Just in time for Halloween, two novels dealing with eerie Colorado themes are haunting local bookstores. One is a fictionalized channeling of one of the state's most celebrated and puzzling historical figures, while the other is a semi-comic mystery dealing with seances, Riverside Cemetery, cab driving and other scary topics.

In this eloquent novel, Stein portrays the independent, eccentric, and resilient woman known as Baby Doe, a legendary figure from Colorado’s silver boom. Stein’s blend of love story, scandal, and mystical experience is satisfying and entertaining.

The Algonquin Round Table, also called The Round Table, was an informal group of American literary men and women who met daily for lunch on weekdays at a large round table in the Algonquin Hotel in New York City during the 1920s and ’30s.

In this eloquent novel, Stein portrays the independent, eccentric, and resilient woman known as Baby Doe, a legendary figure from Colorado’s silver boom. Elizabeth “Lizzie” McCourt Doe is a renowned beauty who moved from Wisconsin to Colorado in the 1870s so that her husband, Harvey Doe, could work in the silver mine that they partially owned.

From the age of seven, Donna Baier Stein wanted to be a writer. Perhaps not coincidentally, it was at this same age that she first learned about the sensational and tragic life of Baby Doe Tabor, one of the most scandalous women in Colorado’s history, its 1880s “silver queen” and for a while the “best-dressed woman in the West.”

Donna wins Colorado Independent Publishers Award, 2nd Place Historical Fiction

Donna wins Will Rogers Medallion Award, 3rd Place, Western Romance, The Silver Baron’s Wife

Gargoyle Magazine published Donna Baier Stein’s short story, “Prodigal Son”

These two authors, Donna Baier Stein and Ronna Wineberg, met at a Bread Loaf Writers' Conference in Middlebury, Vermont. They became fast friends and interestingly, their writing careers have paralleled one another. Both have written novels and short story collections, have won prizes, and have an involvement with journals that publish the works of upcoming writers.