Jerry Jeff Walker
Gypsy Songman
Woodford Press
Gypsy Songman (Woodford Press) is the 57-year odyssey of Ronald Clyde Crosby from Oneonta, New York, to Austin, Texas, with whistle-stops for rowdy intoxication, music-making, and, ultimately, sobriety and happiness. You might know him as Jerry Jeff Walker. Précis: He lived it up, he's living it down.
Daniel Stern
One Day’s Perfect Weather
SMU Press
Emotional worlds away, One Day's Perfect Weather is a catalog of damage and loss among the cognoscenti. It's a measure of Daniel Stern's skill that his conceit of building urbane stories on the frames of well-known poetry and music is wholly successful. The U of H professor dispatches his protagonists like stunt doubles into crises large and small. His butterscotch-smooth narrative can wear thin, but his intelligence prevails. If he took chances, he'd be damn brilliant.
Rick Riordan
The Last King of Texas
Bantam
Raise your margarita to Rick Riordan for the authentic portrait of his hometown, San Antonio, in The Last King of Texas , his third Tres Navarre mystery. This time out, Navarre finds himself embroiled in an open-and-shut case that won't stay closed. Engagingly cast with the likes of boss Erainya Manos and detective Ana DeLeon, this tale of revenge and remorse sizzles and skids like drops of water on a hot skillet.
Tyler Beard
Art of the Boot
Gibbs Smith
Tyler Beard is Texas'—and thus the world's—top authority on Western wear, and his latest tome is this kicky compendium on the sole of the American West. The author, who lives on a ranch near Goldthwaite, tracks the history of the cowboy boot, tips his hat to 28 custom bootmakers around the country (most here in his home stomping grounds), sheds light on decorative rarities such as cactus-fiber embroidery, and offers a glossary for new Texans unfamiliar with phrases such as "cockroach killers." Photos by Santa Fe's Jim Arndt showcase pair after pair of staggeringly beautiful creations. Among them are vintage dazzlers burnished with verdigris and gold, from singer Lefty Frizzell's collection; whimsical ode-to-caviar treasures of stingray leather, crafted by El Paso's Rocketbuster Boots U.S.A. (whose clients include Arnold Schwarzenegger and Oprah Winfrey); and the eighteen surviving masterpieces of the famous State Boot collection, executed between 1949 and 1951 by Cosimo Lucchese of San Antonio.
If you enjoy reading Anne's reviews, you might be interested to know that she has a new book out. It's called All Hat and No Cattle: A Guide for New Texans and the West of Us.
