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When Hannah, a seventy-three-year-old widow, finds the semiconscious body of a fourteen-year-old Mexican national in a ditch along a remote central Texas road, she has no idea someone is watching. Not until the girl's brutal attacker arrives at Hannah's door in the middle of the night, threatening not just the girl's but Hannah's very survival. Ultimately the question of justice for a victim of human trafficking and the woman who helps her lies in the hands of a biracial border patrol officer and an unconventional small-town sheriff. The I-10 corridor of Texas connects saints, demons, and victims as the ultimate question of life and death is decided by two strangers fate has bound together. They must make a hard choice in order to survive: either follow the law or follow their consciences.

Every page of this fun-filled poetry book is bursting with delight for kids and adults alike. Texas Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach tells you not only where Smurglets come from, but using captivating rhythms, goofy rhymes, and wonderfully made-up words he tells readers from ages 5 to 50 why Ogres Hate Okra, about what happens when Blob Junior Goes to Camp, and the dire consequences of losing your Galoopa! Delightfully illustrated by prize-winning artist Susan Halbower.

Comanche Sundown is the story of the great war chief Quanah Parker, a freed slave and cowboy named Bose Ikard, and the women they love.Comanche Sundown lays out a sprawling and plausible recast of Southwestern history that brings Pat Garrett, Billy the Kid, Bat Masterson, Colonel Ranald "Bad Hand" Mackenzie, and General William T. Sherman into one fray. Jan Reid's novel offers a rich blend of historical detail, exquisite eye for the terrain and the animals, and insight into the culture, customs, poetry, and dignity of Native Americans caught up in a desperate fight to survive.

As the 2010 Texas Poet Laureate, Karla K. Morton believes that poetry is everyone's art, and has carved her place in Texas Letters with this stunning collection.With well-loved titles such as "For Love and Michelangelo," "The Closer," "Why God Needs a Shotgun," "Alamo Coastline," "Woman in the Pipe Shop," and "When Texas No Longer Fits in the Glove Box," Morton's poetry will take you on a journey; her flowing style sparks memories and stirs emotions.

The Texas Legislature recently named Paul Ruffin 2009 Poet Laureate of Texas. To those who read literary journals or mid-list popular books, Paul Ruffin is a well-known author and poet. Ruffin is prolific in his writing, having published over a thousand poems, short stories, novels, and nonfiction pieces with decades of unfailing artistry. In the fifth installment of the TCU Texas Poet Laureate Series, editor Billy Bob Hill writes in his introduction that he has long admired Paul Ruffin's use of poetic devices. Ruffin uses alliteration and subtle textured sounds throughout his poetry, making them likeably conversational while full of crafted sound patterns. Ruffin also employs whimsical narratives, coining the word "Necrofiligumbo" in "When the Mummy Became a Mommy." But, Hill explains, the true power of this book comes from its storytelling. With the new material, readers will encounter compelling, often drop-dead funny storytelling. The state of Texas has honored Texas Poets Laureate for seventy-five years, but much of their work has gone unpublished and unrecognized. In a significant step toward recognizing their achievements, TCU Press publishes a series of the work of the Poets Laureate, with a volume dedicated to each poet. The series began with the 2005 and 2006 laureates and continues through each bi-annual appointment. These beautiful volumes collect the finest work of each individual poet. While a single volume may stand alone as a valuable selection of a poet's work, the series as a whole will draw their different voices together into a singular poetic expression of Texas. The next book in the series will focus on the work of 2010 laureate, Karla K. Morton.

Grace & Gumption: Stories of Fort Worth Women (TCU Press, 2007) was a collection of profiles about women who moved beyond the traditional role of keeping house to make significant contributions to the history of Fort Worth. But whenever the fourteen authors of the original book gathered to make decisions, share information, give progress reports, and ask for help, they also shared wine and food.But a cookbook of recipes used by the very women who were stepping out of the kitchen? Feeding themselves and their families was as vital to the women of Grace & Gumption, as it is to women, who today stand on their shoulders. For some, cooking was a joy; for others, it was just one more chore. Some women didn't leave a food trail, but the contributors were inventive about finding "related" recipes--some of them wonderful sounding, some, not so much. Dozens of recipes are featured, everything from skinning a squirrel to Lamb Wellington, including recipes from the Kimbell Art Museum and Fort Worth's City Club. This is a book to read for pleasure and to cook from. Recipes are standardized when that was possible without losing the charm of the original directions. Recipes have not been tested, a chore that would have been monumental. Contributors are Judy Alter, Joy Donovan, Sandra Guerra-Cline, Jan Jones, Ruth Karbach, Brenda Matthews, Ruth McAdams, Sherrie McLeRoy, Carol Roark, Brenda Sanders-Wise, Katie Sherrod, Cindy Smolovik, Hollace Weiner, and Joyce Williams.

Roland Thaxter Bird, universally and affectionately known to friends and associates as R. T., achieved a kind of Horatio Alger success in the scientific world of dinosaur studies. Forced to drop out of school at a young age by ill health, he was a cowboy who traveled from job to job by motorcycle until he met Barnum Brown, Curator of Vertebrae Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and a leader in the study of dinosaurs. Beginning in 1934, Bird spent many years as an employee of the museum and as Brown's right-hand man in the field. His chart of the Howe Quarry in Wyoming, a massive sauropod boneyard, is one of the most complex paleontological charts ever produced and a work of art in its own right. His crowning achievement was the discovery, collection, and interpretation of gigantic Cretaceous dinosaur trackways along the Paluxy River near Glen Rose and at Bandera, Texas. A trackway from Glen Rose is on exhibit at the American Museum and at the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin. His interpretation of these trackways demonstrated that a large carnosaur had pursued and attacked a sauropod, that sauropods migrated in herds, and that, contrary to then-current belief, sauropods were able to support their own weight out of deep water. These behavioral interpretations anticipated later dinosaur studies by at least two decades. From his first meeting with Barnum Brown to his discoveries at Glen Rose and Bandera, this very human account tells the story of Bird's remarkable work on dinosaurs. In a vibrantly descriptive style, Bird recorded both the intensity and excitement of field work and the careful and painstaking detail of laboratory reconstruction. His memoir presents a vivid picture of camp life with Brown and the inner workings of the famous American Museum of Natural History, and it offers a new and humanizing account of Brown himself, one of the giants of his field. Bird's memoir has been supplemented with a clear and concise introduction to the field of dinosaur study and with generous illustrations which delineate the various types of dinosaurs.

An anthology of short pieces and excerpts by humorists from Texas, ranging from the 19th century to the present. The topical sections include the frontier, embattled Texans, early times, cow country, minorities, politics and politicians, religion, outlaws, and the cities. No index. Annotation copyri

The tangled relationships of Robert Flynn's award- winning novel Wanderer Springs surface again in Tie- Fast Country, this time centered around an elderly ranch woman, whose father raised her to be a cowboy, and her grandson, who doesn't know her and has been raised to hate her. When Chance Carter, general manager of a TV station in Florida, gets a telephone call that his grandmother's health is failing and that he must do something about her, he knows only that he is heir to a million-dollar ranch and that his grandmother may have killed his grandfather and the man who was perhaps his father. His idea of a Texas ranch comes from television and he does not know what he will have to do to slide Rista Wyler off her land and into a nursing home. Nor does he know that the only cowboy Rista has left is Pug Caldwell, an old man who has worked for her since he was a teenager and may want the ranch for himself. Reluctantly Chance leaves Florida behind, where he is in control of his own world, and also leaves Shana, the woman he loves but to whom he cannot quite commit. He finds himself more than a world away on the Texas ranch where Rista and Pug have thrown up barricades against intruders. He has no television, no phone, no contact with the outside world. And the food is monotonous and not very good. As Chance watches for certifiable signs of senility in Rista and plans what he'll say to a judge, she puts him to work mending fences and doctoring cows with Pug. In chapters that alternate between the past and the present, Rista reveals the truth of the tangled story of her life. Gradually she introduces Chance to people and events that his mother had dis- torted in the telling. He finds out why Rista still searches the ranch for the undiscovered grave of her aunt, killed by Indians; he comes to know his grandfather, Odis, and even his great-grandfather, Claris, men of different temperaments and different loyalties. And he learns about Stoddard, the newspaperman Rista loved but could not marry. He even learns some bitter truths about his mother, Cassie, and her hatred for the ranch. Chance comes to understand that Rista's commitment to the land is the strongest force in her life, a commitment taught her by her father. Over the years her tenacity in hanging on to the land cost her husband, lover, daughter, and grandson, but she never considered changing. As Chance is learning to understand, if not accept completely, the world of his grandmother, Shana provides the sharp contrast of modern life. When Chance escapes to a telephone in town and calls Shana, she reports on the TV station, where sensationalism, not truth, matters. With a strong and sure narrative voice, Flynn tells a dramatic story about people, the inability of some to change, the ability of others to adapt, and the lessons some learned. The novel is set against a ranching back- ground that is accurate down to the last detail and word.

When a wagon train accident separates a traveling family and strands five helpless children and Grammie in the Texas wilderness of 1848, it is up to twelve-year-old Robbie to find them food and shelter and help them all survive.

When ninety-one-year-old rancher Franklin Woodstock disappears from his West Texas nursing home, his five presumed heirs squabble over his estate.

In 1935 Betsy Throckmorton's father lures her from a New York job with Time magazine back to Claybelle, Texas, with the promise that she can be the editor of his Claybelle Standard-Times. Betsy brings along her husband, Ted Winton, an easterner and Yale graduate to whom she is constantly explaining Texas. Ted will run Ben Throckmorton's radio station, KVAT, where Booty and Them Others sing in rivalry with the better known WBAP Light Crust Doughboys. In Texas, it's the middle of the Depression and the Drought. And Prohibition is barely over, liquor still a controversy. Every city has its hobo camp, and Claybelle has the Star of Hope Mission. But it is also the time of new oil money, high living, infidelity, and tangled love triangles. Betsy and Ted chain-smoke and drink often and long, they wouldn't miss a Paschal High School or TCU football game, they party at the Casino on Jacksboro Highway, and dine at Claybelle's Shadylawn Country Club. Betsy is a serious journalist though, and she sets out to change the paper, clashing with the managing editor when she claims international not state news belongs on page one. She clashes with the columnists when she tries to sharpen their leads. The Texas Murder Machine becomes her big story, when she suspects that Texas Rangers may be killing innocent young men to collect rewards offered by the Texas Bankers Association. Betsy's journalistic determination leads to a personal tragedy that changes her life forever--and makes her a determined, relentless newswoman. Fast Copy is a page-turner that combines romantic comedy with the best of the thriller genre. But it's much more. Dan Jenkins captures Texas in the mid-1930s with a clarity that brings it alive, and his affection for Texas, Fort Worth, and TCU are revealed on every page. Only a native like Jenkins would include the minute details of a TCU-SMU game, the new zephyr stainless steel railroad train, the T&P railroad station, the Fort Worth Cats, and LeGrave Field. His portrait of Claybelle and its leading society folks is tongue-in-cheek funny and right on the mark. Texans should treasure this book for years to come.

The Guadalupe River Drive in the Texas Hill Country, now approaching its 100th anniversary, began as a small path carved from the rocky hillside. Today called River Road, this popular tourist destination is enjoyed by both residents of and visitors to New Braunfels. In Hill Country Backroads: Showing the Way in Comal County, Laurie E. Jasinski explores the time when roads such as the Guadalupe River Drive were unknown and unexplored. A time when it was nearly impossible to reach your destination without having to change a few tires or find a team of mules to pull you out of the mud. A time when a journey was an adventure. Jasinski spent nearly a decade researching the early history of motoring and tourism in the area. Hill Country Backroads combines the setting of the Hill Country in the early 1900s with a historical narrative of Joe Sanders, Jasinki's grandfather, who was central to making the countryside of Comal County accessible to visitors and residents. Sanders improved travel in the area by creating the first scenic map of Comal County and implementing a system of road signs to label the county's confusing byways. Sanders' passion for travel and his attempt to show others how to enjoy life are driving forces throughout the book. Sanders' scenic maps of the area are reproduced along with original photographs of the characters, landscape, and automobiles of the period. Interviews with people who knew Sanders provide fascinating insight into this man and his contributions to Hill Country tourism. Hill Country Backroads combines two distinct but interwoven elements: the setting of the Hill Country in the early 1900s and the life of Joe Sanders. This rich compilation of historical events and human interaction is irresistible.

Katherine Anne Porter's uneasy relationship with her home state has become increasingly important to discussions of her life and work. Born in the now-gone community of Indian Creek and raised in Kyle, Porter is tied to Texas by three major events that occurred during her career. In 1939 she expected to receive the Texas Institute of Letters Award for "Best Texas Book" only to be insulted when the award went to folklorist J. Frank Dobie. In the 1950s she accepted an invitation to lecture at the University of Texas at Austin. During her visit to present that lecture, Porter began to believe that UT would build a library and name it after her, Texas' most famous literary daughter. But somehow she and UT President Harry Ransom miscommunicated, and Porter left her materials to the McKeldin Library at the University of Maryland. Finally, in 1976 she returned to Texas to receive recognition from Howard Payne University in Brownwood. On that trip she visited her mother's grave in the little cemetery at Indian Creek and decided that her remains on her death belonged beside her mother. So Porter finally returned to the state she had fled early in her life. The essays in this collection are based primarily upon a symposium held in May 1998 at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos. The collection includes essays by both scholars of Porter's work and of Texas literature. Some concern specific aspects of her life, such as her love for her birthday or her marital record. Others focus on the main elements of her relationship with Texas, while still others deal with specific works, often relating them to her Texas heritage. This important addition to Porter studies provides new insight into the ways in which Porter's Texas heritage shaped her life and her fiction.

If you've never even been to Southeast Asia, can you be a Vietnam veteran? In a novel that captures the life and times of a generation, Mark Busby takes us on a journey through an era of hippies, the shootings at Kent State University, integration, and Woodstock. Fort Benning Blues tells the story of Vietnam from this side of the ocean. Drafted in 1969, Jeff Adams faces a war he doesn't understand. While trying to delay the inevitable tour of duty in Vietnam, Adams attends Officer Candidate School in Fort Benning, Georgia, desperately hoping Nixon will achieve "peace with honor" before he graduates. The Army's job is to weed out the "duds," "turkeys," and "dummies" in an effort to keep not only the officers but also the men under their command alive in the rice paddies of Vietnam. It doesn't take long for the stress to create casualties. Lieutenant Rancek, Adams' training officer at OCS, is ready to cut candidates from the program for any perceived weakness. He does this, not for the Army, but because he wants only the best ". . . leading the platoon on my right" when he goes to Vietnam. Hugh Budwell, one of Adams' roommates, brings the laid-back spirit of California with him to Fort Benning. Tired of practicing estate law, he joins the Army to relieve the boredom he feels pervades his life. About Officer Candidate School, Budwell states, "If I wanted to go through it without any trouble, I'd be wondering about myself." Candidate Patrick "Sheriff" Garrett, a black southerner, spends a night with Adams in the low-crawl pit after they both raise Rancek's ire. Expecting racism when he joined the Army, Garrett copes better than most with the rigors of Officer Candidate School. Busby uses song lyrics, newspaper headlines, and the jargon of the era to bring the sixties and seventies alive again. Henry Kissinger is described as "Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove" and Lieutenant William "Rusty" Calley as "Howdy Doody in uniform." Of My Lai, Busby says, "At Fort Benning everybody took those actions as a matter of course." As America continues to try to comprehend the effects of one of the most transforming eras in our history, Fort Benning Blues adds another perspective to the meaning of being a Vietnam veteran.

From the archives of the Southwestern Writers Collection at Southwest Texas State University, former curator Richard Holland has selected from among thousands of Larry L. King letters those dealing with the daily warp and woof of an American writer alternately giddy with success and doubting his own talents. The result is a crazy ride on a roller coaster of many dips, loops and steep climbs.As a Texas farm boy, young Lawrence Leo King wrote postcards or tablet-paper letters of advice and/or instruction to -- among others -- FDR, Winston Churchill, quarterback Sammy Baugh, writer James M. Cain, upcoming football opponents, pen pals in distant lands and relatives. As a young newspaperman his complaints of "jackass rules" so bedeviled J. Edgar Hoover that the top G-man handed him off to subordinates and, ultimately, "The Bureau" quit responding. King was fired from his first newspaper job, at age twenty, for ridiculing a federal judge whose legal opinion he found wanting. He later wrote favorable newspaper articles in behalf of a congressional candidate whom his editorial superiors strongly opposed. As a young congressional aide he stood up to Senator Lyndon B. Johnson in a face-to-face confrontation -- and lived to write a Harper's article, "My Hero LBJ", that President Johnson privately branded "a dirty story". Says his old friend and former editor Willie Morris, "King has never specialized in dispensing boredom".King has feuded in public print with Burt Reynolds, Norman Podhoretz, Tommy Tune, his own book editors and publishers, Universal Picture moguls, his collaborators in writing projects, professional critics, and some "fans" who had the temerity to write less than admiringletters. Even King's caustic letters are often full of dark fun. Those to intimate friends -- including other writers and a few favored politicians -- are laced with gleeful opinions and observations about his work, the work of others, life's many absurdities and current events.Norman Mailer, William Styron, Willie Morris, Dan Jenkins and Bud Shrake are just a few of the many writers with whom King long has corresponded. Politicians include former House Speaker Jim Wright, Congressman Mo Udall and Senator Ralph Yarborough. Show-biz types count directors Mike Nichols and Peter Masterson, actors Dan Blocker and Henderson Forsythe. But it is to old Texas friends that King truly lets his hair down in telling intimate secrets of the salts and sours of the literary life that has been his for almost fifty years.A high-school dropout who became a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, a Communications Fellow at Duke and held an endowed chair at Princeton, LARRY L. KING has accomplished thirteen books and seven stage plays as well as television documentaries, screen plays, short stories and hundreds of magazine essays. His honors include the Stanley Walker Journalism Award, the Helen Hayes and Molly Goldwater awards as a playwright, a television "Emmy" and nominations for a Broadway "Tony" and a National Book Award.

Most people are familiar with the siege of the Alamo in 1836, but many do not realize that there was a second battle in the early twentieth century. In 1903, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas began fighting a large eastern company for the old warehouse that was once the mission convent. With the property secured, infighting between two factions of the DRT, led by Clara Driscoll and Adina de Zavala, divided the organization and endangered the Alamo again. At one point, Adina de Zavala barricaded herself inside for three days to protect the building from demolition.Alamo Heights is a fictional account of the battle to protect the Texas landmark. More than simply a book on history, it is a story about the people behind the events. Each character has a hidden agenda, and the tension and battles between them represent the larger conflict between Anglo and Hispanic cultures. The novel addresses the assimilation of Tejanos in a racially divided, increasingly Anglo state.