Houston attorney-novelist Eric L. Harry flashed on the idea for his new technothriller while rafting on a river. In Society of the Mind (Harper Collins, $25), due out in June, a mad genius lures a young Harvard professor to his secret island compound to psychoanalyze an equally disturbed computer…New York
A new book about Lee Harvey Oswald reveals that conspiracy theorists are still straining to repackage old news into something new.
Texas writers go Hollywood.
The best books and CDs from Texas.
Some words are worth a thousand pictures; such is the case with the image-rich writing of Colum McCann, whose first novel, Songdogs (Metropolitan Books, $22.50), has won praise from both The New Yorker and the New York Times. A native of Ireland, the 31-year-old credits Texas with jump-starting his career.
The conventional wisdom is that the independents are good and the national chains are evil—but don’t judge a bookstore by its cover.
The best books and CDs from Texas.
The best books and CDs from Texas.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON AND HIS FAMILY PAPER DOLLS, a cutout book featuring Lyndon and his family in their undies, published by Dover Books as part of its presidential paper doll series, $4.95. TRAIL OF FLAME: THE RED-HOT GUIDE TO SPICY RESTAURANTS ACROSS AMERICA, by Jennifer Trainer Thompson,
Two poets, well versed in the ways of Houston, reflect on the city’s effect on lives and letters.
A cyberpunk writer’s sterling career.
After four decades of writing classic Texas novels, there’s no denying that San Angelo’s Elmer Kelton has earned his Spurs.
Mary Willis Walker’s mysteries aren’t exactly original, but she crafts real moments of tension. That’s why they sell so well and win so many awards.
Macho fiction.
If the literary novel is dead, then why is Baskerville Publishers in Dallas flourishing?
When you read a Hardy Boys novel, the mystery isn’t who done it, but who wrote it.
Twenty years after he began critiquing modern society, Houston writer Max Apple is enjoying the fruits of his labor.
Just as congressional hearings are set to begin, an exclusive excerpt from a new book casts a different light on the government’s role in the fiery end to the siege at Mount Carmel.
With The Liar’s Club, a dark and lyrical memoir, a stiking new voice emerges from the oil patch.
For Dallas writer Carlton Stowers, Sins of the Son is more than just another true crime story. The son is his own.
When Grover Lewis died on April 16, he left a legacy of unwashed greatness. That’s how he would have wanted it.
From “Lone State Doom” to “Land of Violent Men,” a look back at Texas’ classic pulp fiction.
A year after Robert James Waller left Iowa for the quieter climes of Big Bend, the best-selling author is discovering that it’s one thing to live like a Texan and quite another to be one.
This past year, Texas writers chased tornadoes, delved into devil worship, and pondered the etiquette of breast-feeding.
A saga of lust and revenge with a corpulent heroine establishes Carol Dawson as Texas' most promising new writer.
From The Manchurian Candidate to Prizzi’s Money, Richard Condon delivers wry thrillers readers can’t resist.
With eight books in print, David Lindsey has established his own gory niche in the world of mystery writers.
Eight indigenous authors, nine native critters: A bookish look at the wildest, woolliest creatures in Texas history.
Four quickie Branch Davidian books reveal that the full story has yet to come out.
Once a wild child, now a suburban mom, Marion Winik could be Texas’ next big literary success.
Houstonian Betty Ring’s Girlhood Emboidery is a richly illustrated survey of centuries-old needlework.
How 89-year-old Harvey Penick turned life’s lessons into a best-selling book—and followed it up with another master stroke.
Ross Perot’s new book says free trade will wreck the country. But his solution would do more harm than good.
In a chilling excerpt from his autobiography, the late John Connally offers his close-up account of the Kennedy assassination.
How the memoir of an unknown and homeless writer brought him fame and a place to live.
Larry McMurtry rallies Lonesome Dove’s geriatric survivors for a last perilous, meandering adventure in Streets of Laredo.
Renowned legal scholar and law professor Charles Alan Wright is deadly serious—about murder mysteries.
For years he renounced his Texas ties. Now Larry McMurty is once again calling Archer City home.
Hacker Crackdown tells how the feds busted employees of a Texas games company for a crime they didn’t commit.
This fall, photographer Jim Arndt and Western props supplier Tyler Beard visited the annual event in Burnet to chew the fat with many of the craftsmen featured in The Cowboy Boot Book (Peregrine Smith Books), their pictorial guide to fancy footgear. Arndt and Beard have dressed Western
Being the nation’s most famous interpreter of Texas politics sounds like fun. But for Molly Ivins, success has been no laughing matter.
Elvis fans will have their very own sightings in a new book, In Search of Elvis, just published by the Summit Group in Fort Worth ($12.95). The cartoon book is a knockoff of the prodigiously successful Where’s Waldo? children’s series, but Summit’s publicity coordinator Bryan Drake suspects that more parents
El Paso author Cormac McCarthy has always shunned fame, but his latest novel may finally force him into the spotlight.
As the sole studio photographer in Granger from 1924 to 1955, John Trlica recorded on film most of the important occasions—public and private—in the Central Texas farming community. Because Trlica kept meticulous records and saved every negative, his shop became the repository for an intensely documented history of a small
Beyond Beef blames cattle for the decline of civilization—not to mention famine, pestilence, destruction, and death.
An Alabama Klansman posing as a folksy Texas novelist almost pulled off the literary hoax of the century.
Photograph by George Krause
Brown’s formula for success guarantees a happy ending.
Oilman, sports-man, high liver, Clint Murchison also knew how to write a good letter.
