New Mexico State Library for the Blind & Print Disabled

Winter 2026 Newsletter

This newsletter is published by the New Mexico Library for the Blind & Print Disabled or LBPD, and is distributed free to patrons and other interested parties. The newsletter is available in Large Print, hardcopy braille, on audio cartridge and by email. Please call us at 1-800-456-5515 or 505-476-9770 or email us at sl.lbpd@dca.nm.gov to request a physical copy in large print, braille or audio cartridge.

Click here to access our website for more information

Enjoy International Literature

Thanks to the Marrakesh Treaty and expanded book acquisition, the National Library Service’s (NLS) international language collection continues to rapidly grow. To help both patrons and network library staff locate these titles, the NLS is pleased to announce the publication of the latest issue of International Language Quarterly (ILQ) .

ILQ highlights a selection of the most popular international language titles recently added to the NLS collection. The ILQ web pages also feature a Print button that generates a customizable, printer-friendly version for the convenience of users.

This extra-large ILQ issue (Volume 6, Issue 1) features 234 books in 14 languages. Some of the highlights include: popular audiobooks in Croatian, Italian, Russian, and Greek; twenty new Spanish braille books, all thoroughly tested on the NLS’s Braille eReaders; and explore Hidden Gems — books in French, German, Portuguese, and Spanish that deserve a second look.

Click Here to visit the ILQ Website

Awareness of BARD Issues

The NLS has discovered an issue that is intermittently causing BARD to become nonresponsive. This may result in BARD web pages and download requests timing out. Users might experience these issues at any time on any BARD platform.

The NLS has found the root issue, but it will take time to deploy a fix. Unfortunately, this means the intermittent problems may continue for a while. We realize this is a critical issue and apologize for any frustration it is causing. Thank you for being patient while we work to correct the problem.

New From Our Recording Studio

DBC10475 – Not as Briefed: From the Doolittle Raid to a German Stalag

By C. Ross Greening; read by John Pound

The author presents his personal drawings and narrative of his experiences during WWII including his participation in the 1942 Doolittle raid over Tokyo, twenty-seven missions in North Africa, capture, and time as a POW in Barth, Germany. Adult. Some violence.
Click here to Download DBC10475 From BARD  

DBC10482 – Pablo Abeita: The Life and Times of a Native Statesman of Isleta Pueblo

By Malcolm Hendricks Ebright; read by William Scheer

The first biography of Pablo Abeita, a man considered the most important Native leader in the American Southwest in his day. Abeita’s story is one of a people still living on their ancestral homelands, struggling to protect their land and water, and ultimately thriving as a modern pueblo. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC10482 From BARD

DBC10478 – Sins of the Shovel

By Rachel Morgan; read by Tay Rafferty

Rachel Morgan’s frank and incisive history begins with Richard Wetherill’s “discovery” of Mesa Verde in Colorado in 1888. Subsequent expeditions by amateurs, looters, and budding professional archaeologists abetted the devastation of indigenous sites throughout the Southwest. These expeditions became the proving grounds for different conceptions of what archaeology should be and how it should be practiced. Morgan, an archaeologist, knows well the field’s history of racism and unethical behavior, and she is both unsparing and even-handed in assessing what happened in the Southwest and how it informs relations among people – and with the planet – today. Adult.
Click here to Download DBC10478 From BARD

DBC10487 – Hispano Bastion: New Mexican Power in the Age of Manifest Destiny

By Michael J. Alarid; read by Bruce Herr

History of New Mexico’s transition from Spanish to Mexican to U.S. control during the 19th century. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC10487 From BARD  

DBC10497 – Becoming Willa Cather: Creation and Career

By Daryl W. Palmer; read by Ken Collins

Willa Cather has long been admired for O Pioneers! (DB047646), Song of the Lark (DB019998), and My Antonia (DB013491) – the so-called “prairie novels” that launched her career – but the author’s admirers have struggled to explain how a writer growing up in a small town in Nebraska in the late nineteenth century could have transformed what she remembered into literary greatness. Drawing on original archival research and paying unprecedented attention to the author’s early short stories, Daryl W. Palmer offers a ground-breaking account of Cather’s evolution as a writer. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC10497 From BARD

DBC10499 – Murder on the Largo

By Michael J. Alarid; read by Bruce Herr

In western New Mexico in 1905 there rode a notorious outlaw from the Mexican border named Henry Coleman. With a Colt .45 strapped to his hip, Coleman (alias Street Hudspeth from the well-to-do Texas family) came to be either despised as a deceitful rustler and ruthless murderer or admired as a man of honor and great courage, a popular and charismatic cowman who was fast with a gun. No one seemed indifferent. Especially spellbinding are the recollections of how Coleman came to be associated with several murders. Also intriguing is how he died so violently at the hands of a posse of cattlemen in October 1921. Some violence. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC10499 From BARD

DBC10504 – Doctor Franklin and Spain: An Unknown History

By Thomas E. Chavez; read by John Pen La Farge

Dr. Franklin, an inventor of many things, counted the glass harmonica among his achievements. When he found out through the Spanish ambassador to France that the King of Spain wanted one for the youngest prince, Franklin supplied it. And thus began the story of Franklin, the Spanish Crown, and the surreptitious financing of parts of the American Revolution, a story which is just now coming to light. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC10504 From BARD

DBC10517 – Douglas Fir: The Story of the West’s Most Remarkable Tree

By Stephen F. Arno; read by Bruce Herr

A natural and cultural history of the Douglas Fir. Adult

Click here to Download DBC10517 From BARD

DBC10516 – Pause: Two Minutes to Tranquility: Discover Your Quiet Place Within

By Patricia Bonham; read by Patricia Bonham

Pause… In the course of a few conscious breaths learn to change your relationship with your thoughts and discover your quiet place within. This short practical book will help you find relief from stress caused by listening to and believing the nonstop thoughts running around your head. Pause is an easy exercise that cuts through the internal chatter. With practice, it can change your life. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC10516 From BARD

DBC10520 – Six Kinds of Sky: A Collection of Short Fiction

By Stephen F. Arno & Carl E. Fielder; read by Bruce Herr

A collection of six short stories with glittering landscapes from the thick Mazatlan starry night to the wide-open spaces of the Sioux Nation in South Dakota. Written with wit and ingenuity, these stories ennoble the human spirit. Adult. Some descriptions of sex. Some strong language. Some violence.

Click here to Download DBC10520 From BARD

DBC10522 – Hotshots

By Judith Van Gieson; read by Valerie Brooker

An elite firefighter or “hotshot” is killed in a Colorado wilderness fire. Her parents suspect Forest Service negligence caused their daughter’s death. Albuquerque lawyer/sleuth Neil Hamel investigates and is drawn into the mythic world of the hotshots and the fierce battles surrounding their work. Strong language.

Click here to Download DBC10522 From BARD

DBC10529 – Incredible Elfego Baca: Good Man, Bad Man of the Old West

By Howard Anaya Bryan; read by Walter McWalter

Elfego Baca is best remembered in western lore for his single-handed standoff against an estimated 80 bloodthirsty cowboys that had him holed up in an old shack for two days and fired a reported 4000 shots at him without effect. Newspapers recounted, “one is struck by his remarkable courage, humor and wit”. This book examines the facts and legends surrounding Baca’s various careers as a gunfighter, lawyer, sheriff, mayor, and district attorney. Adult. Some violence.

Click here to Download DBC10529 From BARD

New Recordings from Network Libraries

DBC32405 – Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F

by Joe Pappalardo; read by Chris Abell

The explosive and bloody true history of Texas Rangers Company F, hard men who risked their lives to bring justice to a lawless frontier. Between 1886 and 1888, Sgt. James Brooks of Texas Ranger Company F was engaged in three fatal gunfights, endured disfiguring bullet wounds, engaged in countless manhunts, was convicted for second-degree murder, and rattled Washington, DC with a request for a pardon from the US president. His story anchors the tale of Joe Pappalardo’s book, an epic saga of lawmen and criminals set in Texas during the waning years of the “Old West.” Alongside Brooks are the Rangers of Company F, who range from a pious teetotaler to a cowboy fleeing retribution for killing a man. They are all led by Captain William Scott, who cut his teeth as a freelance undercover informant but is now facing the end of his Ranger career. Company F hunts criminals across Texas and beyond, killing them as needed, and are confident they can bring anyone to “Ranger justice.” Adult.

Click here to Download DBC32405 From BARD

DBC32199 – Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands

by Jonathan Thompson; read by Jason Calder

San Juan County, Utah, contains some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, rich in natural wonders and Indigenous culture and history. But it’s also long been plagued with racism, bitterness, and politics as twisted as the beckoning canyons. In 2017, en route to the Valley of the Gods with his spouse, a Colorado man closed the gate on a corral. Two weeks later, the couple was facing felony charges. Award-winning journalist Jonathan Thompson places the case in its fraught historical context and – alongside personal stories from a life shaped by slickrock and sagebrush – shows why this corner of the western United States has been at the center of the American public lands wars for over a century. Adult.

Click here to Download DBC31299 From BARD

What is the LBPD Staff Reading?

Jeremy is reading:

DB120113  – Cahokia Jazz

By Francis Spufford; read Andy Ingalls
“Alternate history and noir thrills combine in Francis Spufford’s clever and dense novel Cahokia Jazz (DB120113). It’s 1922, and the bustling metropolis of Cahokia along the Mississippi river is on the brink of turmoil. Emotions are running hot when a murder shakes the city to its core, pitting the police, the politicians, the private eyes, and the secret societies of Prohibition America against each other. Spufford imagines a textured and realistic world where Native Americans were allowed to develop cities like Chicago and New York, and populates his setting with wonderful and eclectic characters.”

Click here to Download DB120113 From BARD

Yavar is reading:

DB049949  – Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea

By Charles Seife; read Dennis Rooney
“Do you have an interest in history, mathematics, or both? If so, Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (DB049949) is a charming and fascinating read. It is written by a science journalist and does not require in depth knowledge of math, but is an engaging crash course of sorts from zero’s “birth as an Eastern philosophical concept to its struggle for acceptance in Europe, its rise and transcendence in the West, and its ever-present threat to modern physics.”

Click here to Download DB049949 From BARD