Larry McMurtry

Roads

simon and schuster

If time, money, or other constraints prevent you from answering the call of the open road this summer, you can still take a long trip—at least vicariously—with Larry McMurtry. Roads, his latest effort, is a look at America's highways, and in a way, a larger-scale version of In a Narrow Grave, the Texas travelogue that made McMurtry a name 32 years ago. In 1968 the feisty author found the state's hidebound habitude mighty irksome; today, older and wiser, he displays a self-deprecating and reflective tone toward the country's idiosyncrasies. McMurtry drove part or all of 25 highways to research Roads, and almost anything can spark a brief but appealing discourse: a rack of Pam Grier blaxploitation films at a truck stop in Minnesota, a sign urging passersby to "Sell Your Babies" in California. Many lines resonate with Texans and other fans of long-distance travel—fast-food outlets, for example, appear "squatting vulturishly beside the road." And inevitably a little philosophizing sneaks in too: Truckers, he opines, "may be the last free men left, the true cowboys of the road."

Lance Armstrong

It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life

G. P. Putnam's Sons

Buy it at Amazon.com

Two Lance Armstrongs can be found in the Austinite's self-reflection, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life (G. P. Putnam's Sons). There's Fairy Tale Lance—the cyclist who survives cancer to win bike racing's greatest prize, the Tour de France. And there's Lance the Id—the still-young man struggling to balance the responsibilities of family, fame, and charity with the egocentricity that drives an athlete to be the world's best. Kudos to Armstrong's collaborator Sally Jenkins for the compelling narrative and to Armstrong for this unblinking baring of his soul.

Jim Lehrer

The Special Prisoner

Random House

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In Japanese POW camps in World War II, American airmen were designated as "special prisoners," but the title of Jim Lehrer's novel The Special Prisoner (Random House) refers to septuagenarian Bishop John Quincy Watson of San Antonio. Fifty years after he endured a horrific imprisonment in Camp Sengei 4, Watson encounters a person in the DFW Airport he believes is the Hyena, the camp's chief interrogator and tormentor. His confrontation with the man—a successful Tokyo banker—touches off an intensely emotional drama. The Special Prisoner is edge-of-the-seat exciting, an extraordinary piece of fiction.