books that explain why we think Mars is our destiny, and books that look at the unseen. It is a mix of anxiety and wonder. Poor Richard’s Books isn’t just selling paper; they are curating a mood. The staff sees these books as tools for thinking, sparks of hope, or doses of frustration.

For locals in Colorado Springs and the broader Western Slope, this is a signal. The books on these shelves are not just entertainment. They are mirrors. One reflects a future where biology is politics. Another reflects a past where science was fantasy. And the third looks into the dark and asks what’s there.

The practical impact is simple: these books are available now, in September 2026. If you want to understand why the conversation about Mars is so loud right now, or why gender roles feel like they are shifting under your feet, the answers might be in a $18.99 novel or a $29.99 history book. The store is open. The books are on the shelves. You decide which mirror you want to look into.