9.17.2017   Book pays tribute to 2016 Dallas Cowboys

Triumph Books has published a 128-page full-color book recapping the Dallas Cowboys’ 2016 season, The Boys Are Back: Dak, Zeke, and a New Cowboys Era in Big D by Jean-Jacques Taylor ($15.95 paperback).

As the title indicates, the tribute book focuses on the dynamic rookie duo of Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott, who led the Cowboys to a remarkable 13-3 record.

Cowboys fans might want to scoop it up as a souvenir edition. Chapters include “Why Zeke Made Sense,” “Dak’s Faith-Based Journey to QB,” “How Dak Won Over the Cowboys Locker Room,” and “Zeke’s Kettle Jump.”

Diane Kelly: The sixth book in Diane Kelly’s “Paw Enforcement” series is Enforcing the Paw (St. Martin’s, $7.99 paperback), again featuring Fort Worth police officer Megan Luz and her K-9 partner, Brigit. Kelly’s stories weave in some mystery, some humor, some romance, and some dogology as Megan and Brigit try to figure out which of two former lovers is stalking the other. They both point the finger at their ex, and it gets harder to sort out truth and lies as hostilities escalate.

Kelly, who has been favorably compared to novelist Janet Evanovich, is one of the featured authors at the West Texas Book Festival (Sept. 21-23). Read more at abilenetx.com/apl/bookfest.

She also is the author of the “Death and Taxes” series featuring female IRS agent Tara Holloway. The twelfth and final book of that series is due later this fall.

First novel: Sixth-generation Texan W. W. McNeal has written his first novel, Plum Creek (TCU Press, $22.95 paperback), set in Texas during Reconstruction in the late 1860s.

Billy McCulloch, almost 16, joins a former Texas Ranger captain (“the baddest white man that ever lived”) and a posse of relatives as they hunt for a notorious half-breed murderer who kidnapped the captain’s 14-year-old niece after slaughtering her family. On his sixteenth birthday, Billy gets a pistol as a present from his late father and soon has to use the business end of it. Billy finds he has a lot to learn about life, and about his mysterious family.

Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is West Texas StoriesContact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.