Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole

2.18.2018   Miles Arceneaux is back with another thriller

Fans of the mystery writing team that goes by the pen name of Miles Arceneaux will want to check out Hidden Sea, the fifth Gulf Coast novel featuring the adventures of Charlie Sweetwater ($11.99 paperback).

This one is set on the Texas and Mexican Gulf Coast but drifts into Cuba as well, as Sweetwater sets out to find his missing great-nephew in Mexico, accompanied by the boy’s father, Raul Sweetwater. Along the way they encounter drug cartels, smugglers, crooked politicians, pirates and sea slaves.

As always, the Arceneaux team (Brent Douglass, John T. Davis, and James R. Dennis) keeps the action flowing and the pages turning, with a couple of surprising twists at the end. This may be the best yet.

George Washington: Abilene author Rob Westman and Abilene artist Kay Walton have teamed up to produce a full-color coffee table book on George Washington’s Christian faith and values.

George Washington: Providence ($24.95 hardcover) makes its debut appropriately on Presidents Day, at a 7 p.m. event Monday at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Abilene.

Dr. Peter Lillback, author of the number one best-seller George Washington’s Sacred Fire, will speak, and Westman and Walton will sign books. Westman said he was inspired to write his book, and produce a one-hour documentary, after reading Lillback’s thoroughly researched account several years ago. Lillback helped Westman secure funding for his and Walton’s family-oriented volume.

“If George Washington is our measure,” Westman writes, “then God seems less interested in bravado and more interested in bravery. He was not a perfect man. But we can learn from his actions, as he attempted to walk according to the duties of the Christian faith.”

Reconstruction violence: Veteran Texas author Chuck Parsons has written an authoritative biography, Captain Jack Helm: A Victim of Texas Reconstruction Violence (University of North Texas Press, $29.95 hardcover).

Helm was a deputy sheriff, sheriff, and captain of the Texas State Police during Reconstruction. Often the suspected lawbreakers that he arrested never made it back to jail alive, and eventually his version of law and order brought about his own demise at the hands of notorious killer John Wesley Hardin. Little has been written about Helms until this book.

Texas State Historian Bill O’Neal says, “A biography of Jack Helm is long overdue. Captain Jack Helm is more than a fine gunfighter biography: it is a vivid statement about the murderous violence of Reconstruction in Texas.”

Business successes: The Entrepreneurial Spirit of Aggieland by Randy Burson ($34.99 oversized hardcover, $24.99 paperback) focuses on 12 Aggies who have succeeded while pursuing their dreams of launching their own business enterprises. The twelve stories are told in first person as the entrepreneurs relate their paths to success, the challenges they had to overcome, and their advice to young, aspiring business leaders.

“There is no secret recipe for success,” Burson writes. “Entrepreneurial success is about courage, self-discipline, vision, belief, capitalizing on opportunities, overcoming obstacles and, most of all, hard work.”

* * * * *

Glenn Dromgoole has been writing his Texas Reads column since 2002, focusing on Texas books and authors. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

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