Books
August 20, 2021
TM Recommends: Read a Dane’s Assessment of Texas Culture
Plus: Some yummy Mexican pastries in Austin and an early collection of Sandra Cisneros poetry.
Novels
Books
May 10, 2021
‘The Hunting Wives’ Is an East Texas Thriller That Takes Women’s Relationships Seriously
May Cobb’s second novel explores how the members of a women-only shooting club love, betray, and protect one another.
Books
April 30, 2021
Mary H.K. Choi’s New Novel Is a Witty, Vulnerable Immigrant Coming-of-age Story
The San Antonio–raised author’s new novel, ‘Yolk,’ is about learning to be gentle with yourself—something Choi herself is still working on.
The National Podcast of Texas
August 19, 2019
Katherine Center: “I Don’t Want to Write Depressing Fiction”
On this week’s National Podcast of Texas, the Houston author discusses her new novel, ‘Things You Save in a Fire.’
Books
January 20, 2013
Desperately Seeking Cormac
Cormac McCarthy’s birth date and birthplace are just two of the facts about him that have eluded his rabid fans—until now. A dossier on the most fiercely private writer in Texas.
Books
January 20, 2013
Catcher in the Raw
Forty years after its publication, Horseman, Pass By is still one of Larry McMurtry's finest novelsand as groundbreaking as J. D. Salinger's masterpiece.
Books
January 20, 2013
The Texpatriates
As Sandra Scofield, Shelby Hearon, and Janet Peery are proving, you don’t have to live in Texas to be a Texas writer.
Books
April 30, 1999
Ladies and Gentlemen, the Next Cormac McCarthy
Meet El Paso novelist James Carlos Blake, who writes critically acclaimed literary westerns with lots of violence but few female characters. Sound familiar?
Books
April 30, 1999
David Hale Smith
David Hale Smith rejects more than three hundred manuscripts each month, but when he accepts one, publishers take note. Since 1994, when he left the tutelage of Dallas superagent Jan Miller and founded his own agency, DHS Literary, the thirty-year-old has established himself as one of the industry’s young lions,
Books
May 31, 1998
Bass, Master
The first commandment of fiction writing is: Show, don’t tell. Rick Bass knows it well, though he still struggled through many drafts before finishing his first novel, Where the Sea Used to Be (Houghton Mifflin, $25), which will be published this month. “Paint the images and trust the readers to
Books
May 31, 1998
Bond Plays On
SUNBURNED AND HUNGRY after a day of tubing down the Guadalupe, you head back to Austin for dinner at one of your favorite Tex-Mex restaurants—a garish, festive joint called Chuy’s. You are seated and slurping on a margarita when you spot a striking man in a nearby booth. A little
Books
July 31, 1997
CD and Book Reviews
Hot CDsWest Texas bluesman Long John Hunter plays even more guitar than usual on Swinging From the Rafters (Alligator), and that’s a lot of guitar. Hunter represents the party-down end of the blues spectrum; he’s gotta poke fun at himself even when he’s ostensibly down-and-out, as on “I’m Broke.” With
Books
June 30, 1997
Affair of State
A Dallas lawyer’s roman à Clinton.
Music
June 30, 1997
CD and Book Reviews
Hot CDsThe real pleasure in Toni Price’s Sol Power (Antone’s/Discovery/Sire) is trying to peg her as country, blues, or folk. Whether she’s singing something silly and simple, such as “Cats and Dogs,” or taking the sultry and sublime route, as when she covers Allen Toussaint’s “Funky,” the Austinite offers an
Books
July 31, 1996
Nye Anxiety
San Antonio poet, essayist, and anthologist Naomi Shihab Nye is completing work on her first novel. The protagonist of Habibi (Simon and Schuster) is an Arab American teenage girl in present-day Jerusalem. The book is based, Nye says, on her own “travels and travails before coming to Texas” and explores
Being Texan
April 1, 1996
CD and Book Reviews
Hot CDsYes, it’s that Tiny Tim—albeit with a gruffer voice than you probably remember—singing with Denton polkaholics Brave Combo on Girl (Rounder). Together, the onetime tulip tiptoer and the 1995 Grammy nominees bip and bop through a set of standards (“Stardust”) and pop-rock faves (“Hey Jude”). The collaboration may not
Books
March 1, 1996
Colum McCann
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.