Contributing Editor

WOMEN’S STUDIES
Inés Hernández-Ávila and Norma Elia Cantú, editors

Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art

978-1-4773-0796-0, Hardcover, 501 pp., 12 color photos, 38 b&w photos. University of Texas Press,

February 2016

Reviewed by Natalia Treviño

The cover of Entre Guadalupe y Malinche: Tejanas in Literature and Art greets us with the human heart almost pierced by bladelike leaves. This image, Barraza’s Codex of Corazon Sagrado, features a sensuous maguey plant flanked by roses, kicking up toward an anatomically correct human heart, which floats between winglike clouds above the tapestry that forms the Texas landscape. Like the cover painting, this multi-genre collection of Tejana writers and artists sings of the liminal space that Tejana women inhabit in which the relationship between the land and the heart is both painful and sublime, thriving between two major Mexican feminine icons: Guadalupe, the sacred virgin Maria, and Malinche, traitor to Mexico, Cortez’s famous bride and secular “whore.” >>READ MORE

Texas ReadsGlenn Dromgoole

>> archive

Three suspenseful novels from Texas authors

J. Todd Scott, a 20-year federal agent with the DEA, has written The Far Empty, a suspenseful first novel set in a fictional small town in the Big Bend area (Putnam, $26 hardcover).

Sheriff Stanford Ross, called The Judge, rules the town of Murfee with an iron fist. Town residents respect – and fear – him, but his 17-year-old son loathes him.  The boy believes his father murdered his mother and disposed of the body, while the sheriff has convinced the community that she simply ran off and left them. A previous wife drowned in the bathtub and another one also vanished years ago.

A new deputy has come to town, a former high school football star in need of a fresh start. When he finds some bones on a remote ranch, he starts asking questions that the sheriff doesn’t really want answered.

Meanwhile, DEA agents are quietly making inquiries of their own until one day when their investigation literally explodes.

Author Scott moves the story along through the eyes of a variety of characters, including a new teacher in town with a questionable past and a violent deputy sheriff whose weirdness has finally become too much for his buddy and boss, Sheriff Ross.

Debut novel: Amy Gentry of Austin, a writer who has done volunteer work helping victims of sexual and domestic violence, has written a gripping first novel, Good As Gone (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $23 hardcover).

Eight years ago thirteen-year-old Julie Whitaker was taken from her Houston home at knifepoint in the middle of the night. Her 1ten-year-old sister witnessed the abduction. Julie vanished without a trace.

English professor Dr. Anna Davalos and her accountant husband, Tom Whitaker, have given up hope after searching for her for years. Jane has moved off to college, but is home for a visit. Then, out of the blue, one evening as they are sitting down to dinner, the doorbell rings. Julie is back.

Maybe.

As the story unfolds, Anna has her doubts as she gets confidential reports from a private investigator. Is this really her daughter, Julie, or an impostor who has been singing with a band in Seattle and before that was eking out an existence as a stripper and who-knows-what?

Who is she, and has she really come “home” or is there another reason why this young  woman is in Houston?

New from Sandra Brown: Sandra Brown, one of Texas’s all-time best-selling novelists, has a new thriller out this fall — Sting (Grand Central Publishing, $26 hardcover).

Two hit men are sent to kill Jordie Bennett in New Orleans, but one of them kidnaps her instead, takes her to a remote location and demands $2 million from the man who wanted her dead. The kidnapper is brutal, but keeps her alive – while she tries to come up with a desperation move to get away.

Well, all is not as it seems, as there are many surprising twists and a few hot sexual scenes as the story develops.

As always, Brown keeps the action moving and the reader guessing, probably incorrectly, what will come next.

Glenn Dromgoole is co-author of 101 Essential Texas Books. Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.

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

Texas Book Festival unveils full 2016 lineup

280 featured authors, including DeLillo, Cline, Dolby, Prose, Sáenz, Kennedy, Lakshmi,  Towles, more

AUSTIN — The Texas Book Festival is excited to host a lineup filled with nationally renowned presenters, including Don DeLillo, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Diana Kennedy, Thomas Dolby, Emma Cline, Padma Lakshmi, Amor Towles, Francine Prose, Lawrence Wright, Phoebe Robinson, Jane Alexander, Robert Olen Butler, Jon Klassen, R.L. Stine, and more. The 2016 TBF weekend takes place on November 5 and 6, spread throughout the grounds of the Texas State Capitol and along Austin’s iconic Congress Avenue.

Award-winning authors are found throughout the TBF lineup, including literary legend Don DeLillo, an American novelist, playwright, and essayist well known for such acclaimed works as White Noise and Under-world, whose subjects range from television and sports to nuclear war and perfor-mance art. Co-presented by the TBF and the Harry Ransom Center, DeLillo will appear in conversation with author and screenwriter Noah Hawley about DeLillo’s latest novel, Zero K, at the Festival.

“We are hosting some big marquee names this year, and it’s exciting to see the trend of prominent artists—actors, comedians, performance artists—writing books,” says Lois Kim, the Festival’s executive director. “But one of the best things about our deep and diverse lineup is the opportunity for discovery. There is so much talent in this list, and we can’t wait for people to dive in and find their next favorite author at the Festival, which is free to attend, thanks to the Festival’s generous supporters and dedicated volunteer army.”

A total of more than 280 writers, including chefs, actors, YouTube-stars, and more, are part of the 2016 Texas Book Festival lineup. One of the nation’s premier literary events and longest-running book festivals in the country, the Festival continues to be free and open to the public thanks to sponsors and volunteers. Additionally, the Festival brings more than 40,000 attendees, live music, kids’ activities, food trucks, book signings and sales, and 100 exhibitors all in and around the State Capitol over two full days.

The weekend also kicks off with the First Edition Literary Gala, featuring actor-authors Ethan Hawke and Diane Guerrero; acclaimed journalist and novelist Carl Hiaasen; and chef and restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson as presenters. Children’s book writer Jon Scieszka will emcee this year’s gala, to be held on Friday, November 4 at the Four Seasons Hotel Austin.  >>READ MORE