On the Shelf

Local Authors Honored

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Three Silver City writers won prestigious 2019 New Mexico-Arizona book awards. Sharlene Daugherty’s book, She Faces Her Enemy (Dorrence Press) was a finalist in two categories: biography and multicultural. Kate Rauner’s science fiction book, Titan: Colonizing Saturn’s Moon, was a finalist in efiction. E J Randolph’s science fiction books, The Ambassador Calls Twice and No Charity were finalists in efiction. At the awards banquet in Albuquerque, the NM/AZ Book Co-op announced The Ambassador Calls Twice won its NM efiction category.

This year 1,545 entries were submitted. From 56 categories, the judges chose 182 finalists. Three independent judges read each entree and assigned a final rating based on predetermined criteria.

Sharleen Daugherty has lived in Silver City since she moved here in 2004. She gave up a lucrative computer consulting business to promote Navajo artisans and their products. Her books detail her cross-cultural encounters. In She Faces Her Enemy, Sharleen writes an intimate account of her journey into the Navajo culture and her ultimate acceptance into their community. This book also won a gold medal from the 2019 Albuquerque Museum Foundation Award for published non-fiction.

Kate Rauner, a chemical engineer, moved to Grant County in 2003. Her scientific perspective brings space colonies to life with believable habitats, technologies, and dangers on new worlds. In Titan: Colonizing Saturn’s Moon, members of a cult hijack a spaceship to colonize the cold, lethal moon, but psychological tensions split them into deadly factions, threatening the colony’s survival.

E J Randolph moved beyond Bear Mountain in 1999 and started writing social and political fiction set in the future. Paradoxically, her ideas come from her study of history. The two books that won 2019 awards are part of her federation diplomat series. Her diplomat goes to planets plagued by civil unrest or war and brings about peace. In The Ambassador Calls Twice, she encounters hostile aliens and organizes effective planetary resistance. In No Charity, she intervenes in an explosive situation leading to war.

A full selection of all three authors’ books are available on Amazon. Locally, Kate and E J’s books can be found at the Tranquil Buzz and O’Keefe’s Bookstore. E J’s children’s dragon books sell at the Marketplace. Sharleen’s books are available at Wild West Weaving on Texas Street. Coas bookstore in Las Cruces stocks some of Kate and E J’s books.


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