Lone Star ReviewsMichelle Newby, NBCC,
Contributing Editor
CHILDREN’S FICTION
Mary Pope Osborne (author), AG Ford (illustrator)
Hurricane Heroes in Texas (Magic Tree House #30)
Random House Books for Young Readers
Hardcover, 978-1-5247-1312-6 (also available as an e-book and an audio-book), 112 pgs., $13.99; August 7, 2018
Mary Pope Osborne’s beloved Jack and Annie return to Texas, landing in a backyard oak tree in Galveston on September 8, 1900, just in time for the Great Galveston Hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the country.
Hurricane Heroes in Texas is the thirtieth installment in the mega-bestselling Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne. In a “Dear Reader” note at the beginning of Hurricane Heroes in Texas, Osborne notes that she began writing a book about the worst hurricane to strike the United States in the summer of 2017, just as Harvey, another devastating hurricane, bore down on the Texas coast. >>READ MORE
LONE STAR INDIE REVIEWS
12.9.2018
FICTION
Rick Treon
Black Rose Writing
Paperback, 978-1-68-433167-3 (Kindle ebook also available); 228 pages, $18.95; December 6, 2018
Former Texas newspaper reporter and editor Rick Treon’s first completed work of fiction is an impressive, realistic dark thriller with an unnerving conclusion that wisely leaves a pathway open for a follow-up novel.
In Deep Background, Levi Cole, the chief investigative reporter for a Dallas newspaper, is forced to leave his high-profile job suddenly because of questionable writings that could bring him and his employer big lawsuits. To get out of the limelight for a while, Cole returns to his rural Texas hometown of Bison Ridge to help a colleague and married ex-girlfriend cover a murder.
However, as he digs deeper and deeper, Cole eventually discovers that he has gotten himself caught in a deep conspiracy that goes well beyond the murder. And his entrapment will compel him not only to take sides — a huge no-no for an “objective” reporter — but also to make disturbing choices. >>READ MORE
LONE STAR INDIE REVIEWS
FICTION / PARANORMAL ROMANCE
Michael Scott Clifton
Book Liftoff
Paperback, 978-1-947946-42-2 (also available as ebook), 344 pages, $14.95
September 2018
East Texas, specifically the areas around Mount Pleasant and Longview, might not be your first choices for fantasy settings in a darkly toned, paranormal romance tale about a witch and an emergency room physician.
But in The Janus Witch, Mount Pleasant novelist Michael Scott Clifton uncorks a clever and entertaining tale that unfolds within a region he knows well.
In The Janus Witch, one member of a murderous witches’ coven somehow plunges into another realm (contemporary East Texas) while being pursued by witch hunters. Tressalayne is seriously injured when she falls through tree branches and hits the ground, and she is left temporarily without memory of her violent, paranormal past. >>READ MORE
Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole
>> archive
Gaines, Kelton titles head new book lineup
New books by Joanna Gaines and Elmer Kelton head this week’s lineup, but I also will touch on several others that you might want to read or give this holiday season.
In Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave (Harper Design, $40 hardcover), Gaines offers practical and simple ideas to “empower and motivate you to create a home that communicates the soul and substance of the people who live within its walls.”
The full-color, oversized book, she says, “is a culmination of all that I’ve learned through the hundreds of homes I’ve designed over the years.”
Chapters are devoted to “identifying your design style,” followed by specific ideas concerning entry ways, living rooms, kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, kid spaces, rooms to retreat, and utility rooms, with a detachable design template at the back.
Distinctive homes: Another home décor book new this fall is Helen Thompson’s Texas Made/Texas Modern: The House and the Land, with photographs by Casey Dunn (The Monacelli Press, $50 hardcover). Thompson and Dunn teamed up earlier on Marfa Modern.
Texas Made/Texas Modern takes readers on a delightful tour inside and outside 19 elegant and distinctive Texas homes featuring architectural modernism with a Texas twist — also known as Texas regionalism.
Kelton stories: Elmer Kelton’s many fans will be happy to know that Forge Books has released a new collection of Kelton’s short stories, available for the first time in book form.
The publisher brought out a collection of 11 stories last year under the title Wild West, and that one is now in paperback ($9.99).
The new collection, Hard Ride ($27.99 hardcover), includes 14 stories by the beloved San Angelo western author who died in 2009. The stories are from the 1950s when Kelton got his start writing for the old pulp western magazines before any of his novels were published.
Eventually, he would write more than 40 western novels and be voted by his fellow western authors as the best ever in that genre. Most of his books are still in print.
Women outlaws: Melissa Lenhardt’s new western novel, Heresy (Redhook Books, $15.99 paperback), concerns a female band of outlaws who seek revenge after they are run off their ranch by an unscrupulous cattleman.
Even as they pull off a series of robberies, the outlaws get no credit for their misdeeds, with the newspapers blaming the rival Jeb Spooner Gang instead.
Lenhardt relies on realistic-sounding (but fictional) journal entries, slave narratives, newspaper accounts, and other documents to craft the tale, her fourth western novel. Her other three were the “Sawbones” series featuring a tough woman doctor on the western frontier.
Plennie Wingo: One of the more unusual non-fiction books this year is Ben Montgomery’s tale about an Abilene man who set out to walk backwards around the world in 1931.
Plennie Wingo’s odd story is told in The Man Who Walked Backward: An American Dreamer’s Search for Meaning in the Great Depression (Little, Brown, $28 hardcover).
Forty-five years later, Wingo delighted Tonight Show host Johnny Carson with his tale, but it never made him the fortune he sought.
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Glenn Dromgoole’s most recent book is The Book Guy: One Author’s Adventures in Publishing. Contact him atg.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.
>> Check out his previous Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life
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