Larry L. King is at work on a novel about minor league baseball in Texas in the fifties. Breaking Balls is a fictionalized account of his experiences covering the “miserable 144-game schedule” of the Midland Indians as a $55-a-week reporter for the Midland Reporter-Telegram in 1951. “I went to all
Our selections for some of the best contemporary Texas books.
As Sandra Scofield, Shelby Hearon, and Janet Peery are proving, you don’t have to live in Texas to be a Texas writer.
“All you’ve got is a famous name,” a Republican operative told George W. Bush. But six years later he was governor, and six years after that he was president. And six years after that, his place in history—not to mention the fate of the world—is a little uncertain.
Does anyone outside of Texas care about Texas history? H. W. Brands hopes so, and he's not the only one.
It took me half my life to figure out that most of what I thought I knew about J. Frank Dobie was wrong.
Once upon a time, Molly Ivins was just a kid from River Oaks with an internship at the Houston Chronicle. Her time there set her on the path to becoming the most famous firebrand in Texas.
Recipe for a great new cookbook: Combine a celebrated chef, a veteran food writer, and an innovative approach to contemporary Tex-Mex; serve.
A pivotal loss in the 1970 Senate race shaped George Bush’s future. An excerpt from a new book on the 1988 presidential campaign.
So what if Sandra Brown’s novels have wildly implausible plot twists, banal endings, over-the- top characters, and other literary no-no’s. She’s published nearly 70 of them since 1981, and 55 have gone on to be best-sellers. We’re sure the sex scenes have nothing to do with it.
From Good Bull: More Aggie Escapades, by John Hoyle:One of the no-no’s in the Corps is to have a member of the opposite sex in your dorm room at the wrong hours. One night, a group of Fish saw a senior sneaking a young woman into his room. The freshmen,
Did domestic protests end the U.S.-Mexican War?
The Austin-based writer's love of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows inspired her to write a sequel to the 1908 classic.
Catching up with our leading unsentimentalist.
The ACLU's annual report says there are fewer than ever, but such authors as Twain, Hemingway and Salinger still get "challenged" in some ISDs.
Joe Nick Patoski takes on America's most storied football franchise in his new book, The Dallas Cowboys.
The San Antonio writer's novel, In Between Days, doesn't get its Houston setting quite right.
Brené Brown discusses her book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (Gotham Books) and her 2010 TED talk on vulnerability.
The grand opening of a new H-E-B in McAllen drew crowds—including several who showed up to hear a native son read from his collection of locally set short stories.
Can education reform save a declining Austin high school?
The George W. Bush Institute released its first book today, titled "The 4 Percent Solution: Unleashing the Economic Growth America Needs."
A brutal—and very funny—South Texas memoir by Domingo Martinez.
The San Antonio-based author of the romance novels Roses and Tumbleweeds talks about her late literary success.
The New York Times columnist talks to Salon about her new book As Texas Goes... and gets reviewed by her own paper.
The Austin-based singer-songwriter talks about her new autobiography, Diamond in the Rough, and her sixth studio album.
There’s more to Texas politics than Rick Perry. Gail Collins's new book demonstrates that the Northeastern media establishment doesn't understand that.
There are 1,101 Houstonians on the waiting list to read one of the 38 library copies of 50 Shades of Grey. But the libraries of North Texas have stocked 148 copies and still have 829 people on hold.
Houston Chronicle blogger Jenny Lawson (aka The Bloggess) found herself at the center of a two-day auction among twelve publishing houses for the rights to her debut memoir, Let's Pretend This Never Happened. How did she rise from unpaid blogger to New York Times bestseller?
The grumpy Texas literary legend rips the Texas art and music mecca in his review of a new book about Elizabeth Taylor, calling Marfa "as bleak a place as you'll find in America."
After three-plus decades toiling in semi-obscurity, the prolific Nacogdoches-based horror fiction author is having a moment.
Retired Border Patrol officer Hipolito Acosta remembers his time on the beat in The Shadow Catcher.
How two Texans took a gay rights case to the Supreme Court.
James Carlos Blake’s latest novel explores the sins of the grandfather.
Cyberpunk pioneer Bruce Sterling speculates that the worst is yet to come.
Is it time to revisit Larry McMurtry’s Berrybender Narratives?
Fifty years after it first electrified the nation, Dallas native John Howard Griffin’s classic book still has something to tell us.
In Donna M. Johnson's memoir of a Pentecostal childhood, religious zeal and illicit love nearly tear a family apart.
Is the Freddie Steinmark saga the greatest story ever oversold?
Fort Worth preacher J. Frank Norris paved the way for today’s televangelists. But he’s probably best known as the defendant in a wild 1927 murder trial.
Babe Didrikson’s pioneering career as a woman golfer.
Texas Christian University Press, long the hub of Elmer Kelton hagiography, has just released its newest paterikon, Elmer Kelton: Essays and Memories ($19.95), a collection of pieces written in honor of the beloved West Texas author, who died nearly two years ago. Among the memories are those of the Reverend
An excerpt from Chapter One.
An excerpt from Volume 8.
A new Crockett biography by Michael Wallis weighs in on how Davy died.
In this exclusive excerpt from Remember Ben Clayton, a new novel by Stephen Harrigan, a sculptor meets a lonely rancher who has lost his son and needs something to remember him by.
IntroductionYes, I do have a Texas connection, but, as we’d say in the Midwest, where I grew up, not so’s you’d know it. I come from an immigrant family. Although my father sounded like Harry Truman and freely used phrases like “Haven’t had so much fun since the hogs ate
"Readings," by Sandra Scofield with Jessica Scofield.
Chapter 1We were parked at the curb in Leonard’s car, sitting near a busted-out streetlight. We were looking at a house about a block up. It was a dark house on a dark street next to another dark house, and beyond that was an abandoned baseball field grown up with
Read an excerpt from a new novel by Taylor Stevens.
Read an excerpt from a new novel by Mat Johnson.
