Kay Ellington, Editor and Publisher

6.5.16 CALF brings author/illustrator Mark Teague to Abilene for a dino-mite week

We’re taking a break from interviews this week to bring you some of the best in children’s books, authors, and events . . . so we’ll return with our regularly scheduled feature next Sunday.

In the meantime, here’s what’s happening during our Lone Star Literary Kids’ Summer Reading Week: the Abilene Cultural Affairs Council is proud to host the CALF, a beloved summer tradition since 2012. The festival draws people from all over Texas and beyond. It’s an opportunity to showcase our arts groups, beautiful historic downtown and to promote art and literacy. The theme each year is inspired by the summer artist on exhibit at the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature, also located in downtown Abilene. >>READ MORE

2016 Kids’ Summer Reading: Check it out!

Texas’s only statewide, weekly calendar of book events

Bookish Texas event highlights 6.5.2016
>> GO this week Michelle Newby, Contributing Editor

SPECIAL EVENTS AND FESTIVALS in Texas this week: Canyon, Abilene, Wimberly, and B&N B-FestHOUSTON Mon., June 6, Brazos Bookstore, Joy Jones discusses and signs THE LAST MADAM, 7PMAUSTIN Tues., June 7, The North Door, Owen Egerton’s One Page Salon presents: Jennifer DuBois, John Erier, Jenni Warner-Green, Hani Talebi & Kimberly Meier, 7:30PMAUSTIN Wed., June 8, BookPeople, Singer/Songwriter & Writer KORBY LENKER speaking & signing Medium Hero, 7PMSOUTH PADRE ISLAND Thurs., June 9, Paragraphs on Padre, Meet the Author Series: Shanalee Sharboneau discusses and signs My Mama Loves Me: I’m Her Little Girl, 1PMDALLAS Fri., June 10, B&N – Preston/Royal, B-Fest welcomes author Rachel Caine, 6PM

News Briefs 6.5.16

Abilene’s Children’s Art and Literacy Festival lauds books across the city June 9-11

Celebrating the work of Mark Teague, illustrator of the How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You? book series, Abilene’s Children’s Art and Literacy Festival includes a parade, dramatic readings of Teague’s books, costumed characters, art activities, animals, magic shows, balloons and more June 9-11, 2016, in Abilene, the Storybook Capital of Texas. >>READ MORE

Coming up June 10-12, 2016, hundreds of authors will appear at Barnes & Noble stores nationwide for B-Fest™, a three-day event celebrating the best books for teens. This will be the biggest weekend of author events in B&N history, plus trivia, sweepstakes, giveaways (while supplies last), and more. Participants will the first to sample upcoming teen novels, take part in games, and discover great new reads.
>>READ MORE

Check out Lone Star Literary Life’s GO pag for B-Fest events around Texas.

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE READERS’ POLL

Favorite Texas Bookstores to be revealed June 12, 19

Texas has nearly 300 bookstores, and 30 of them made the cut to be eligible for final-round voting thorugh May 31. Voting remained heated right up until the last minute! Stay tuned for our rollout of your favorite picks next week and June 19.

FICTION/TEXAS

Christopher Molleda

Legend of the Gatorman: A Tale Inspired by True Events Involving a Serial Killer in South TexasXLibris, 978-1-5144-1127-8, 216 pages paperback, 216 pages, October 2015

Almost any place in the world has legends, scary stories, and unsolved mysteries.

Christopher Molleda’s Legend of the Gatorman is Texas crime fiction tied closely to some true and rumored horror events in the 1930s. Names and various other details have been changed, but Molleda’s novel closely tracks the infamous case of a Bexar County serial killer named Joe Ball, also known as “The Alligator Man” and the “Butcher of Elmendorf” (Elmendorf is a small community seventeen miles southeast of downtown San Antonio). >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archiveFrank Hamer profiled in action-packed biography

In the first paragraph of his thoroughly researched, well-written and action-packed biography of legendary Texas Ranger Frank Hamer, author John Boessenecker boldly states: “He was the greatest American lawman of the twentieth century.”

That’s quite a claim. Whether or not that’s true, Boessenecker, who lives in San Francisco, presents 460 pages of stories to back it up in Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin’s Press, $29.99 hardcover).

The author doesn’t overglamorize Hamer (1884-1955), pointing out his shortcomings as well as his many successes in this fast-paced account of Hamer’s five decades in law enforcement. Best known as a Texas Ranger, Hamer actually spent about as much of his career in other peace officer capacities.

In fact, he was not a Ranger but a hired special investigator when he famously tracked down and killed the murderous outlaws Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker in 1934. Boessenecker separates popular myth, perpetrated by the movie Bonnie and Clyde, from the facts of the case. Hamer’s widow sued the studio for defamation for the way it portrayed Hamer in the film and collected a $20,000 settlement, the author reports.

The Bonnie and Clyde case gets three chapters (out of twenty-three) and sixty-six pages in the book as Boessenecker devotes much more attention to Hamer’s earlier years in law enforcement dealing with border violence, saving blacks from East Texas lynch mobs, battling the Ku Klux Klan, and struggling with political corruption.

“Texas bred tough men,” writes Boessenecker, “and none came any tougher than Frank Hamer. He was to the Lone Star State what Wyatt Earp was to Arizona and what Wild Bill Hickok was to Kansas.

“His iron courage was forged in the flames of fifty-two gunfights with desperadoes. In an era when crooked police were a dime a dozen, he could not be bought at any price.”

Boessenecker supports his conclusions with forty pages of bibliographical notes in which he takes issue with some earlier books and accounts, especially with regard to the killing of Bonnie and Clyde.

Slow cooker: Texas food writer and recipe developer Marye Audet has put together the Mexican Slow Cooker Cookbook: Easy, Flavorful Mexican Dishes That Cook Themselves (Rockridge Press, $13.99 paperback).

“Just because you love eating Mexican food,” she writes, “doesn’t mean you want to spend hours in the kitchen preparing and cooking ingredients. This slow cooker cookbook brings easy slow cooker meals to your table with the flavors of Mexico – and minimal effort on your part.”

Chapters include dips and appetizers, soups, vegetarian dishes, seafood and poultry, meat dishes, sides and desserts. The focus is on the recipes themselves, with very few pictures, but the 90 or so recipes are easy to follow and don’t really need illustrating. And, of course, that makes it a more affordable book.

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Glenn Dromgoole’s latest book is More Civility, Please. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.