Contributing Editor

FICTION

Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall

Bonnie and Clyde: Resurrection Road

Pumpjack Press

Paperback, 978-0997411331 (also available as ebook), 308 pages, $15.95; April 2017

This new take on the 1934 deaths of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow is a fast-moving action-thriller rich with mystery, socio-political commentary, and lingering questions that set up a path for a possible sequel.

“What if?” is one of mankind’s oldest ways to launch a story. Yet, certain aspects of Bonnie and Clyde: Resurrection Road fit right into today’s contentious news headlines.

What if Bonnie and Clyde had been killed by Texas and Louisiana lawmen in that infamous ambush that left two bodies riddled with rifle, pistol and machine gun bullets, plus shotgun pellets? What if they had been pulled out of their car before the ambush, gassed into unconsciousness and replaced by a pair of lookalikes who had no idea they were about to die a couple of minutes later and be buried as “Bonnie” and “Clyde”?   >>READ MORE

11.26.2017

WESTERN FICTION

Preston Lewis

Bluster’s Last Stand: The Memoirs of H. H. Lomax

Wild Horse Press

Paperback, 978-1-68179-096-1, $19.95

Reading nineteenth-century Old West memoirs can be a fast way to fall asleep — unless they have been written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by San Angelo novelist Preston Lewis, a Spur Award winner and former president of the Western Writers of America.

Bluster’s Last Stand is the frequently hilarious fourth book in Lewis’s “Memoirs of H. H. Lomax” series. In this new entry, Lomax survives the Battle of Adobe Walls, gets into a deadly feud with General George Armstrong Custer (whom he derides as “General Bluster”), and later lands an unusual job in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Along the way, he also works as a bouncer and guard in a Waco bordello and prospects for gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota. >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Almanac’s history section needs updating

The 2018–19 edition of The Texas Almanac, published by the Texas State Historical Association, has been released. The price has gone up $5 for both the hardcover ($44.95) and the paperback ($29.95).

Featured articles in this edition focus on the state of Texas water and on Texas hunting and fishing. Of course, the Almanac — which is celebrating its 160th anniversary — is loaded with all kind of updated statistical, political, geographical, agricultural, and other useful data. It’s a handy reference guide for all things Texan.

Except history. The Almanac’s history of Texas ends at 1980. It hasn’t been updated in years. I’ve mentioned it in reviewing the last two editions. Odd, since the Almanac is published by the state historical organization, that Texas history gets short shrift in its otherwise excellent publication. A lot has happened in the state since 1980, including the election of two U.S. presidents from Texas and a political paradigm shift from solidly Democratic to staunchly Republican.

Campus architecture: Texas A&M University Press has published a magnificent oversized book, Architecture That Speaks: S.C.P. Vosper and Ten Remarkable Buildings at Texas A&M by Nancy T. McCoy and David G. Woodcock, with photographs by Carolyn Brown ($40 hardcover).

The ten buildings, all designed and built between 1929 and 1933 while Vosper served on the campus architecture staff, are still intact today, in spite of the massive building boom on campus in recent decades.

They are: the Chemistry Building; the Cushing Library; Hart Hall; Walton Hall; the Petroleum Engineering, Geology, and Engineering Experiment Station Building; the Veterinary Hospital; the Administration Building; the Agricultural Engineering Building; the Animal Industries Building; and the Horse Barn.

Each building gets its own chapter except for four that share two chapters. A concluding chapter looks at the campus today, as Texas A&M tries to strike a balance, in its architecture, between accommodating growth and preserving its heritage.

Bakery bandit: Always alert and anticipating an alarm, Gumshoe Zoo awakes.

     “A bread bandit burgled my bakery before breakfast,” bawls Betty.

     “My counters and cupboards were completely cleared of carrot cake, cornbread, and crackers,” the chef claims.

     “We’ll dutifully deal with your distressing dilemma,” denotes Gumshoe Zoo.

That’s how talented Texas author Travis Nichols, now staying in San Francisco, starts his charming children’s comical caper, Betty’s Burgled Bakery: An Alliteration Adventure (Chronicle Books, $14.99 hardcover).

I love children’s books that are as much fun for adults as for kids (and aren’t most of them?)! This one certainly is.

Nichols, who grew up in Abilene, tells this tale alliteratively from A to Z, concluding with — oh, I shouldn’t give away the ending.

Read it yourself — or with a youngster who will yip and not yawn as you yuck it up. Nichols’s previous Gumshoe Zoo Detective Agency mystery, Fowl Play (also $14.99), delightfully deals with idioms like “put the cart before the horse,” “a fish out of water,” and “don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” It’s as much fun as a barrel of monkeys.

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

>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life