The dust jacket of Denver author Warren Hammond’s debut novel, “KOP,” sports a cover one rarely sees outside of romance novels: a lifelike, vivid image of the main characters. Amid a dismal urban landscape that suggests overcrowding and squalor, a young brunette looks into the distance while a man who could pass for a meaner, somewhat broken down Pierce Brosnan leers into the shadows.

“KOP” ain’t no romance novel, though.

A young, urban man decides to make a change in his dormant love life. He takes a risk  partly for adventure and partly to satisfy his sex drive. In the end, he rekindles a relationship with the love of his life, if only for a few minutes. Michael Mecherikoff tells the story …

He tossed through the pages of the Westword magazine. The headlines repelled his attention like hooks without bait. “Guh,” Tim whispered. Ads for upcoming concerts became ads for night clubs became ads for adult audiences. 

Hmm, he thought.

“Who Are You People?: A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America” by Shari Caudron
Barricade Books, 288 pages, $15

Denver writer Shari Caudron has hit the national radar with a nonfiction book that examines an interesting subject.

No, she didn’t trek across the Afghanistan desert post 9-11, log time in a foreign brothel, or go undercover with religious fanatics.

What she did was cast a probing eye toward people we see all the time, possibly at work or at family gatherings, who have interests that arouse a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment.

In the 17 years Inge Sargent taught junior high and high school students in Boulder, a few may have wondered about her penchant for putting her hair up in a double bun. They might have questioned the  man-eating tiger hide or the python skin hanging on her walls. But until she published a book about her early adulthood, no one realized she’d been a bright star in Burma’s dark history.

Inge, now 75, had once been to Burma what Princess Di was to Britain.