TEXAS BOOK LOVER

WHAT LIES BELOW

Barbara Taylor Sissel

Genre: Contemporary Mystery / Literary Suspense
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Date of Publication: May 15, 2018

Number of Pages: 334

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Gilly O’Connell’s nightmares aren’t just bad dreams; they’re glimpses of terrifying realities to come. Gilly has spent her entire life trying to suppress the foreboding visions. So when a dismissed premonition leads to her husband’s murder, she buries the guilt and pain of the unsolved crime in the only way she knows how—she runs from it.

Three years later, after overcoming a battle with addiction and starting over in a small Texas town, Gilly dares to believe the worst is over. That is, until another crime rips her heart open: the abduction of a three-year-old girl. Gilly knows more about it than anyone…

She’s dreaming again.

Gilly is convinced that if she tells the police she dreamed of the kidnapping before it happened, there’s no way they’ll believe her. But when she finally gets the courage to come forward with what she saw, people don’t see her as crazy—they see her as a suspect.

Now, in order to help a desperate single father save his child, Gilly must first clear her own name. But as the nightmares of the past catch up to her, Gilly’s only chance for salvation might be the dreams she’s spent so long trying to ignore.

PRAISE FOR WHAT LIES BELOW:
“Infused with heart-stopping suspense, emotional resonance, and startling imagery, What Lies Below swept me along a river of urgency and dread. Barbara Taylor Sissel effortlessly weaves together prescience, regret, grief, love, and revenge—all wrapped in the mystery of a young girl’s abduction. Beneath the breathless immediacy of the story lie deeper questions: How do we forgive ourselves—and others—for remembered transgressions, and can we ever break free of the past?” —A. J. Banner, #1 Amazon and USA Today bestselling author of The Good Neighbor and The Twilight Wife

“Barbara Taylor Sissel’s What Lies Below is suspense at its finest—heartrending, compelling, and beautifully written. If you’re looking for your next up-all-night read, look no further.” —Jessica Strawser, author of Almost Missed You and Not That I Could Tell

“I cannot emphasize this enough: you must read What Lies Below. Barbara Taylor Sissel manages to combine an unreliable narrator, twisting plot, and well imagined characters to create a world where nothing is as it seems and secrets abound. I had intended to savor the novel’s lovely prose but wound up devouring the book in a day. Simply fantastic.” —Karen McQuestion, bestselling author of Hello Love

CLICK to ORDER

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EXCERPT FROM WHAT LIES BELOW

BY BARBARA TAYLOR SISSEL

There was something wrong. While the little girl went willingly with the woman to the car, Gilly felt the grip of cold terror in her bones. She wanted to get at the woman, to yank the child’s hand from the woman’s grasp, and she would have but there was a barrier between them, a wall of thick glass. She paced along it, walking her fingertips over the surface, heart thundering in her ears. Beyond the barrier, some distance away, the woman was chatting with the child, head bent, listening for the little girl’s response.

God, her small upturned face was so sweet and trusting.

“Stop!” Gilly shouted the word, but neither the woman, nor the little girl, looked in her direction. It was as if Gilly was invisible to them. Her throat constricted; her eyes burned. How could it be this easy, taking a child? It shouldn’t be. There were laws, safeguards.

The woman lifted the tiny girl, who held a Nemo backpack, into a child-sized safety seat in the backseat of the car. It should have been reassuring, seeing that, but it wasn’t.

“No,” Gilly whispered. “No no no…”

She pressed her face to the glass, memorizing details: the woman was tall, slender, wearing a navy hoodie and sunglasses that concealed the upper half of her face. Gilly had the impression she was dark-haired, but with her head covered it was only an impression. The woman’s car was blue, light metallic blue, a sedan, medium size. Newish, she thought, but the make and model eluded her. She wasn’t good at identifying cars. It was parked in front of a building—small, one story, faced in dark red brick. The woods that surrounded it on three sides appeared dark and sinister. But there—that scrap of pink just at the edge of the woods behind the building—what was that? Gilly pressed close to the glass, cupping her hands around her eyes. It was a trike, a child’s trike flipped on its side. A soft moan escaped her. The scene began to dissolve now—the woman’s face, the building, the car, the pink trike—all of it was retreating, fading into a haze. Except for the child’s face. It didn’t seem possible, but it was as if the little girl had climbed out of her car seat to peer at Gilly through the car’s rear window. Every feature of her small face stood out. She was smiling; she seemed happy. But somehow Gilly knew it wouldn’t last, that she was in terrible jeopardy.

She lunged at the glass . . .

. . . and woke, thrashing and disoriented. Hot. So hot. Gone still now. Rigid. Waiting, for her breath to settle and for a semblance of normalcy, the recognition of her surroundings to return. The bedroom walls swam at her, the furniture, a dresser and a linen upholstered French country chair, floated in her peripheral vision. A stack of moving boxes against one wall was familiar. It and the furniture belonged to her. The walls belonged to the house she was renting. But they were real, as real as the cold weight of her dread.

CHECK OUT THE BOOK TRAILER!

Barbara Taylor Sissel writes issue oriented, upmarket women's fiction that is threaded with elements of suspense and defined by its particular emphasis on how crime affects the family. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, she was raised in various locations across the US and once lived with her family on the grounds of a first offender prison facility. The experience, interacting with the inmates and staff, provided a unique insight into the inmate's lives, the circumstances behind the crimes they committed, and the impact on the families that were affected. The bestselling author of nine novels, her stories focus on the family at the heart of the crime. An avid gardener and the mother of two grown sons, Barbara lives in the Texas Hill Country. She’s represented by Barbara Poelle at the Irene Goodman Literary Agency.

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VISIT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:

5/15/18	Excerpt	Texas Book Lover
5/16/18	Review	Dressed to Read
5/17/18	Author Interview	That's What She's Reading
5/18/18	Review	The Clueless Gent
5/19/18	Notable Quotable/Bonus Review	The Love of a Bibliophile
5/20/18	Notable Quotable	Story Schmoozing Book Reviews
5/21/18	Review	A Page Before Bedtime
5/22/18	Guest Post Part 1	Reading by Moonlight
5/23/18	Guest Post Part 2	Books in the Garden
5/24/18	Review	Book Fidelity

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I reviewed The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers (Atria Books) by Marcia Gay Harden for Lone Star Literary Life. "By turns gentle and fierce, elegiac and exuberant, The Seasons of My Mother is a loving tribute to Harden’s mother, Beverly, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease."

MEMOIR
Marcia Gay Harden
The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers

Atria Books
Hardcover, 978-1-5011-3570-5 (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 336 pgs., $26.00
May 1, 2018

My mother thinks herself timid. This is incorrect. I confess to teenage contempt at what I (mis)perceived as weakness. In truth my mother was strong, knocked down by circumstances never contemplated or prepared for, and got back up, repeatedly. The most affecting passages in The Seasons of My Mother concern the transformation of the mother-daughter relationship into something closer to friendship. I think my mother and I are doing that now, acknowledging a more equal footing.

The Seasons of My Mother: A Memoir of Love, Family, and Flowers is the first book from actress Marcia Gay Harden, winner of an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Pollock (Sony Pictures, 2000), and a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for God of Carnage (Yasmina Reza, 2006). By turns gentle and fierce, elegiac and exuberant, The Seasons of My Mother is a loving tribute to Harden’s mother, Beverly, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

“This week on my to-do list is ‘Book a … brain scan,’” Harden writes. My grandmother suffered from dementia in her late 80s, and her daughter — my mother — fears she will be struck as well. My mother and Beverly Harden, and Marcia Gay and I, have quite a bit in common. “It made me respect the ability Mom had for control and reserve,” Harden muses. “Perhaps it wasn’t timidity at all … but simply self-control?”

In chapters with titles such as, “My mother is an orange hibiscus in a brown coffee cup” and “My mother is a driftwood ballerina,” Harden remembers the seasons of her mother’s life because Beverly no longer can. With honesty, sensuosity, and self-deprecating humor, Harden introduces us to a nineteen-year-old bride who married a naval officer-in-training. During the next ten years, Beverly Harden gave birth to five children and followed her officer around the world. In Japan she learned the ancient Japanese art of flower-arranging called ikebana.

Harden uses the concepts of ikebana to relate Beverly’s Texas roots, traditional rituals, and blossoming in Japan. Alzheimer’s is the invasive weed, the destructive nonnative species. Harden writes lyrically about the different kinds of memory — tactile, auditory, visual, emotional, atmospheric. Harden paid attention when Beverly talked about her beloved blooms. The Seasons of My Mother is an education and an inspiration in flora and the natural world, a celebration of the senses.

A lovely volume, The Seasons of My Mother is wrapped in shades of lilac, symbolizing innocence, a reminder of first love, and confidence in the recipient of the flowers. The interior is graced by candid photos of Harden with her mom and delicate drawings of hardy flowers.

Often spiritual, The Seasons of My Mother is Harden, in appreciation and admiration, stringing vignettes like pearls on a string. She tells us the story of Beverly becoming herself and then, not losing herself, but losing how she became herself, a homemaker in the truest sense, offering not sacrifices, but gifts.

Here’s to all the mothers in my life. Thank you.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

SINS OF THE

YOUNGER SONS

JAN REID

Genre: Literary Fiction / Romance / Spy / Thriller
Publisher: Texas Christian University Press
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Publication Date: February 28, 2018

Number of Pages: 296 pages

Sins of the Younger Sons has received the Jesse H. Jones Award for Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters! Luke Burgoa is an ex-Marine on a solitary covert mission to infiltrate the Basque separatist organization ETA in Spain and help bring down its military commander, Peru Madariaga. Luke hails from a Basque ancestry that came with the Spanish empire to Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, and, seventy-five years ago, to a Texas ranch. Neighbors consider the Burgoas Mexican immigrants and exiles of that nation’s revolution, but the matriarch of the family speaks the ancient language Euskera and honors traditions of the old country. Luke’s orders are to sell guns to the ETA and lure Peru into a trap. Instead he falls in love with Peru’s estranged wife, Ysolina, who lives in Paris and pursues a doctorate about an Inquisition-driven witchcraft frenzy in her native land. From the day they cross the border into the Basque Pyrenees, their love affair on the run conveys the beauty, sensuality, exoticism, and violence of an ancient homeland cut in two by Spain and France. Their trajectory puts Luke, Ysolina, and Peru on a collision course with each other and the famed American architect Frank Gehry, whose construction of a Guggenheim art museum seeks to transform the Basque city of Bilbao, a decrepit industrial backwater haunted by the Spanish Civil War—and a hotbed of ETA extremism. Ranging from the Amazon rain forest to a deadly prison in Madrid, Sins of the Younger Sons is a love story exposed to dire risk at every turn.

PRAISE FOR SINS OF THE YOUNGER SONS:
"Reid’s story is a fascinating blend of page-turning thriller and vivid tableau of Basque culture and the movement that battled the Spanish establishment for many decades. A reader can’t ask for more—a book that’s engaging, entertaining, educative, and unique.”
—Thomas Zigal, author of Many Rivers to Cross and The White League

“What a fine book Jan Reid has written! At once history—both cultural and political—and sensual love story, it reaches beyond genre to make for a magical and profound reading experience. Don’t start reading it at night unless you want to stay up until dawn and then some.” —Beverly Lowry, author of Who Killed These Girls? and Harriet Tubman: Imagining a Life

"Page by page, Sins of the Younger Sons invites the reader to dwell for a while within its unique world, to suffer and celebrate with its unforgettable characters. It’s a trip that, if taken, is well worth the effort.” —Ed Conroy, San Antonio Express-News

"Sins of the Younger Sons vividly takes us into a world few of us have seen and into a bitter conflict most of us have never considered nor understood.” —Si Dunn, Dallas Morning News

CLICK TO BUY

EXCERPT FROM

Sins of the Younger Sons

By Jan Reid

“How’s your day been?” said Ysolina as she came through the foyer. Luke wasn’t sure if she asked him or Barkilu, her collie.

“Good and bad.”

She set her briefcase down and kissed the dog. “Yes?”

“The good was reading the latest in your journal. I was moved.”

“Oh, you found it,” she said, rattled. “And liked it? Thank you. And the bad?”

He handed her the slip of paper. She looked at its warning and said, “Who gave you this? What does it mean?”

“I got it in a split tennis ball trying to make a bet at a pelota game, while you were gone. Where were you?”

“In Pamplona. My research—”

He shook his head. “We weren’t going to do that.”

“What, Luke? What?”

“We weren’t going to lie to each other. You weren’t at the archives in Pamplona. You couldn’t have gotten close to them. The crowds are huge this year for the running of the bulls. The roads are closed. I read it in the paper.”

She leaned against the wall and put the back of her head against it.

“All right. I went to see Peru. We were just talking.”

“Cooking up a little killing?”

She came off the wall and slapped him.

He nodded and held his hands out to the sides. “I don’t care what you were doing. I mean I do. Any man would. But you went to see him in a car registered to the person who’s on my forged passport and visa. I’m a fugitive, too, you know. And I put myself in this situation because of you.”

“And now you’re my guardian angel. Maybe you ought to flap your big white wings and just go away.”

“Ysolina, we have to get out of here. This proves what I haven’t been able to make you notice. It’s about us carrying on like we don’t have a care in the world. And this husband you went to see. Did you watch to see if anyone followed you? Do you get the picture?”

He had moved closer in saying this. She put the palm of her hand against his chest. “Can we talk about this over a drink?”

“Good idea.”

Soon they were yelling at each other; Barkilu cringed.

“You’ve been using me,” he lashed out.

“Is that right? I still don’t know just how you showed up on that trail ride that day. Who’s been using who?”

He sat on one of the bar stools stirring whiskey with his forefinger. “Where are Peru and his gang?”

“His gang,” she said bitterly.

“What are they going to do?”

“I don’t know. He won’t say. He wants to protect me.”

“Okay, let’s level with each other. I’ll go first. I was working non-official cover for an organization I call the Outfit. It means I’ve got no diplomatic immunity, whatever happens. I threw my associations with those Americans in the bay that morning in St. Jean-de-Luz. As far as my former friends are concerned I’ve gone over with ETA. Is that straightforward enough? I’m in a lot of trouble. Not because of you. I said that badly. Because I fell in love with you.”

She drew a breath to steady her voice. “There were secret negotiations between the regime and ETA in Morocco. They seemed so promising. There had been a ceasefire for several months, and I hoped Peru might emerge as a kind of rebel turned peacemaker. What they’re seeing in Northern Ireland.”

“He didn’t seem all that peaceable to me.”

“Can I finish?”

“Go ahead. Sorry.”

“The talks fell apart right when you and I met. I still hoped that scenario for Peru might work out, but that doesn’t mean things were good between us. They haven’t been for a long time. I was using you, yes, and so was Peru. He knew I needed to be here for my research and more. I’m glad you think I’m doing something genuine. The people who tried to kill Peru in France were a Spanish hit squad. They were mercenaries led by an officer in the Guardia Civil.”

She went on, “Peru’s all right but he’s very angry. I don’t know what he’ll do. Maybe I was naïve. Grasping at straws. But I was hopeful—is that a sin? The Spaniards broke the ceasefire. They tried to kill Peru and did kill a boy Peru loved like a son. So all bets are off about a solution. He knows it’s over between us. He knows I’m with you. If you’ll calm down and just have me.”

After a moment he pulled her into his arms. She beat his chest lightly with the side of a fist. “You’re right,” she said, “it’s time to go. But where?”

Jan Reid’s highly praised books include his novel Comanche Sundown, his biography of Texas governor Ann Richards, Let the People In, his memoir of Mexico, The Bullet Meant for Me, and The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock. Making his home in Austin, Reid has been a leading contributor to Texas Monthly for over forty years.

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VISIT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:

5/17/18	Promo	The Page Unbound
5/18/18	Review	Hall Ways Blog
5/19/18	Excerpt	Texas Book Lover
5/20/18	Author Interview	The Librarian Talks
5/21/18	Review	Books in the Garden
5/22/18	Promo	Book Fidelity
5/23/18	Playlist	The Clueless Gent
5/24/18	Review	The Love of a Bibliophile
5/25/18	Promo	Forgotten Winds
5/26/18	Review	Reading by Moonlight

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DAM NATION

Bonnie and Clyde #2

CLARK HAYS AND KATHLEEN McFALL

Genre: Historical / Alternative History / Romance
Publisher:Pumpjack Press on Facebook

Date of Publication: March 24, 2018

Number of Pages: 266

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Bonnie and Clyde: Defending the working class from a river of greed.

The year is 1935 and the Great Depression has America in a death grip of poverty, unemployment and starvation. But the New Deal is rekindling hope, with federally funded infrastructure projects, like Hoover Dam, putting people back to work. Set to harness the mighty Colorado River for electricity and irrigation, the dam is an engineering marvel and symbol of American can-do spirit.

So, why is someone trying to blow it up?

When an informant on the construction site is murdered, Bonnie and Clyde—spared from their gruesome deaths and forced into a covert life working for the government—are given their second assignment: stop the bomb and protect the thousands of laborers and families in the company town. It's their most dangerous mission yet: working for a living.

Can the notorious lovers put aside their criminal ways long enough to find out who wants to extinguish the American dream, and hopefully reclaim a shred of redemption along the way?

The thrilling story cuts back and forth between the modern era where a reporter interviews the now-elderly Bonnie Parker, and the dangerous 1930s undercover exploits of Bonnie and Clyde, as they are thrust into a fight to defend the working class against corporate greed.

Dam Nation, a historical thriller with unsettling contemporary parallels, continues the explosive "what-if" series, started in Resurrection Road, about two unlikely heroes fighting to defend the working class during America's Great Depression.

PRAISE FOR BONNIE AND CLYDE: DAM NATION:

Crisply written, well-researched, thoroughly entertaining. As in Resurrection Road, Hays and McFall evoke time and place well in this sequel. The story’s politics are fresh and timely. Readers will find Bonnie and Clyde to be great company, and the novel’s framing story (the widowed Bonnie’s 1984 recollections) gives their relationship an extra layer of poignancy.

-- Kirkus Reviews

“Dam Nation” highlights the real-life turmoil of the 1930s as only Hays and McFall can — shadowy intrigue, plenty of suspects and enough behind-the-scenes and under-the-covers action to keep the narrative sizzling along to the final page.

-- East Oregonian

A rollicking good read. The real history of the rise of unions and worker rights against the backdrop of a nation recovering from the Great Depression contributes an engrossing, realistic scenario; a vivid read that blends fiction with nonfiction elements in a way that makes the book hard to put down.

-- Midwest Book Review

CLICK TO PURCHASE

A jailhouse interview with Clyde Barrow

Interview recorded by Royce Jenkins,

a reporter for the Texas Lubbock Dispatch

My name is Clyde Barrow and I am a thief, a murderer and a product of wealth inequality.

You may know me from the shenanigans I got caught up in with the love of my life, Bonnie Parker. Most folks think Bonnie and Clyde got cut down in a hail of bullets outside of Sailes, Louisiana in 1934, and most folks figured we got what was coming to us — neither is exactly true.

I ain’t proud of the things we done, but I’m not exactly ashamed either. I wish no one had died, that’s for certain, but when the system is stacked against you from the get go, things are going to turn out bad. I always say, you kick a dog long enough, one day, you’re gonna get bit.

In my day, it was the Great Depression that lit the fuse. Right before that was what they called the Gilded Age, with the Robber Barons — the captains of industry — rigging all the laws, so them and their pals could carve off bigger and bigger slices of the pie until the whole thing came crashing down like an outhouse in a tornado.

You think it was the rich that suffered? If you know your history, you know that ain’t true. It was the poor folks who live hand-to-mouth who paid the price. Me and my family, our neighbors, we was the ones standing in soup lines and living under bridges, with no jobs and no hope.

As a result of that, I grew up dirt poor in Cement City, a little hellhole outside of Dallas, Texas. There wasn’t but two ways to make it out of Cement City: dead or in prison.

I tried to play it square, tried to get a job, but there wasn’t no jobs to be had and what there was didn’t pay enough scratch to get by. Sound familiar?

Rooting around in the dirt for a dying wage, like a hog under an acorn tree, well that wasn’t for me. No sir. I figured if the fat cats could take what they wanted, I could too. Only problem was, when some no-account like me steals a broken-down car or a truck full of turkeys, well them old boys running America, well, they just couldn’t have that.

Right away I ended up in jail — and they made me work for free inside prison. The bosses, them at owned the prisons, actually profited by keeping me locked up. The prisons today are full of young men and women who try to get by selling weed, but they sure ain’t overcrowded with the Wall Street sharks that caused the latest Great Recession and stole hundreds of millions in the process.

Ain’t we learned nothing from history? Can’t hardly believe were running through the same thing today. The robber barons damn near ruined this country, and they’re about to do it again.

Me and Bonnie helped out in 1934 by keeping old FDR safe from an assassin so he could put in the New Deal, giving the working man a voice with unions, regulating Wall Street and so on. But money has its own gravity, and now the super-rich are pulling the government levers behind the scenes to make it even harder for the working class, even though they tell us to our faces that they ain’t.

In this day and age, wealth inequality is even worse than at the height of the robber barons in the 1930s. Right now, in America, the top ten percent of the country controls damn near 80 percent of the wealth. And it gets worse the richer they are. What do they need all that money for?

They’re spending billions trying to convince us about some trickle-down nonsense. Saying if they get taxed less and if they don’t have no regulations and if the government doesn’t invest in public programs it will all be magically better for the working man! That’s a load of manure. It wasn’t true in 1929 and it sure as hell ain’t true now. That’s like saying the working class might get a few more scraps falling from the rich folks’ dinner table if they just pile up even more mountains of food on their fancy plates. It’s all a damn lie.

Got to be blind to not see that we’re speeding head first into something even worse than the Great Depression. Don’t know why rich people can’t just do the right thing. Recognize that profits are for everyone working to make them, not just to be hoarded by the ones lucky enough to own the capital. There’s more than enough money to go around, still leaving plenty for the rich to have their yachts and jets.

I ain’t suggesting people pick up guns and start robbing and running, like me and Bonnie. That won’t get you nowhere but in jail or dead in a ditch. But I am suggesting folks wise up to the real criminals who keep bleeding the working class, squeezing the disenfranchised and lining their pockets, all from the tops of their gilded towers.

Me and Bonnie may have been murderers and thieves, but we knew what we were doing was wrong. I ain’t so sure about this new crop of Robber Barons. That scares me more than looking down the barrel of a Tommy gun.

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER FOR RESURRECTION ROAD, BOOK ONE IN THE BONNIE AND CLYDESERIES:

Clark and Kathleen wrote their first book together in 1999 as a test for marriage. They passed.

Dam Nation is their sixth co-authored book.

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5/16/18	Excerpt	Chapter Break Book Blog
5/17/18	Review	Forgotten Winds
5/18/18	Author Interview	StoreyBook Reviews
5/19/18	Notable Quotable	Bibliotica
5/20/18	Review	Missus Gonzo
5/21/18	Character Interview	Texas Book Lover
5/22/18	Notable Quotable	Tangled in Text
5/23/18	Review	Hall Ways Blog
5/24/18	Guest Post	Story Schmoozing Book Reviews
5/25/18	Review	Momma on the Rocks

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Bookish goings-on in Texas for the week of May 21-27, 2018:

Special Events:
New Ideas 2: A Festival of New Plays, Dallas, May 18-26

Elena Gallego Rare Books Pop-up Shop, San Antonio, May 19-June 3

Boldface Conference, Houston, May 21-25

Comicpalooza, Houston, May 25-27

Ongoing Exhibits:

Routine Fables, Houston, May 25-July 29

Monday, May 21:

Austin
Austin CentralLibrary, Chad Sarno cooking demonstration and signing of The Wicked Healthy Cookbook, 6:30PM

BookPeople, AMY CHOZICK speaking & signing Chasing Hillary (In Conversation with Mimi Swartz of Texas Monthly), 7PM

Dallas
Interabang Books, Gilbert King discussing and signing BENEATH A RUTHLESS SUN, 7PM

Houston

Brazos Bookstore, poet Justin Jamail reading from and signing EXCHANGEABLE BONDS, 7PM

Richardson
Richardson Public Library, Writers Guild of Texas workshop: "Point of View + Voice" with Carmen Goldthwaite, 7PM

Tuesday, May 22:

Austin

BookPeople, PAIGE DAVIS speaking & signing Here We Grow, 7PM

Jack Allen's Kitchen Anderson Lane, book signing happy hour with Kenny Braun, author of As Far as You Can See, 5PM

Malvern Books, Malvern’s Multi-Verse with Cecily Sailer, 7PM

Spiderhouse Ballroom, Austin Poetry Slam featuring Chucky Black, 7PM

Dallas

Dallas Museum of Art, Arts & Letters Live presents award-winning author Michael Ondaatje discussing his new novel, Warlight, with author Bret Anthony Johnston, director of the Michener Center for Writers, 7:30PM

Half Price Books - The Mothership, Katherine Center reading and signing How to Walk Away, 7PM [numbered-pass event]

Interabang Books, John Branch discussing and signing THE LAST COWBOYS, 7PM

The Wild Detectives, Carina Chocano discussing and signing You Play the Girl: On Playboy Bunnies, Stepford Wives, Train Wrecks, & Other Mixed Messages, 7:30PM

Decatur
Decatur Public Library, Julia Heaberlin reading and signing Paper Ghosts, 6:30PM

Houston

The Black Labrador, Houston Writers House social: Amy Megill (aka Editor Amy) presents "Preparing to Work with and Later Working with an Editor," 6:30PM

Warehouse Live, the Houston Moth StorySLAM presents "Ego," 7:30PM

McAllen
B&N - Palms Crossing, Story time: Local author Iona Cordero reading Paramedics to the Rescue!, 10AM

McAllen Public Library, The Storybook Garden hosts Natalia Sylvester reading and signing Everyone Knows You Go Home, 6PM

Nacogdoches
The Bosslight, Author and Bosslight manager Tim Bryant discusses his first novel, DUTCH CURRIDGE, 6:30PM

San Antonio

The Mix, PuroSlam, 9:30PM

The Twig Book Shop, Barbara Ras and Kathy Fagan Poetry Reading, 6PM

Weslaco

Mayor Joe V. Sanchez Public Library, The Storybook Garden hosts award-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes to talk about her books, including her latest, GHOST BOYS, 6:30PM

Wednesday, May 23:

Austin
BookPeople, JOHN BRANCH speaking & signing The Last Cowboys (In Conversation with: Kevin Robbins), 7PM

Malvern Books, An Evening with David Abel & Cathy Eisenhower, 7PM

Boerne
Herff-Rozelle Farm, German author Barbara Ortwein will discuss At Journey's End: Texas Forever, the final book in her Texas Saga Trilogy, 10:30AM

Dallas

B&N - Lincoln Park, The Poppy War book signing with R.F. Kuang, 7PM

The Wild Detectives, Join local writers and activists for a conversation about the #TimesUp movement as they consider where race does or not fit into it (moderated by Sanderia Faye, author of Mourner’s Bench), 7:30PM

Houston

Avant Garden, Write About Now Poetry Slam, 7:30PM

Renee's on the Bayou, Poetic Nights on the Bayou featuring Kyle Blue, 7PM

St. Paul’s United Methodist Church, Brazos Bookstore presents Michael Ondaatje, reading from his book WARLIGHT, 7PM [ticketed event]

San Antonio
San Antonio Country Club, Lewis Fisher will join the San Antonio Bibilophiles Club to discuss his newest book, Maverick: The American Name That Became a Legend, 10:30AM

The Twig Book Shop, Katherine Center reading and signing How to Walk Away, 5PM

Thursday, May 24:

Austin

Austin Central Library, Pulitzer Prize-winner Jack E. Davis will read from and discuss The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, with local writer Juli Berwald (author of Spineless), 7PM

BookPeople, KATHERINE CENTER speaking & signing How to Walk Away, 7PM

Dallas

Deep Vellum Books, Nonfiction Authors Association DFW Monthly Meetup, 7PM

Interabang Books, Amy Poeppel reading and signing LIMELIGHT, 7PM

The Wild Detectives, Ijeoma Oluo discussing and signing So You Want to Talk about Race, 7:30PM

Fort Worth
The Fort Worth Club, The World Affairs Council of DFW hosts Bret Baier discussing and signing Three Days in Moscow: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of the Soviet Empire, 11:30AM

Houston

B&N - Vanderbilt Square, In My Hands: Compelling Stories from a Surgeon and His Patients Fighting Cancer book signing with Steven A. Curley, 12PM

Brazos Bookstore, Dickson Lam reading and signing PAPER SONS, 7PM

Katy Budget Books, Summer Slam for teens and kids, 6PM

Palmer Memorial Episcopal Church, Brazos Bookstore presents Rachel Kushner reading from her new book THE MARS ROOM, 7:30PM

River Oaks Bookstore, Michael Eason discussing and signing Wildflowers of Texas, 5PM

San Antonio

B&N - San Pedro, Reaper: Ghost Target book signing with Nicholas Irving, 7PM

Palo Alto College, San Antonio’s Literary History: A Plática with Tomás Ybarra-Frausto and Carmen Tafolla, 6:30PM

Sugar Land

B&N - First Colony, Story time with local author Maria Ashworth, 10AM

Friday, May 25:

Austin

BookPeople, ANNE KEENE speaking & signing The Cloudbuster Nine, 7PM

Malvern Books, I Scream Social Reading & Open Mic featuring Claudia Delfina Cardona, Nia Brookins, and Maggie Ilersich, 7PM

Dallas

South Dallas Cultural Center, Former Deputy Mayor Pro Tem Diane Ragsdale will moderate a panel with Rev. Dr. Leroy Haynes, Jr., Marvin Crenshaw, Skip Shockley, Sister Sonceria Messiah, and B.L. Smith, all members of the original Dallas and Denton Panthers, along with Ernest McMillan, founder of the Dallas chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, to discuss The Black Panther Party in a City Near You, 7PM

Houston

Kaboom Books, Poetry of the Imagination: A Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Reading, 7PM

Library Coffee and Wine House, Xone Poetry presents Rhythmz II: Spring 'n da Groove, 7PM

Saturday, May 26:

Austin

Half Price Books - N. Lamar, local author Ned Wolf will sell and sign his fantasy books from The Nandia Trilogy, 1PM

Malvern Books, book launch for Amanda Johnston's Another Way to Say Enter (with Lisa L. Moore), 7PM

Cleburne

The Published Page Bookshop, Diane Schallen discussing and signing Explore Medieval Times, 12PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Connie Simpson discussing and signing THE NANNY CONNIE WAY, 7PM

Latino Cultural Center, Dave Gutierrez will be giving a lecture on his critically acclaimed book Patriots from the Barrio with a book signing to follow, 2PM

El Paso

B&N - Sunland Park, Richard Ochoa signing Unstoppable, 1PM

Galveston

Galveston Bookshop, Jim Sanderson signing La Mordida, 2PM

Houston

Brasil, Houston VIP Slam and workshop featuring Jonathan Mendoza, 7PM

Guava Lamp, heART & SOUL presents Volume 104: Hear Him, 5PM

Half Price Books - Clear Lake, Local Author Saturdays: Meet local Indie authors and pick up their latest release, while supplies last

Murder By the Book, Mark Oshiro will sign and discuss Anger Is A Gift, and Caleb Roehrig will sign and discuss White Rabbit, 4:30PM

River Oaks Bookstore, poetry and art with Mong-Lan, 3PM

Katy

Cinco Ranch Branch Library, Ancient Empires series: Islamic Art and Architecture with former architecture professor Sheba Akhtar, author of Of Color and Form, 1PM

San Antonio

B&N - San Pedro, Ned Wolf signing Nandia's Children, 4PM

Imagine Books & Records, Dali's Mustache: Poetry and Music, 8PM

The Twig Book Shop, Kevin Greenblat signing Plant Life of Western Texas, 11AM

Tyler

B&N, The Truck That Could Not Move book signing with Rosemarie Swadley Davis, 2PM

Sunday, May 27:

Austin

Malvern Books, Readings from Donna M. Johnson’s Personal Narrative Workshop, 4PM

Dallas

Half Price Books - The Mother Ship, local author Leonard Critcher will sell and sign his book Welcome to the Metroplex!, a complete guide to DFW, 1PM

Houston

Brazos Bookstore, Public Poetry presents poets Erica Nichol and RJ Wright, 5PM

THE WIDOW'S WATCHER

ELIZA MAXWELL

Genre: Literary Fiction/Gothic
Publisher: Lake Union Press

Date of Publication: March 29, 2018

Number of Pages: 286

Scroll down for the giveaway!

From Eliza Maxwell, the bestselling author of The Unremembered Girl, comes a gripping novel about the mysteries that haunt us and the twists of fate that can unravel them…

Living in the shadow of a decades-old crime that stole his children from him, reclusive Lars Jorgensen is an unlikely savior. But when a stranger walks onto the ice of a frozen Minnesota lake, her intentions are brutally clear, and the old man isn’t about to let her follow through.

Jenna Shaw didn’t ask for Lars’s help, nor does she want it. After he pulls her from the brink, however, Jenna finds her desire to give up challenged by their unlikely friendship. In Jenna, Lars recognizes his last chance for redemption. And in her quest to solve the mysteries of Lars’s past and bring him closure, Jenna may find the way out of her own darkness.

But the truth that waits threatens to shatter it all. When secrets are surrendered and lies are laid bare, Jenna and Lars may find that accepting the past isn’t their greatest challenge. Can they afford the heartbreaking price of forgiveness?

PRAISE FOR THE WIDOW'S WATCHER:

"There was a moment I had to tell myself that this is just a book..."

-- Goodreads reviewer

"A well-paced story of healing, forgiveness and tragedy, with enough unexpected twists to keep readers guessing.”

-- Amber Cowie, author of Rapid Falls

CLICK TO PURCHASE

║ AMAZON║ MURDER BY THE BOOK║

║ BARNES AND NOBLE (Print Only) ║

WHEN SILENCE REIGNS SUPREME

Guest Post by Eliza Maxwell

At some unknown point last year, the stereo in my car gave up and died.

In the midst of the chaos my children inherently trail in their wake, it nearly went unnoticed. Like many parents, I spend my days navigating a fluid list of things that need attention. They range from, “Buy groceries or it’ll be broken tortilla chips from the bottom of the bag and gum for dinner again,” to the really important things like, “Purge kids’ rooms of junk while they’re not home and can’t spear me on the twin javelins of betrayal and their unholy attachment to all things plastic.”

Getting the car radio fixed couldn’t compete and fell into the abyss of all things “low priority”, along with other stuff I’m never going to do and won’t admit. Things like organizing the sock drawer based on what gives me joy—each pair matched, gently rolled, and tucked into designated cubicles, serial killer style.

To my amazement, and without intention, that broken radio opened the door for something magical to happen.

At least during the hours the kids were in school, silence reigned supreme.

The noise was pushed back and in the space left behind my mind wandered wherever the hell it felt like wandering. And in the middle of that new-found peace, one scene bloomed, whole and complete.

Just one, but it was the one. The one I couldn’t let go of. The one that demanded a frantic search for the rest of the story to frame it. The one that brought me to ugly tears in the middle of traffic. The one that, after umpteen drafts and edits and proofreads, still brings me to tears.

Those tears, of joy and grief and regret and hopefulness, all mixed up and swirling together, became the touchstone of a new novel.

The Widow’s Watcher releases on May 29, 2018, and I cannot wait! I have zero hesitation admitting it’s my favorite of the books I’ve written so far.

I’m not going to tell you which scene came first, but if you read the book, I trust you’ll have a pretty good guess.

CHECK OUT THE TRAILER!

Eliza Maxwell lives in Texas with her ever-patient husband and two kids. She's an artist and writer, an introvert and a British cop drama addict. She loves nothing more than to hear from readers.

Twitter║ Facebook

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Three Winners! 1ST PRIZE: Signed Copy + $25 Amazon Gift Card
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MAY 22-31, 2018
(U.S. Only)

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VISIT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:

5/22/18	Book Trailer	StoreyBook Reviews
5/22/18	Review	The Librarian Talks
5/23/18	Guest Post	Texas Book Lover
5/24/18	Review	#Bookish
5/24/18	Notable Quotable	The Page Unbound
5/25/18	Review	That's What She's Reading
5/25/18	Author Interview	Dressed to Read
5/26/18	Review	Tangled in Text
5/26/18	Notable Quotable	Missus Gonzo
5/27/18	Deleted Scene	Books and Broomsticks
5/28/18	Review	The Clueless Gent
5/28/18	Excerpt	Story Schmoozing Book Reviews
5/29/18	Top Five List	Nerd Narration
5/30/18	Review	Forgotten Winds
5/31/18	BONUS Review	Hall Ways Blog

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I reviewedA People's History of the Vampire Uprising: A Novel (Mulholland Books) by San Antonio attorney Raymond A. Villareal for Lone Star Literary Life. I had high hopes for this one, y'all, but those hopes were dashed.

HORROR
Raymond A. Villareal
A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising: A Novel
Mulholland Books
Hardcover, 978-1-3165-6168-6 (also available as an e-book and audio book), 432 pgs., $27.00
June 5, 2018

“These pages are compiled for everyone: those who lived through this time, and those who did not survive. I hope … they give you meaningful perspective.” (signature redacted)

A body exhibiting the sort of intradermal contusions affiliated with hemophilia, but no other signs of trauma, is discovered outside Nogales, Arizona. When the state crime lab reports unidentifiable substances in a hair sample from the body, the town coroner, fearing something Ebola-like, reports the curious findings to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). When Dr. Lauren Scott, a research physician with the CDC, arrives in Nogales, the first body is gone but another has been found with identical symptoms. Dr. Scott discovers two tiny puncture wounds in the neck of this second body.

What happened to the first body, you ask? It got up and walked out.

A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising: A Novel, the first book from San Antonio attorney Raymond A. Villareal, is apocalyptic dystopia, a very popular genre. Unfortunately, it reads like a mashup of “The Walking Dead,” “True Blood,” and The Da Vinci Code.

Villareal begins with a decent concept. The vamps in Villareal’s world are called “Gloamings,” presumably because twilight is the time of day when it’s safe for them to emerge. They are carriers of what the government calls the Nogales organic blood illness (NOBI). The Gloamings possess all of the classic vampire traits—speed, strength, hypnotic abilities. The author does an admirable job of relating current societal ills to the vampires: fake news, social media, polarized politics, and conspiracy theories. Law enforcement is accused of unnecessary force. Lobbyists appear. An equal-rights bill is passed. Certain religious denominations excommunicate members who become Gloamings, but the Buddhists are cool with it.

Consider: Should vampires, with their enhanced physical attributes, be allowed into the Olympics? Would their lifespans make them the ultimate astronauts? Do they qualify as a protected class under the Family and Medical Leave Act or the American with Disabilities Act? Naturally, celebrities (Taylor Swift!), tech billionaires, and hedge fund managers “re-create” intentionally. Pursuits take place in Texas locales like Marfa and Houston, though with little local detail to reward the reader’s interest.

Though wildly imaginative, A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising is enamored of its own cleverness, including footnotes and appendices, an affectation for which I blame David Foster Wallace. Clumsy execution hampers Villareal’s creativity. The dialogue is mundane and odd word choices and nonsensical similes are distracting. Vampire Patient Zero “moves like a cat” while “lurching” toward Dr. Scott. The handcuffs snap off “like wet paper.”

A People’s History of the Vampire Uprising failed to hold my attention. The story is related in a compilation of various newspaper reports, magazine articles, blog posts, congressional testimony, interrogation transcripts, and interviews of eyewitnesses. Because the story is told in bits and pieces, the narrative arc is nonexistent. On the other hand, the obstructed narrative flow does mimic the process by which information is disseminated, and images created, in the twenty-first century. The staccato style also precludes any emotional investment in Villareal’s characters. I was briefly cheered when Buffy (the Vampire Slayer) appeared but, fierce and entertaining as she is, she can’t rescue the story alone.

If you like horror, and vampires in particular, I recommend In the Valley of the Sun (Skyhorse Publishing, 2017) by Andy Davidson. The anonymous compiler of this history, whose note began this review, hopes in vain.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

Bookish goings-on in Texas for the week of May 28-June 3, 2018:

Special Events:
Elena Gallego Rare Books Pop-up Shop, San Antonio, May 19-June 3

Ongoing Exhibits:

Routine Fables, Houston, May 25-July 29

Monday, May 28:

Dallas

The Wild Detectives, Carlos Velázquez, el “enfant terrible” de las letras mexicanas, en la presentación de su libro de relatos, La efeba salvaje, 7:30PM

San Antonio

Dead Tree Books, Memorial Day Poetry, 11AM

Tuesday, May 29:

Austin

Central Presbyterian Church, MICHAEL POLLAN speaking and signing How to Change Your Mind, 7PM [ticketed event]

Spiderhouse Ballroom, Austin Poetry Slam featuring the Dallas Poetry Slam, 7PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Stephanie Tornatore & Adam Bannon present HEALTHY MEAL PREP, 7PM

El Paso
The Black Orchid Lounge, The Barbed Wire Open Mic Series, 8PM

North Richland Hills

North Richland Hills Library, unique book event with the authors/photographer of the book Behind the Texas Badge: Learn more about the North Richland Hills police officers and other local officers in the book during a meet and greet and book signing, 6:30PM [registration required]

San Antonio

The Mix, PuroSlam with DJ Donnie Dee, 9:30PM

Wednesday, May 30:

Austin
BookPeople, JOE CRESPINO speaking & signing ATTICUS FINCH, THE BIOGRAPHY, 7PM

LBJ Library, a conversation with author and journalist Jake Tapper, speaking in conversation with Mark K. Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, about his debut political thriller, The Hellfire Club, 6PM [a Friends event]

Terrazas Branch Library, Aural Literature featuring Chicon Street Poets, 7:30PM

Dallas

Dallas Museum of Art, Arts & Letters Live hosts French literature professor, fashion historian, and acclaimed author Dr. Caroline Weber discussing her newest book, Proust’s Duchess: How Three Celebrated Women Captured the Imagination of Fin de Siecle Paris, 7:30PM

Frisco
B&N - Stonebriar, Reign the Earth (The Elementae Series #1) book signing with A. C. Gaughen, and The Universe Is Expanding and So Am I book signing with Carolyn Mackler, 7PM

Houston

Avant Garden, Write About Now Poetry Slam, 7:30PM

Ballroom at Bayou Place, Brazos Bookstore and the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston present James Clapper, speaking about his new book FACTS AND FEARS: HARD TRUTHS FROM A LIFE IN INTELLIGENCE, 7:30PM

Thursday, May 31:

Austin

BookPeople, JULIA HEABERLIN speaking & signing Paper Ghosts, 7PM

Dallas

Parish Episcopal School- Midway Campus, the World Affairs Council of DFW hosts former national security director James Clapper discussing and signing Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, 7PM

Houston

Brazos Bookstore, Poetry: Robin Reagler and Martha Serpas, 7PM

Poison Girl Bar, Poison Pen Reading Series featuring Karyna McGlynn, Analicia Sotelo & Nancy Reddy, 8:30PM

Plano
The Hope Center, Critical Conversations Speaker Series: Michele Rigby Assad, author of Breaking Cover: My Secret Life in the CIA and What It Taught Me About What’s Worth Fighting For, 7PM

San Antonio

Carmens De La Calle Café, Jazz & Poetry w/Purpose, 7:30PM

The Twig Book Shop, poet David Eye reading and signing Seed, 5PM

Sugar Land

B&N - First Colony, Story time with local author Maria Ashworth, 10AM

Tyler
Half Price Books, local author Eric Duvall will sell and sign his war novel 100% Faith, 0% Fear, 4PM

Friday, June 1:

Austin

BookPeople, LAIRD BARRON speaking & signing Blood Standard, 7PM

Malvern Books, celebrate the launch of Take To The Territory, Jim Trainer’s fourth collection of poetry and prose, 7PM

Paramount Theatre, Rob Lowe presents Stories I Only Tell My Friends, his one-man show inspired by the success of his two New York Times bestselling memoirs, Stories I Only Tell My Friends and Love Life, 8PM [VIP tickets include a signed copy of the book]

Canyon
Canyon Area Library, book release party for FLASH: THE STORY OF ME and TAZ & THE BIG FLAPPY THING, 10AM

Dallas

Clarence Muse Cafe Theatre, Poets 'n Jazz #5 with ZEMILL and VERB KULTURE, 9PM

Houston

Brazos Bookstore, Poetry: Nancy Reddy reading from ACADIANA & Lauren Berry reading from THE LIFTING DRESS, 7PM

Inprint House, First Friday Poetry Reading Series presents Saba Husain, 8:30PM

Murder By the Book, Aaron Mahnke will sign and discuss The World of Lore: Wicked Mortals, 6:30PM

Saturday, June 2:

Austin

BookPeople, BILL KILDAY speaking & signing Never Lost Again (followed by a scavenger hunt), 2PM

BookPeople, JENNIFER DONALDSON speaking & signing Lies You Never Told Me, 6PM

Half Price Books - N. Lamar, local author Christy Decker will sell and sign her novel Final 42, 1PM

Half Price Books - S. Lamar, local author Diane Metzger will sell and sign her historical novel Willow Bend: Welcoming Our Soldiers Home, 1PM

Canyon

Burrowing Owl Bookstore, Kathie Campbell Greer signing Sliding for Home, 11AM

Dallas

Clarence Muse Cafe Theatre, Poets 'n Jazz #5 with ZEMILL and VERB KULTURE, 9PM

Interabang Books, Clotilde Dusoulier discussing and signing TASTING PARIS, 7PM

El Paso

Memorial Park Public Library, Tumblewords Project workshop: "The Call You Ecstasy" with Sandra Torrez, 12:45PM

Houston

Half Price Books - North Oaks, Local Author Saturdays: Meet local Indie authors and pick up their latest release, while supplies last

Katy Budget Books, Michele Mathews signs Mommy Business, a humorous guide to taking back control of your life, your children, and your marriage; and The 24th Life, a paranormal romance, 2PM

Murder By the Book, Laird Barron will sign and discuss Blood Standard, 4:30PM

Writespace, Workshop: "Writing from your Life" with Cameron Dezen Hammon, 9:30AM

Writespace, Workshop: "How to Write Great Titles" with Dr. Cynthia Childress, 4PM

Nacogdoches

Nacogdoches Public Library, Texas Writers' League workshop: The Craft + Business of Writing with WLT: Nacogdoches Edition featuring Michael Noll and Becka Oliver, 3PM

San Antonio

Dead Tree Books, L.B. Ellis reading and signing Paris, 2PM

Hotel Emma, Ven a Comer: multi-course dinner featuring modern interpretations of food and spirits from UTSA’s historic Mexican Cookbook Collection, 5:30PM

The Twig Book Shop, Ginny Brown signing Chasing the Perfect Moment, 11AM

Sugar Land
B&N - First Colony, Sonya Hurst signing Prayers that Open the Portals of Heaven, 1PM

Tyler
B&N, Author signing of The Eyes of the Doe and Mademoiselle Renoir a Paris by Patricia Taylor Wells, 1PM

Sunday, June 3:

Austin

BookPeople, LEWIS SMITH speaking & signing The Gnostic Library, 2PM

Dallas

Deep Vellum Books, Trey Moody & Melissa Cundieff - Poetry Reading, 3PM

The Foundry Club, Writing Workshops Dallas seminar: "How to Find Your Plot: A Storytelling Seminar" with J.R. Forasteros, 3PM

Half Price Books - The Mother Ship, local author Lawrence Hodgeswill sell and sign his inspirational memoir Raised From the Dead, and local author Thomas Fletcher Grooms will sell and sign his business book Market Intelligence: The Original Work, 1PM

The Wild Detectives, Backyard Story Night: Women Galore Edition, 7PM

Houston

Blue Willow Bookshop, Samuel Miller, formerly of the band Paradise Fears, will discuss and sign his debut novel A LITE TOO BRIGHT, 2PM

Mansfield
Half Price Books, Local Author Sundays: Meet local Indie authors and pick up their latest release, while supplies last

San Antonio
The Twig Book Shop, Phil West signing I Believe That We Will Win: The Path to a US Men's World Cup Victory, 12PM

Patriotism means loving your country enough to gaze at it with eyes wide open, to appreciate and celebrate the good, and to examine that which must be improved with honesty and introspection. Then you get to work to fix what is broken, especially in times like these. Most importantly, vote. Call your representatives, write to them, attend the local meetings of those who still have them, march, sit-in, protest. It's our responsibility to stand against those who run roughshod over the Constitution and dishonor our veterans daily by attempting to destroy what our veterans fought to save.

It is Memorial Day here in the United States of America. Today we remember our fallen and their families. We remember that our beloved country exists today thanks to the convictions and bravery of men and women willing to fight to the last for what should be universal truths.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed - Declaration of Independence

In keeping with the literary theme of this blog, I offer you an essay by Lt. General William James Lennox, Jr., MA and PhD in Literature from Princeton University and fifty-sixth Superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, on teaching literature and poetry to soldiers.

Romance and Reality
By Lt. Gen. William James Lennox Jr.

As I write this, American soldiers serve in harm's way in places such as Mosul, Fallujah, and Jalalabad. For young leaders in today's Army, the war on terror constitutes a difficult and sometimes tragic reality.

Meanwhile, in the small classrooms of West Point, young cadets consider war through the eyes of Rudyard Kipling, Carl Sandburg, and John McCrae. During his or her plebe year, every West Point cadet takes a semester of English literature, reading and discussing poetry from Ovid to Owen, Spenser to Springsteen ("Thunder Road" provides a catalogue of poetic devices). Cadets must also recite poems from memory, a challenge that many graduates recall years later as one of their toughest hurdles.

Like warfare, poetry can result from the collision between romance and reality, as the ironic title of Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" memorably observes. So too, our new cadets arrive full of romantic idealism, then spend the next forty-seven months at the Academy learning the pragmatic realities of discipline, integrity, and leadership.

Why, in an age of increasingly technical and complex warfare, would America's future combat leaders spend sixteen weeks studying the likes of simile, irony, rhyme, and meter?

Those who can't communicate can't lead. Poetry, because it describes reality with force and concision, provides an essential tool for effective communication. Like most colleges, West Point emphasizes both verbal and written communication skills, and our faculty evaluates cadets on their substance, style, organization, and correctness. In studying poetry, cadets gain a unique appreciation for the power of language. From alliteration to onomatopoeia, the poet's tools allow words to transcend the limitations of syntax. We may hear that transcendence in Shakespeare's imagery and Whitman's passion, but it is there as well in the closing cadence of MacArthur's farewell: "when I cross the river, my last conscious thoughts will be of the corps, and the corps, and the corps." We do not hold our cadets to this standard of stentorian elegance; we do, however, teach them to appreciate what makes this language different.

Second, poetry confronts cadets with new ideas that challenge their worldview. The West Point curriculum includes poetry, history, philosophy, politics, and law, because these subjects provide a universe of new ideas, different perspectives, competing values and conflicting emotions. In combat, our graduates face similar challenges: whether to fire at a sniper hiding in a mosque, or how to negotiate agreements between competing tribal leaders. Schoolbook solutions to these problems do not exist; combat leaders must rely on their own morality, their own creativity, their own wits. In teaching cadets poetry, we teach them not what to think, but how to think.

Finally, poetry gives our cadets a new and vital way to see the world, a world that many of my generation could not have imagined. When I entered West Point in the summer of 1967, Academy graduates were waging a very Cold War in central Europe and a very hot war in the jungles of Southeast Asia. In the thirty-eight years since, countless changes, some magnificent and some tragic, have shaped a very different future for my grandson.

Often, these tectonic shifts in history and society resist clear exposition, particularly when these shifts involve armed conflict. Louis Simpson noted this elusiveness when he wrote:

To a foot soldier, war is almost entirely physical. That is why some men, when they think about war, fall silent. Language seems to falsify physical life and to betray those who have experienced it absolutely—the dead.

Since the Iliad, poetry has allowed its writers to capture wars chaos and horror with a power that other artists lacked. One can, for example, read a hundred accounts of the Crimean War, but none of them will convey its pointless barbarity like Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade." Those few stanzas convey the romance and reality of warfare more clearly than any other medium.

We may not produce a poet laureate at the United States Military Academy. If, however, we develop graduates who can communicate clearly, think critically, and appreciate the world through different perspectives, we will provide the Army and the nation with better leaders.

Originally Published: March 1, 2006, Poetry Magazine

I reviewedThe Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II (Texas Tech University Press), edited by Aliza Wong, for Lone Star Literary Life. "The importance of witnessing, the necessity of not looking away, cannot be overstated."

HISTORY
Edited by Aliza S. Wong, with foreword by Ron Milam, and photography by Mark Umstot
The Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II

Texas Tech University Press
Hardcover, 978-1-6828-3024-6, 160 pgs., $29.95
December 15, 2017

During a trip to Israel in May 2015, I wept my way through Yad Vashem: World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem. Yad Vashem (in Hebrew: “a monument and a name”) is the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, a 44.5-acre complex consisting of the Holocaust History Museum, the Children’s Memorial, the Hall of Remembrance, the Museum of Holocaust Art, sculptures, the Valley of the Communities, a synagogue, a research institute with archives, a library, a publishing house, and the International School/Institute for Holocaust Studies. You enter the Children’s Memorial in pitch darkness, then emerge into a large room filled with pinpricks of light like stars in the night sky. Each star represents a dead child.

On December 11, 1941, Nazi Germany declared war against the United States. Before World War II finally ended on September 2, 1945, the U.S. would engage in “total war” against the Axis powers of Japan, Germany, and Italy, and almost sixty million people would die. Among those dead would be more than six million Jews, Roma and Sinti, homosexuals, communists, political prisoners, and “common” criminals, murdered by the Third Reich in slave-labor and concentration camps.

More than ten million American men were inducted into the military. Of these veterans, the Texas Holocaust and Genocide Commission’s Texas Liberator Project has identified, as of the date of publication of this book, more than three hundred men who were members of the five Texas military units that took part in the liberation of forty-three different death camps. Among the camps liberated by Americans, including my grandfather John Merritt, were Buchenwald, Dora-Mittelbau, Mauthausen, and Landsberg, one of eleven subcamps of Dachau.

The Texas Liberators: Veteran Narratives from World War II is edited by Dr. Aliza S. Wong, associate professor of history at Texas Tech University; Dr. Ron Milam, associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, penned the foreword; Lubbock photographer Mark Umstot took the veterans’ portraits. Together these three have created a somberly beautiful coffee-table volume which collects the eyewitness testimony of twenty-one Texas servicemen who helped liberate Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II.

The debate about how much the U.S. government knew about Germany’s plans to exterminate European Jews continues, though The New York Times reported on the Chelmno camp as early as July 1942. Most of the veterans interviewed for The Texas Liberators did not know what to expect, and some would break into tears these many decades later when recounting their memories.

Umstot’s portraits, some in extreme close-up, are profoundly touching and eerily personal. The black-and-white photographs on heavy, glossy stock, some accompanied by the veterans’ military portraits, document dignity in each wrinkle, and provoke wonder at the twinkle in eyes that have witnessed the worst we can do to each other— “bodies stacked like cordwood … laid out like a parking lot.”

The importance of witnessing, the necessity of not looking away, cannot be overstated. Thank you for your service.

To learn more please visit www.texasliberators.org.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

Bookish goings-on in Texas for the week of June 4-10, 2018:

Special Events:
West Texas Writers' Academy, Canyon, June 4-8

Children's Art & Literature Festival, Abilene, June 7-9

North Texas Council of English Language Arts Conference, Hurst, June 8

Texas Folklife Festival, San Antonio, June 8-10

Fresh Fiction's Boas & Tiaras 2018, Allen, June 9

Wimberley Book Festival, June 9

Dallas-Forth Worth Writers Conference, Hurst, June 9-10

Ongoing Exhibits:

Routine Fables, Houston, May 25-July 29

Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books, Abilene, June 7-September 30

Monday, June 4:

Austin
BookPeople, MADELINE MILLER speaking & signing Circe, 7PM [ticketed event]

Dallas

Interabang Books, Katherine Reynolds Lewis discussing and signing THE GOOD NEWS ABOUT BAD BEHAVIOR, 7PM

Park Cities Baptist Church, New York Times bestselling author Karen Kingsbury discussing and signing her new book, To the Moon and Back, 7PM

Frisco
B&N - Stonebriar, A Lite Too Bright book signing with Sam Miller, 7PM

Houston
Brazos Bookstore, Greg Upah discussing and signing SALES TALKS, 7PM

San Antonio

Urban 15, HIDDEN HISTORIES: “EL OJO DEL AGUA: SACRED SPRINGS, SACRED STORIES, 7PM

South Padre Island
Paragraphs on Padre, Meet the Author Series at Paragraphs: Dr. Edward Dramberger discussing and signing The Destination Diaries, 1PM

Tuesday, June 5:

Austin

BookPeople, CHAD SARNO speaking & signing The Wicked Healthy Cookbook, 7PM

Hill's Cafe, Hearsay Poetry Night, 8PM

The North Door, One Page Salon with the Writers' League of Texas featuring Meg Gardiner, Charlotte Gullick, Chaitali Sen, and Christina Soontornvat, 7:30PM

Spiderhouse Ballroom, Austin Poetry Slam: New Shit Slam featuring the APS Regional Slam Team, 7PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Kevin Powers reading and signing A SHOUT IN THE RUINS, 7PM

Klyde Warren Park, Locals Only Book Club: discussion of Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget with author Sarah Hepola, 6PM

Warwick Melrose Hotel, the World Affairs Council of DFW hosting "A New Agenda & Bipartisanship for the Americas & the U.S." with Christopher Sabatini, author of The U.S. and Latin America: A Path Forward, and Ambassador Marc Grossman (followed by a book signing), 7PM

El Paso
Literarity Book Shop, Prize-Winning Journalist Alfredo Corchado signs Homelands, 5PM

Houston
Brazos Bookstore, Houston Poets Read: ECHOES OF THE CORDILLERA, 6:30PM

San Antonio

The Mix, PuroSlam with DJ Donnie Dee, 9:30PM

The Twig Book Shop, Emily Ann Peterson reading from and signing Bare Naked Bravery, 5PM

Wednesday, June 6:

Austin
BookPeople, JIM BUTCHER speaking & signing Brief Cases, 7PM

Bullock Museum, High Noon Talks: Lora-Marie Bernard discussing The Counterfeit Prince of Old Texas, 12PM

Malvern Books, Rachel Z. Arndt reading and signing her essay collection, Beyond Measure, 7PM

Boerne
Patrick Heath Public Library, A History of Texas Jazz with author Dave Oliphant, 6PM

Dallas

The Wild Detectives, Inner Moonlight: Fatima-Ayan Malika Hirsi and courtney marie will present their forthcoming poetry double-chapbook, Moon Woman / don’t get your hopes up, 7:30PM

Houston

Avant Garden, Write About Now Poetry Slam, 7:30PM

Brazos Bookstore, Kevin Powers reading and signing A SHOUT IN THE RUINS, 7PM

San Antonio

The Twig Book Shop, Dixie Lee Evatt and Sue Meredith Cleveland reading and signing Shrouded, 5PM

Thursday, June 7:

Abilene
Paramount Theatre, Artist Talk with children's book illustrator Oliver Jeffers, 6:30PM

Austin

BookPeople, MICHELLE SMITH speaking & signing The Whole Smiths Good Food Cookbook, 7PM

BookWoman, Bare Naked Bravery: Reading and Live Music with Emily Ann Peterson, 7PM

ESB-MACC, Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez story telling celebrating 1000 stories collected from WWII Veterans and their families, 5:30PM

Malvern Books, An Evening with poets Elizabeth Threadgill, Melissa Cundieff, and Roger Jones, 7PM

Cleburne

Cleburne Public Library, The Friends of the Cleburne Public Library will host mystery and true crime author Kathryn Casey, who will discuss and sign copies of her latest book In Plain Sight, detailing the Kaufman County prosecutor murders, ?

Dallas

Interabang Books, Amber Royer reading and signing FREE CHOCOLATE, 7PM

The Wild Detectives, Kristen Martin signing Be Your Own #Goals, 6PM

Denton
Spiderweb HQ, Read Between the Lines zine workshop with Spiderweb Salon, 7PM

Houston

Blue Willow Bookshop, Boldly Bookish tour: Authors Tara Altebrando, Jeff Giles, Carolyn Mackler, and Sarah Tolcser will appear and talk about their books, 7PM

Brazos Bookstore, David Bowles discussing and signing FEATHERED SERPENT, DARK HEART OF THE SKY, 7PM

San Antonio

B&N - San Pedro, Book Signing: A People's History of the Vampire Uprising by Raymond A. Villareal, 7PM

St. Andrews Methodist Church, Writers' League of Texas presents "The Craft + Business of Writing" with Michael Noll and Becka Oliver, 7PM

Sugar Land

B&N - First Colony, Story time with local author Maria Ashworth, 10AM

Friday, June 8:

Abilene
National Center for Children's Illustrated Literature, an evening with celebrated artist Oliver Jeffers at the NCCIL Gallery featuring his art from "15 Years of Picturing Books," 6:30PM

Austin

BookPeople, KEVIN POWERS speaking & signing A Shout in the Ruins, 7PM

Malvern Books, a celebratory reading by the writers of S. Kirk Walsh’s nine-month fiction workshop, 7PM

Dallas

Deep Vellum Books, David Eye: "Seed" Poetry Reading, 7PM

Interabang Books, poet Aaron Brown reading from and signing ACACIA ROAD, 7PM

Houston

Katy Budget Books, Discussion Group: Gender Bias in the Literary World, 7PM

Murder By the Book, Ruth Ware will sign and discuss The Death of Mrs. Westaway, and Christi Daugherty will sign and discuss The Echo Killing, 6:30PM

San Antonio

The Twig Book Shop, Trey Moody and Melissa Cundieff: Poetry Reading, 5PM

San Marcos
The Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, Premiere paddler and Texas Canoe Racing Hall of Famer Bob Spain will be signing Bob Spain's Canoeing Guide and Favorite Texas Paddling Trails following check-in for the 56th Annual Texas Water Safari, 6PM

Saturday, June 9:

Austin

Austin Book Arts Center, Open House and Closing Party for Ex Libris, 5PM

BookPeople, LEVIS KELTNER speaking & signing Into That Good Night, 2PM

BookPeople, STEPHANIE GARBER speaking & signing Legendary (In Conversation with author Amy Tintera), 6PM

Cleburne
The Published Page Bookshop, local graphic novel/comic author Shane Morrison will be signing his debut work, Beast King, 12PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Join author and filmmaker Jared Brock for a screening of a 39-minute documentary film based on his new book, THE ROAD TO DAWN: JOSIAH HENSON AND THE STORY THAT SPARKED THE CIVIL WAR, 7PM

El Paso

Memorial Park Public Library, Tumblewords Project workshop: "Point of View: How pointy is that?" with Raquel Mejía, 12:45PM

Houston

Blue Willow Bookshop, Jennifer Zeynab Joukhadar will discuss and sign her novel THE MAP OF SALT AND STARS, 1PM

Blue Willow Bookshop, celebrate the launch of Preston Norton's new novel NEANDERTHAL OPENS THE DOOR TO THE UNIVERSE, 4PM

Half Price Books - Clear Lake, Local Author Saturdays: Meet local Indie authors and pick up their latest release, while supplies last

Katy Budget Books, Kristen Martin signing Be Your Own #Goals, 2PM

MECA, Meta-Four Houston at Bayou City Poetry Group Slam, 7PM

Murder By the Book, Raymond Villareal will sign and discuss A People's History of the Vampire Uprising, 1PM

Murder By the Book, Karen Hanson Stuyck will sign and discuss A Deadly Courtship, 4:30PM

Writespace, Workshop: "The Art of Memoir" with Jessica Wilbanks, 1PM

Lubbock

B&N, The Simple Little Rule: The Golden Rule Rediscovered book signing with Mike Ellerkamp, 1:30PM

Plano

B&N - Creekwalk Village, local Olympian Johnny Quinn signing Push: Breaking Through The Barriers, 12PM

San Antonio

San Antonio Central Library, Kate Dawson, journalism professor at UT Austin, will discuss her true crime book, Death in the Air, 2PM

The Twig Book Shop, E.R. Bills signing Texas Far & Wide, 11AM

South Padre Island
Paragraphs on Padre, Meet the Author Series at Paragraphs: Book signing and conversation with author Mario E. Martinez, 1PM

Southlake
B&N - Town Square, Isabella Allen signing Through the Barbed Wire, 2PM

Tyler

B&N, Betraying Eyes book signing with Dee Wiggins, 1PM

Webster
B&N, Gulf Coast Poets meeting featuring Xach Blunt, 10:30AM

B&N, Meet the Author: Goretti Rerri signing My Box of Chocolates: How my child with autism learned to read, write and more, 1PM

Sunday, June 10:

Austin

Bass Concert Hall, Texas Performing Arts will present President Bill Clinton in a wide-ranging conversation as he discusses his forthcoming novel, The President is Missing, 7:30PM

BookPeople, GAIL HONEYMAN speaking & signing Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, 2PM

BookPeople, MARI ANDREW speaking & signing Am I There Yet?, 6PM

Malvern Books, Austin Writers Roulette presents "Never-Ending Tomorrow," 4PM

Dallas

B&N - Preston/Royal, Lakewood resident Sarah Secor-MacElroy signing You’ve Got This, Mama: A Mother’s Guide To Embracing The Chaos And Living An Empowered Life, 1PM

The Foundry Club, Writing Workshops Dallas seminar: Submitting to Journals & Magazines with Mag Gabbert, 3PM

Half Price Books - The Mother Ship, local author and illustrator Leon Robertson will sell and sign his book ARF & Soul, and local author Carole Fowkes will sell and sign books from her A Terrified Detective series, 1PM

San Antonio

Landa Library, An Afternoon With Texas Poet Laureate Carol Coffee Reposa, 3PM

The Twig Book Shop, Donna Bowman reading and signing Step Right Up: How Doc and Jim Key Taught the World About Kindness and Abraham Lincoln's Dueling Words, 12PM

Sugar Land
Half Price Books, local author Annie Loney will sell and sign her memoir, The Runs and Errors of a Baseball Mom's Life, 12PM

I I reviewed Katherine Center's new novel, How to Walk Away (St. Martin's Press), for Lone Star Literary Life! "As is Center’s specialty, How to Walk Away is sweet without the sap, an uplifting, feel-good tale without being predictable."

CONTEMPORARY FICTION
Katherine Center
How to Walk Away: A Novel

St. Martin’s Press
Hardcover, 978-1-2501-4906-0, (also available as an e-book, an audiobook, and on Audible), 320 pgs., $26.99
May 15, 2018

Margaret Jacobsen has her fingertips on the brass ring. She’s the beautiful, dutiful younger daughter of Anglo, upper-middle-class strivers in Austin, Texas, possessor of a brand-new MBA degree, favored candidate for a dream job, and certain her longtime boyfriend, Chip, is going to propose to her today. The only clouds in Margaret’s sky are an estranged older sister and an intense fear of flying, which is unfortunate because her phobia may limit their choice of honeymoon destinations and Chip is in the process of earning a pilot’s license.

Margaret was right; Chip did propose to her—after bullying her, in that jocular but insistent manner every woman on the planet will recognize, into the cockpit of the Cessna he had been training in and promptly crashing it, the plane cartwheeling before wedging in a ditch and catching fire. Chip escapes but Margaret must be cut out of the wreckage, requiring skin grafts, questioning whether she’ll walk again.

How to Walk Away: A Novel is the latest work of contemporary fiction from Houston’s Katherine Center. A graduate of the University of Houston’s renowned creative writing program, Center has published six novels. As is Center’s specialty, How to Walk Away is sweet without the sap, an uplifting, feel-good tale without being predictable.

Initially I thought Margaret’s wisecracking in the immediate aftermath of a spinal cord injury incongruous (“They say everybody loses time in the ICU. It’s basically Vegas in there, minus the showgirls and slot machines.”), but then I realized her first-person narrative is a fictional memoir, told from the remove of a decade. In the beginning, Margaret is a likeable enough character—if lacking in backbone—a generic yuppie aspiring to McMansion-hood, but she tells her story from the future as a transformed woman, a nuanced, sympathetic character.

The remainder of the cast have fewer dimensions than Margaret and don’t receive the same opportunities for growth, but are interesting and entertaining, nevertheless. Margaret’s father is understood to be active behind the scenes; her mother is almost insufferable (“[Mom] could always find the downside. And she had no filter, so once she found it, everybody else had to find it, too.”); Chip proves to be an asinine coward of breathtaking selfishness (“Do you know I escaped that crash without a scratch?” Chip said … “the plane is totaled. You … are totaled.”); Ian the Scottish physical therapist is appropriately brooding and mysterious; older sister Kit makes her energetic, grand re-entrance as a breath of fresh air.

Center’s writing is markedly emotionally astute—I suspect she was a psychoanalyst in a former life. Her families are authentically complicated, her characters’ interactions fraught with the disconnect between heart and mind. Center is particularly good at conveying shock and grief, employing a blend of sardonic nonchalance that should be patented. Center’s technique allows the devastation to sneak up on you. When you begin feeling too relaxed, understand that you’re about to get smacked with a doozy of a plot twist.

How to Walk Away is quickly and evenly paced. Subplots involving the estranged sister, a difficult mother, the hospital edition of office politics, and the possibility of new romance service the main plot line instead of distracting from it.

How to Walk Away is recommended reading for your summer vacation, whether you take it to the beach or your backyard hammock.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

Bookish goings-on in Texas for the week of June 11-17, 2018:

Special Events:
Southern Fried Poetry Slam, San Antonio, June 12-17

Greater Austin Comic Con, June 16-17

Ongoing Exhibits:

Routine Fables, Houston, May 25-July 29

Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books, Abilene, June 7-September 30

Monday, June 11:

Austin
BookPeople, C. ROBERT CARGILL speaking & signing We Are Where The Nightmares Go And Other Stories (Cargill will be joined by illustrator John Picacio, who created the cover art), 7PM

Dallas

Hotel Crescent Court, the World Affairs Council of DFW luncheon: Admiral Jim Stavridis USN (Ret.) discussing and signing Sea Power: The History and Geopolitics of the World’s Oceans, 12PM

Interabang Books, Andrew Sean Greer reading and signing LESS, 7PM

Houston

Blue Willow Bookshop, Gail Honeyman will discuss and sign her novel ELEANOR OLIPHANT IS COMPLETELY FINE, 7PM

Brazos Bookstore, Poetry: Leslie Contreras Schwartz reading from and signing NIGHTBLOOM & CENOTE, and Melissa Studdard reading from and signing I ATE THE COSMOS FOR BREAKFAST, 7PM

North Richland Hills
North Richlad Hills Public Library, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan reading and signing the paperback edition of her New York Times bestselling novel Manhattan Beach, 1:15PM [ticketed reception 12:15PM]

Plano
Haggard Library, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan reading and signing the paperback edition of her New York Times bestselling novel Manhattan Beach, 7PM [ticketed reception 6PM]

Tuesday, June 12:

Austin

BookPeople, AMBER RAE speaking & signing Choose Wonder Over Worry, 7PM

Home Slice Pizza, Austin Bat Cave's Story Department (inspired by NYC’s The Moth) presents "Comments Section" with Jared Walls, Daniel Oppenheimer, May Cobb, Michael Noll, and Jaime Rich diving into the hellscape of the comment section for your entertainment, 7:30PM

Malvern Books, launch of award-winning author Roger Thompson’s new book, No Word for Wilderness: Italy’s Grizzlies and the Race to Save the Rarest Bears on Earth, 7PM

Spiderhouse Ballroom, Austin Poetry Slam, 7PM

Cedar Hill
Zula Bryant Wylie Library, Dallas Area Writers Group meeting featuring author Ann Howells, 7PM

Dallas

Hall of State at Fair Park, Dallas Historical Society Brown Bag Lecture: Lora-Marie Bernard discussing The Counterfeit Prince of Old Texas, 12PM

Interabang Books, Alfredo Corchado discussing and signing HOMELANDS, 7PM

The Wild Detectives, Natalia Sylvester reading and signing Everyone Knows You Go Home, 7:30PM

El Paso
The Black Orchid Lounge, The Barbed Wire Open Mic Series, 8PM

Houston
B&N - Westheimer Crossing, Stranger: The Challenge of a Latino Immigrant in the Trump Era discussion and signing with Jorge Ramos, 6PM

Brazos Bookstore, Marisha Pessl reading and signing NEVERWORLD WAKE, 7PM

Fix Coffeebar, Poetry Fix Presents Weasel Patterson & Assorted Poets (Perhaps You), 6:30PM

Warehouse Live, The Moth Houston StorySLAM: "Endings," 7:30PM

Irving
South Irving Library, Girls Rock! YA Author Panel: an evening with authors Dhonielle Clayton, Zoraida Cordova, Justina Ireland, Julie Murphy, and Aminah Mae Safi as they discuss their latest books and answer audience questions (book sales and signing follow), 7PM

Lewisville

Half Price Books, Make Maden signing Tom Clancy Line of Sight, 7PM

San Antonio

The Mix, PuroSlam Southern Fried Poetry Slam kickoff party, 9:30PM

Wednesday, June 13:

Austin
Austin Central Library, ANDREW SEAN GREER speaking & signing Less (in conversation with Amanda Eyre Ward), 7PM [ticketed event]

BookPeople, Space Party: Astronaut & Author CLAYTON ANDERSON speaking & signing A is for Astronaut: Blasting Through the Alphabet (space gear encouraged), 4PM

BookPeople, ALFREDO CORCHADO speaking & signing Homelands, 7PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Ralph Cissne reading and signing ANGEL CITY SINGLES, 7PM

Houston

Avant Garden, Write About Now presents current grand slam champion of Houston VIP Slam Team (under the direction of the poet laureate of the City of Houston, Deborah DEEP Mouton) Raie Crawford and her debut book, In|S P A C E|Between, 7:30PM

Blue Willow Bookshop, Rick Bragg will discuss and sign his latest book THE BEST COOK IN THE WORLD: TALES FROM MY MOMMA'S TABLE, 7PM

Brazos Bookstore, Maya Rao discussing and signing GREAT AMERICAN OUTPOST, 7PM

Murder By the Book, Mike Maden will sign Tom Clancy Line of Sight, 6:30PM

Tyler

B&N, To the Stars Through Difficulties book signing with Romalyn Tilghman, 1PM

Thursday, June 14:

Austin

B&N - Arboretum, Ralph Cissne signing Angel City Singles, 7PM

BookPeople, MEGHA BAROT AND MATT GAEDKE speaking and signing Keto Made Easy and JIMMY MOORE speaking & signing The Keto Cure, 7PM

BookWoman, Second Thursday Open Mic featuring Jim LaVilla-Havelin, 7:15PM

LBJ Library, a conversation with Lynda Johnson Robb, LBJ White House aide Tom Johnson, professor and author Kyle Longley, and Mark Updegrove, author of LBJ's 1968 (preceded by a book signing 5PM), 6PM [a members and Friends event]

Malvern Books, Novel Night with Maureen Asantewaa & H.R. Young-Lira, 7PM

Canyon

Burrowing Owl Books, Poetry Circle with the High Plains Poetry Project, 7PM

College Station
George H.W. Bush Presidential Library, celebration of Juneteenth with the Freedom Walk and and award-winning storyteller Decee Cornish speaking about the history of Texas and cultural heritage in Africa, 10:30AM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Rick Bragg discussing and signing THE BEST COOK IN THE WORLD, 7PM

Royal Oaks Country Club, Dallas Jewish Historical Society annual meeting featured speaker is Charley Rosen, former basketball coach and author of The Chosen Game, 7PM

Frisco
The Depot at the Heritage Center, a presentation by Steve Huddleston, senior horticulturist at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden and author of Easy Gardens for North Central Texas, 7PM

Houston

Katy Budget Books, Sara Wolf signing Bring Me Their Hearts, the first title in a new YA trilogy, 6:30PM

San Antonio

Rosella Coffee Co., Trinity University Press celebrates the publication of Humans of San Antonio by Michael Cirlos, 6PM

The Twig Book Shop, Alfredo Corchado discussing and signing Homelands: Four Friends, Two Countries, and the Fate of the Great Mexican-American Migration, 5PM

Sugar Land

B&N - First Colony, Story time with local author Maria Ashworth, 10AM

Friday, June 15:

Austin

BookPeople, DARRELL BRYANT speaking and signing Geronimo's Bones and GEORGE MCGEE speaking & signing Open, Mindful Philosophy on the Fly, 7PM

Cherrywood Coffeehouse, METAPHORICALLY CHALLENGED37 with The POETIC BUTCHER, 7:30PM

Cleburne

The Published Page Bookshop, Stan McDonald signing The Texas Chef: Down Home Texas, 6PM

Houston

Holler Brewing Co., Writespace presents the 2018 Writers of Color Reading, 7PM

Murder By the Book, MBTB Summer Reads & Fall Preview (all selections will be 20% off), 7PM

San Antonio

The Twig Book Shop, Guest author story time: Cate Berry reads her debut picture book, Penguin & Tiny Shrimp Don't Do Bedtime, 10AM

Saturday, June 16:

Austin

B&N - Arboretum, Dr. Ronald E Bell II signing Reflections of God's Provision from Genesis, 1PM

B&N - Arboretum, Anne Keene signing The Cloudbuster Nine, 2PM

BookPeople, MIKE NEMETH speaking and signing The Undiscovered Country and TIM BRYANT speaking & signing Dead and Buried, 2PM

Half Price Books - Southpark Meadows, local author Tiarra Michelle will sell and sign her book, Love Your Melanin, 1PM

The Writing Barn, Workshop: "Your Story and Theirs: Constructing the Hybrid Memoir" with Donna M. Johnson, 12PM

Bellaire
Southwest Presbyterian Church, Houston Writers House workshop: "Winging it - Making your story take flight" - An Aviation Field Trip to Ellington Field with pilots and authors Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely, 10AM

Belton

McWha Bookstore, book signing with local author and sportswriter Putt Riddle, 10AM

Dallas

Deep Vellum Books, David Bowles reading and signing Feathered Serpent, Dark Heart Of Sky: Myths of Mexico, 7PM

Interabang Books, Story time: Stephanie Parsley Ledyard reading PIE IS FOR SHARING, 1PM

El Paso

Memorial Park Public Library, Tumblewords Project workshop: "Under the Nighttime Sun" with Cecilia Tate, 12:45PM

Frisco
Frisco Public Library, SCBWI of North Texas workshop: World Building with author Sean Easley, 11AM

Houston

B&N - River Oaks, Shanalee Sharboneau's Father's Day story time, 11AM

Brazos Bookstore, David Sedaris reading and signing CALYPSO, 7PM

Discovery Green, Author Talk & Book Signing: Steven Raichlen on Grilling Today & Tomorrow, 1PM

Half Price Books - Clear Lake, Local Author Saturdays: Meet local Indie authors and pick up their latest release, while supplies last

River Oaks Bookstore, Stacy Newton reading and signing Angels Survive, 3PM

Writespace, Workshop: "How to Submit Your Work Like a Pro" with Cassandra Rose Clarke, 9:30AM

Plano

B&N - Creekwalk Village, C.R. Shuman signing The Land of Artemis, 12PM

Port Neches

Fleur Fine Books, Meet & Greet with Jessica Fisette, author of The Soul Reaper series, Fragments, and The Aldurian Chronicles, 3PM

San Antonio
B&N - La Cantera, Michael Cirlos signing Humans of San Antonio, 2PM

B&N - San Pedro, Daniel Miller discussing and signing Texit: Why and How Texas Will Leave The Union, 2PM

Dead Tree Books, Tony Diaz discussing and signing Travel Smart, Travel Safe, 2PM

Half Price Books - Bandera, San Antonio Current Best Author 2018 nominee Bowie V. Ibarra will be featuring his latest Tex-Mexploitation title 'La Lechuza: Revelation of the Blood Queen, 12PM

The Twig Book Shop, Cate Berry signing Penguin and Tiny Shrimp Don't Do Bedtime, 11AM

Tyler

B&N, Chippy and Little Chipper Junior's Great Picnic Race book signing with Lorraine Rusnak McKean, 12PM

Webster
B&N, Melissa Daggett signing Spiritualism in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans: The Life and Times of Henry Louis Rey, 1PM

Weslaco
The Storybook Garden, Story time with Patty York Raymond, author of ABCs to Ranching, 11AM

Sunday, June 17:

Austin

BookPeople, DAVID SEDARIS speaking and signing Calypso, 6PM [ticketed event]

Dallas

Half Price Books - The Mother Ship, POWER MOMS LOCAL AUTHOR PANEL: POWER Moms is a collection of self-help stories written by 12 mothers, including Sherrie Walton, Jaquithia Stinson, Tashara Robinson, Dr. LaTonya Woodson, Shantania Leggins, Mary Smith, Dr. Kanini Brooks, Trina Smith, Shirley Walker-King, Shakeena Brantley, Katrina Hudson and Anita Bowman Roussel, with inspiring stories to tell, 1PM

Denton
J&J's Pizza On the Square, Spiderweb Salon presents Spidercon, 5PM

Houston
Half Price Books - North Oaks, Leanne Vogel will discuss and sign The Keto Diet: The Complete Guide to a High-Fat Diet, with More Than 125 Delectable Recipes and Meal Plans to Shed Weight, Heal Your Body, and Regain Confidence, 3PM

Murder By the Book, The Belles and Brujas Tour: Zoraida Córdova, Dhonielle Clayton, Jaime Questell, Mari Mancusi, and Katharine McGee, 2PM

I reviewedWire Mother Monkey Baby: A Novel (Outpost19) by Austin's Rob Reynolds for Lone Star Literary Life. It's a mixed review but Reynolds has tons of promise. I look forward to his next novel.

LITERARY FICTION
Rob Reynolds
Wire Mother Monkey Baby: A Novel

Outpost 19
Paperback, 978-1-9448-5337-2, 262 pages, $16.00
November 7, 2017

Clayton Draper, attempting to jump-start his stagnating life, moves into a new development in Austin called The Complex, one of a new trend in “all-inclusive” apartment communities boasting sports facilities, restaurants, bars, and cinemas, among other distractions—ahem, I meant attractions—subsidized by corporations. Draper’s new home, sponsored by Kool Kola, is a “microcosm of the outside world,” he writes, “only more micro, less cosmic.” Draper’s new home of exposed brick and cathedral ceilings includes a Kool Kola vending machine, which is inventoried monthly by a judgmental service technician. Draper, the ingrate, isn’t drinking enough Kool Kola. Absurdist humor and clinical depression infuse Reynolds’ debut in equal measure.

Draper, imagining a “new self … better and more cultured,” tries to escape his comfort zone to take advantage of the social opportunities at The Complex. He attends French films, where he obsesses over whether he’s chosen the best seat; talks up women in bars, where “Instead of getting the night started on the right foot,” he laments, “[he] learned once again how [his] mouth is perfectly sized to receive it”; and wanders barbecues where, “With one of two hands occupied [with a beer bottle he] had fifty-fifty odds of coming across as normal.”

We know Draper’s in trouble when he begins referring to Austin as “Waterloo.” He tries various strategies for happiness: Retail therapy at San Marcos outlet malls, adding “something tangible, verifiable, to [his] life”; quits his job for freelance (“Refusing to bow to the god called Security”); and the geography cure, a trip to Paris, but Draper stays firmly in character, and wherever you go, there you are.

Wire Mother Monkey Baby: A Novel is the first book from Austin’s Rob Reynolds, former associate and contributing editor of the Harvard Review and Boston Book Review. Reynolds’s short fiction appears in the Tampa Review and the Kennesaw Review, among other publications, and was anthologized in You Have Time for This: Contemporary American Short-Short Stories. His first novel is a commentary on happiness in the twenty-first-century United States where appearance trumps substance, we’ve lost the distinction between alone and lonely, and we make ourselves ill contorting to fit the mold.

First, that title: Wire Mother Monkey Baby alludes to psychologist Harry Harlow’s experiments with infant rhesus monkeys involving maternal-separation, dependency needs, and social isolation. The monkeys were separated from their mothers within hours of birth and presented with surrogates either made of wire and holding a bottle of food or covered in terrycloth but lacking food. The baby monkeys with the terrycloth mothers, food or no, benefited from contact comfort, a psychological resource unavailable to the well-fed but psychically damaged babies of wire mothers. Draper has material riches—the wire mothers of materialism—but he’s an emotional train wreck.

Wire Mother Monkey Baby chronicles a year of Draper’s midlife existential crisis in the form of journal entries. Consulting God, Mary Poppins, de Tocqueville, Tilda Swinton, Studs Terkel, Dwight Yoakam, The Flintstones, and bourbon (a partial list), Draper chases happiness. “There’s a tall order,” he writes, “[it’s] in the Declaration of Independence … our patriotic duty to pursue happiness. Such pressure.”

I was initially intrigued by Reynolds’ sardonic style and clever word play. However, Wire Mother Monkey Baby is light on dialogue and storyline, heavy on exposition and interior monologue. The quick pace soon trips on little external conflict or plot. Reynolds’ sharp social commentary is spot-on, if confined to first-world problems; I’m reminded of Huxley’s A Brave New World and Eggers’ The Circle. Reynolds has created a nuanced character with merit, even though his neurotic, semi-alcoholic navel-gazing becomes tiresome.

Wire Mother Monkey Baby is frequently entertaining and engaging, but pervasively uneven. Reynolds is talented and promising. I look forward to his next effort.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

PEN Texas announcee the winners of the 2017 Southwest Book Awards on June 11, 2018. The winners in each category receive a $500 prize.

Hollow: A Novel(Soft Skull Press) by Austin's Owen Egerton has won the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award for fiction. Y'all can read my Lone Star Literary Life review of Hollow here.

Amarillo's Chera Hammons is the winner of the 2017 PEN Southwest Poetry Award for The Traveler’s Guide to Bomb City (Purple Flag). Y'all can read our Lone Star Literary Life reviewhere.

Edward McPherson won the 2017 PEN Southwest Creative Nonfiction Award for The History of the Future: American Essays (Coffee House Press).

Congratulations to all of the winners! I'm going to go buy McPherson's book. I haven't read it yet.

Bookish goings-on in Texas for the week of June 18-24, 2018:

Special Events:
Meet Valley Authors Night, McAllen, June 22

12th Annual Austin African American Book Festival, June 23

Ongoing Exhibits:

Routine Fables, Houston, May 25-July 29

Oliver Jeffers: 15 Years of Picturing Books, Abilene, June 7-September 30

Monday, June 18:

Austin
BookPeople, EDGAR CANTERO speaking & signing Meddling Kids, 7PM

Dallas

Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Ellen Meacham discussing and signing Delta Epiphany: RFK in Mississippi, 7PM

The Wild Detectives, award-winning journalist and immigration expert Alfredo Corchado in conversation with the Dallas Morning News’ Tom Huang about his new book, Homelands: Four Friends, Two Countries, and the Fate of the Great Mexican-American Migration, 7:30PM

Houston

Brazos Bookstore, Jay Wehnert discussing and signing OUTSIDER ART IN TEXAS: LONE STARS, 7PM

Murder By the Book, Matthew Pearl will sign and discuss his new release, The Dante Chamber, 6:30PM

Tuesday, June 19:

Austin

BookPeople, MATTHEW PEARL speaking & signing The Dante Chamber, 7PM [ticketed event]

Malvern Books, 6th Austin edition of the Why There Are Words reading series featuring readers Elizabeth Crook, Spike Gillespie, Alyce Guynn, and Ray Bonneville, 7PM

Spiderhouse Ballroom, Austin Poetry Slam featuring Write About Now, 7PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Terry Brooks reading and signing THE FALL OF SHANNARA: THE SKAAR INVASION, 7PM

Moody Performance Hall, Oral Fixation presents "All Over the Map," 8PM

Warwick Melrose Dallas, The World Affairs Council of DFW and the Dallas Democratic Party host Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes discussing and signing The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House, 6:30PM

Houston
Brazos Bookstore, Mark Haskell Smith reading and signing BLOWN, 7PM

San Antonio

The Mix, PuroSlam Poetry ft. DJ Donnie Dee, 9:30PM

The Twig Book Shop, Natalia Sylvester reading and signing Everyone Knows You Go Home, 6PM

Spur
Dickens County-Spur Library, Special appearance by S.J. Dahlstrom, author of the Wilder Good series, 10AM

Wednesday, June 20:

Austin
B&N - Arboretum, How to Stop the Summer Reading Slide Discussion Panel and book signing with authors Taryn Bashford, Jo Whittemore, Don Zolitis, Samantha Clark, Vicky Skinner, and A.M. Rose, 7PM

BookPeople, TERRY BROOKS speaking & signing The Skaar Invasion, 7PM [ticketed event]

Malvern Books, Mark Haskell Smith reading and signing his new novel, Blown, hosted by Austin author Jill Alexander Essbaum 7PM

Dallas

Dallas Museum of Art, Arts & Letters Live, in honor of World Refugee Awareness Day, hosts Clemantine Wamariya reading and signing The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After, a narrative about her survival after the Rwandan genocide, 7:30PM

Houston

Avant Garden, Meta-Four Houston at Write About Now Youth Poetry Slam, 7:30PM

Murder By the Book, Cara Black will sign her Aimee Leduc prequel, Murder On The Left Bank, 6:30PM

San Antonio

Trinity University, 300 Years of San Antonio and Bexar County Book Launch, 10AM

The Twig Book Shop, Kelly Smith discussing and signing Signs in the Rearview Mirror: Leaving a Toxic Relationship Behind, 5PM

Thursday, June 21:

Austin

BookPeople, WRITERS' LEAGUE OF TEXAS presents "PRACTICE MAKES PITCH PERFECT" with Lance Fitzgerald, Vice President and Director of Subsidiary Rights for The Crown Publishing Group at Penguin Random House, and WLT Executive Director Becka Oliver, 7PM

Monkeywrench Books, Womanist Read-In, 6PM

Canyon
Burrowing Owl Books, A poetry reading with Chera Hammons, whose collection The Traveler's Guide to Bomb City just won the 2017 PEN Southwest Book Award, 7PM

Dallas

The Wild Detectives, Taryn Bashford signing her new book, The Harper Effect, 3PM

The Wild Detective, Mark Haskell Smith returns to present his new novel, Blown, 7:30PM

The Writer's Garret, Workshop: "IN THE PITY: AN INTRODUCTION TO POETRY For Veterans and Military Families" with Joshua Morgan Folmar, 6:30PM

Houston

Blue Willow Bookshop, Special Story time with Stephanie Ledyard, author of Pie Is for Sharing, 10AM

Blue Willow Bookshop, Alex Hutchinson will discuss and sign his book ENDURE, 7PM

Brazos Bookstore, Joe Crespino discussing and signing ATTICUS FINCH: THE BIOGRAPHY, 7PM

Murder By the Book, Terry Brooks will sign and discuss The Skaar Invasion, 6:30PM

River Oaks Bookstore, poet Rose Bruno Bailey reading and signing Camellia in Snow, 5PM

Midland
George W. Bush Childhood Home, Laura Bush Literacy Program Reading Event, 4:30PM

San Antonio

The Twig Book Shop, Dawson Barrett discussing and signing The Defiant: Protest Movements in Post-Liberal America, 5PM

Sugar Land

B&N - First Colony, Story time with local author Maria Ashworth, 10AM

Friday, June 22:

Austin

BookPeople, MARTIN WALKER speaking & signing A Taste for Vengeance, 7PM

Malvern Books, I Scream Social Reading Series 3rd birthday bash!, 7PM

Dallas
Interabang Books, Silas House reading and signing SOUTHERNMOST, 7PM

El Paso
Fahrenheit 180, Barbed Wire Open Mic Series, 7:30PM

Houston

Brazos Bookstore, Natalia Sylvester reading and signing EVERYONE KNOWS YOU GO HOME, 7PM

Plano
B&N - Legacy West, The Moscow Deception: An International Spy Thriller book signing with Karen Robards, 7PM

Saturday, June 23:

Austin

BookWoman, Nasty!: A Reading and Signing by Fierce Women Writers including Rhonda Jackson Joseph, Melissa Moralez, Rachel Stevens, and Kim Vodicka, 6PM

Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center, Class: Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies (and Moths) Class with Jim and Lynne Weber, authors of Native Host Plants for Texas Butterflies, 9AM

Cleburne
The Published Page Bookshop, Heath Dollar reading and signing Waylon County: Texas Stories, 4PM

Dallas

Interabang Books, Special Story Time with Jen Betton and HEDGEHOG NEEDS A HUG , 10:30AM

El Paso

Memorial Park Public Library, Tumblewords Project workshop: "Writing in Heat" with Mónica Gómez, 12:45PM

Galveston
Galveston Bookshop, Houston author Mark Lardas signing The Cruiser Houston (Images of America), 2PM

Houston

Blue Willow Bookshop, Aki Yamaguchi will discuss and sign her photo memoir HEART DOG: ANGEL IN DISGUISE, 1PM

Brazos Bookstore, Writespace presents a Summer Solstice Reading and Open Mic, 6PM

Half Price Books - Clear Lake, Local Author Saturdays: Meet local Indie authors and pick up their latest release, while supplies last

Katy Budget Books, Mae Edwards signs Stolen Options, an autobiography, 2PM

Murder By the Book, Levis Keltner will sign and discuss Into That Good Night, 4:30PM

River Oaks Bookstore, Francine Page reading and signing Logan Thee Forsaken, 3PM

Winter Street Studios, Book launch: Erin Faith Allen presents The In Between: A Travel Memoir, 7PM

Writespace, Workshop: "What Writers Need to Know about Contacting Agents and Editors" with Katharine Shilcutt, 9:30AM

Writespace, Workshop: "Lyric Essay: The Best-Kept Secret of Savvy Writers" with Leslie Contreras-Schwartz, 1PM

San Antonio

B&N - San Pedro, Adrian Davila signing Cowboy Barbecue: Fire & Smoke from the Original Texas Vaqueros, 1PM

Central Library, Workshop: "Testimonio: A Writing Workshop of the Body" with Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros, 11AM

Felkiz Modern, Michael Cirlos signing Humans of San Antonio, 11AM

The Twig Book Shop, Mary Virginia McCormick Pittman signing Four Legged Heroes, 11AM

South Padre Island
Paragraphs on Padre, An afternoon with award-winning children's author Patty York Raymond, 1PM

Southlake
B&N - Town Square, Jane Alvey Harris signing Secret Keeper, 2PM

Sugar Land
Half Price Books, local author Andre Huu will sell and sign his memoir The Round of Your Life: A Book on Golf and Life, 12PM

Sunday, June 24:

Austin

BookPeople, JAY BRANDON speaking and signing Against the Law, and MANNING WOLFE speaking and signing Music Notes, 2PM

Malvern Books, launch of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review Issue 48, 4PM

Dallas

The Foundry Club, Writing Workshops Dallas Seminar: "Book Marketing 101: A Recipe for Sizzling Sales" with Shayla Raquel, 3PM

Half Price Books - The Mother Ship, local author Maddie Marcarelli will sell and sign her novel The Journey, and local author Morrighan Lynne will sell and sign her spiritual book The Spirited Human: Proactive Tools for a Reactive World, 1PM

San Antonio
Landa Library, Denise Barkis Richter presents 100 Things To Do in San Antonio Before You Die, 3PM

Y'all, I have an article in the Summer 2018 issue of Authentic Texas magazine! Check out my friend Doug Baum, owner of the Texas Camel Corps.

I reviewed Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical (Basic Books) by UT Austin professor of history Jacqueline Jones for Lone Star Literary Life. "Goddess of Anarchy is a dramatic and entertaining account of a difficult, complicated, and flawed but significant life almost lost to history, as are those of untold numbers of impactful women."

BIOGRAPHY/HISTORY
Jacqueline Jones
Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical

Basic Books
Hardcover, 978-0-4650-7899-8, (also available as an e-book, an audiobook, and on audio CD), 480 pgs., $32.00
December 2017

Lucy Parsons. Slave, freedwoman, student, wife, mother, writer, editor, internationally renowned orator, socialist, communist, anarchist, cipher. From her birth to a slave in antebellum Virginia in 1851, to her education and formative years in Reconstruction–era Waco, Texas, where she married Albert Parsons, an Anglo man who would later be hanged in connection with the bombing of Haymarket Square, to swiftly industrializing Chicago in the Gilded Age, until her death in 1942, Parsons fought for the laboring masses, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly in a nation dizzy with change, a nation sometimes exalted by rapid innovation, oftentimes staggering beneath it. From the 1880s until the day she died, Parsons “held fast to the ideal of a nonhierarchical society emerging from trade unions, a society without wages and without coercive government of any kind.” Even if this result could be achieved only by dynamite.

Goddess of Anarchy: The Life and Times of Lucy Parsons, American Radical is the latest work of biographical history from Jacqueline Jones, professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin, MacArthur Fellow, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, and winner of the Bancroft Prize. Goddess of Anarchy is a dramatic and entertaining account of a difficult, complicated, and flawed but significant life almost lost to history, as are those of untold numbers of impactful women.

Goddess of Anarchy recounts much of the history of the labor struggle in the United States as told through the prism of Lucy Parsons’s singular, startling life. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was the catalyst for a receptive Parsons to devote her life to “the labor question” and convince her that the two-party system of Republicans and Democrats would always fail the great unwashed in order to remain in power at all costs. Believing the ballot a failure, Parsons advocated bullets.

Parsons’s contemporaries included Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Eugene V. Debs, Samuel Gompers, and Jane Addams, with all of whom she feuded. Many of her peers thought she harmed the cause by denigrating voting and unions. When Progressivism arrived, Parsons decried charity as “hush money to hide the blushes of the labor robbers.” She thought the New Deal and FDR co-opted the movement.

Though she lived in the public eye for almost seven decades, Parsons went to great pains to veil her African origins and personal life. Parsons “expressed a deep commitment to informed debate and disquisition,” Jones writes, but in the next breath would invoke “the virtues of explosive devices.” As she states in her introduction, Jones intends a “more nuanced approach by integrating Parsons’s secret private life with her high-profile public persona.” I don’t think integration was achieved, and I doubt it possible to reconcile the contradictions of a person exceedingly talented at compartmentalization.

The most pressing issues of Parsons’s lifetime remain so in ours, a circumstance which is either wholly depressing or indicates there is truly nothing new under the sun, or both. The two-party system failed to work for the poor; technology displaced workers; the middle class eroded; money and influence corrupted elections and public policy; a “new iteration of the KKK indicated that the more the pace of technological innovation accelerated, the more likely it became that a significant portion of the white laboring classes would seek refuge in a narrow tribalism.”

Jones’s writing has a vitality to it as she explores Parsons’s many contradictions, offers psychological insights, and tartly makes her points. Jones is a master of the concise introductory paragraph and the concluding paragraph that simultaneously foreshadows and whets the appetite for the next chapter. Goddess of Anarchy is an education and a bravura performance from a stylish wordsmith.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.

CINCO DE MURDER

A Taste of Texas Mystery, #3

Rebecca Adler

Genre: Texas Cozy Mystery
Date of Publication: April 3, 2018
Publisher: Berkley

Number of Pages: 304

Scroll down for the giveaway!

Tex-Mex waitress and part-time reporter Josie Callahan serves up more Lone Star justice in this spicy mystery from the author of The Good, the Bad, and the Guacamole.
It's fiesta time in Broken Boot, Texas, and tourists are pouring into town faster than free beer at a bull roping for the mouthwatering Cinco de Mayo festivities. Tex-Mex waitress Josie Callahan, her feisty abuela, and even her spunky Chihuahua Lenny are polishing their folklórico dances for Saturday's big parade, while Uncle Eddie is adding his own spicy event to the fiesta menu: Broken Boot's First Annual Charity Chili Cook-off.

But Uncle Eddie's hopes of impressing the town council go up in smoke when cantankerous chili cook Lucky Straw is found dead in his tent. And when Josie's beloved uncle is accused of fatal negligence, she, Lenny, and the steadfast Detective Lightfoot must uncover who ended the ambitious chilihead's life--before another cook kicks the bucket.

PRAISE FOR CINCO DE MURDER:

"I enjoyed every minute of this high fa looting Texas escapade. The authentic Texas sayings had me rolling on the floor. I'm a Texan and boy did I relate to the towns and chili cook-off so well."

--Texas Book-aholic

"I enjoy the Texas flair and touch while all the food talk just makes me hungry. If you enjoy a good cozy mystery that features an adorable dog and a culinary touch then this is the book/series for you."~Books a Plenty Book Reviews

CLICK TO PURCHASE:
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EXCERPT FROM

CHAPTER 1 OF CINCO DE MURDER

By Rebecca Adler

Folklórico Rehearsal

On such a gorgeous May morning, what could be better than a power walk to Cho’s cleaners with my long-haired Chihuahua, Lenny? The morning sun had tossed a wide blanket of gold over the Davis and Chisos mountains, awakening the piñon pines and the weeping junipers from their slumber, illuminating the bluegrass and scrub so they looked like desert jewels.

The plan had been to retrieve my abuela’s folklórico costume and burn some extra calories. And though we made good time—considering the length of my canine sidekick’s pencil-thin appendages—the morning sun galloped down Broken Boot’s cobbled streets while I paid Mr. Cho with a crumpled five-dollar bill and a coupon for a dozen free tamales.

“Yip.” Lenny lapped from the pet fountain in front of Elaine’s Pies, soaking his black-and-white coat.

“¡Vámonos, amigo!” If we were late to the final dance rehearsal before the Cinco de Mayo parade, God only knew when Senora Marisol Martinez, our matriarch, would permit me to call her abuela again.

During my first few months back home, I was elated to find I could accomplish tasks in far less time than in the crowded thoroughfares of Austin. Almost a year later, I was forced to admit the slower pace of our dusty little town didn’t aid me in my quest to check things off my list. It merely encouraged me to meander.

On that happy thought, Lenny and I raced down the sidewalk toward Milagro. Suddenly I tripped over the plastic clothes bag, nearly kissing the pavement with my face. “Whose great idea was it to rehearse this early?”

“Yip.”

“That’s what I was afraid of.”

When we barreled through the front door of Milagro, the best, and only, Tex-Mex restaurant on Main Street, I expected thefolklórico rehearsal to be in full swing. Instead my best friend, Patti Perez, glared at me, which only made me smile. I was wise to her marshmallow center, in spite of her ghostly Goth appearance.

“Sorry,” I mouthed. After all, it had been my idea for all of us to join the local folklórico troupe—my way of embracing life back in good old Broken Boot, Texas.

“About time,” she chided as I draped Senora Mari’s costume over a stack of hand-painted wooden chairs. In my absence, the other dancers had cleared the dining room to create a dance floor on the beautiful Saltillo tiles.

“I would have called,” I began.

“But I was trapped in a dead zone,” we said in unison. Service was so bad in Broken Boot and its outlying communities that folks were slower here than in the rest of the country in ditching their landlines.

“Where’s Anthony?” When our headwaiter offered his newly formed mariachi band to play for our first performance, I didn’t have the heart to say no. Beggars can’t be choosers, or look a gift band in the mouth.

“Tsk, tsk.” Across the room, Anthony’s new fiancée placed her hand over the bar phone’s mouthpiece. Though christened Lucinda,we’d quickly dubbed her Cindy to avoid calling her Linda, my aunt’s name, and vice versa. “He says his truck has a flat tire.” She scowled at whatever Anthony said next and responded with a flurry of Spanish.

“Who doesn’t keep a spare in the desert?” Patti, whom I referred to as Goth Girl if for no other reason than to hear her snort, delivered this line with a deadpan expression and a flick of her rehearsal skirt.

“Yip,” Lenny said, chasing after her ruffles.

Goth Girl snapped her head in my direction and gave me the stink eye. “Tell me you replaced your spare.”

“Uh, well, not yet, but I will after Cinco de Mayo.” Money was a bit tight, what with the loss of tourists during the winter months.

To my right, Aunt Linda, a stunning middle-aged woman with warm chestnut hair, modeled her bright-colored skirt better than any fashionista in Paris. “That’s what you said about Valentine’s Day.” She was my late mother’s older sister. She might look great in her Wranglers, but she and rhythm had never been introduced.

“And Saint Patrick’s,” chimed in Senora Mari, executing a double spin. This morning she wore a rehearsal skirt of black-tiered lace along with her Milagro uniform of peasant blouse, gray bun at her nape, and large pink flower behind her ear. No matter how much I rehearsed, none of my moves could compare to her sassy head turns and flamboyant poses. Who knew my seventy-something, four-foot-eleven abuela would turn out to be the star of our ragtag troupe?

A sharp clapping interrupted our chatter. “Let’s try it on the counts,” cried Mrs. Felicia Cogburn, mayor’s wife and self-appointed dance captain.

“Yip,” Lenny agreed.

“Why is that dog here?” Mrs. Cogburn demanded, her hands raised in mid-clap.

“He has a key role, remember?” My abuela smiled, an expression so rare on her dear weathered face it made folks uncomfortable.

Mrs. Cogburn blinked several times. “Of course.” Before she could begin, a small truck landed at the curb with a bed full of musicians, trumpets and guitars in full serenade. The band stopped playing long enough to hurry inside.

“¡Ay, Dios! Senora, I had to borrow a spare. Mine was flat.” Anthony waved his friends into a semicircle just inside the door.

Senora Mari thrust a finger into the air. “So you say.” She snapped her head dramatically to the side. “Play.”

With a worried look, Anthony counted off, and the group of dark-haired men and boys began to play the "Jarabe Tapatío", the Mexican hat dance. I spied a familiar face on trumpet. Anthony’s little sister Lily gave me a wink and a nod.

As the trumpets and guitars played, Mrs. Cogburn called out, “And one, two, three, four.”

“Where’s your skirt?” Patti asked as we twirled first right and then left.

“Ah, chicken sticks.” I dodged the dancers, ran up the stairs to my loft apartment, and retrieved my long skirt from a chrome dining chair.

“Yip, yip, yip,” Lenny cried from the bottom of the stairs.

“Sorry.” I found his straw hat on the yellow Formica table and made it downstairs without mishap. “Here you go, handsome.” I perched the hat on his head and tightened the elastic under his chin. As we danced, Lenny would spin in place on his back legs, melting the hearts of the crowd faster than fried ice cream in August.

Rebecca Adler grew up on the sugar beaches of the Florida Gulf Coast. Drawn to the Big Apple by the sweet smell of wishful thinking, she studied acting on Broadway until a dark-eyed cowboy flung her over his saddle and hightailed it to the Southwest.

She's currently content to pour her melodramatic tendencies into writing the Taste of Texas culinary mysteries from Berkley Prime Crime: Here Today, Gone Tamale; The Good, the Bad, and the Guacamole; and Cinco de Murder. Set in far West Texas, her humorous stories are filled with delicious suspense and scrumptious Tex-Mex recipes. Her alter ego, Gina Lee Nelson, writes contemporary romance with a sweet, Southern-fried flavor.

A former president of North Texas Romance Writers, Rebecca is currently a member of Sisters in Crime and Romance Writers of America. When not writing, she spends a great deal of time on her other favorite pastime, directing high school theatre.

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Website║ Goodreads

║ Amazon Author Page║

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GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!

Grand Prize: Signed Copies of the Full Taste of Texas Series + $10 Amazon Gift Card
Two Runners-Up: Signed Copies of Cinco de Murder
JUNE 20-29, 2018
(U.S. Only)

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VISIT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:

6/20/18	Author Interview	Chapter Break Book Blog
6/20/18	Guest Post	Hall Ways Blog
6/21/18	Review	Missus Gonzo
6/22/18	Top 5 List	The Page Unbound
6/23/18	Excerpt	Texas Book Lover
6/24/18	Review	Forgotten Winds
6/25/18	Bonus Review	Reading by Moonlight
6/26/18	Character Guest Post	Dressed to Read
6/27/18	Review	The Librarian Talks
6/28/18	Guest Post + Bonus Review	That's What She's Reading
6/29/18	Review	Book Fidelity

blog tour services provided by

Excerpt & Giveaway: WHAT LIES BELOW by Barbara Taylor Sissel

Review: THE SEASONS OF MY MOTHER by Marcia Gay Harden

Excerpt: SINS OF THE YOUNGER SONS by Jan Reid

Giveaway & Character Interview: Jailhouse Interview with Clyde Barrow from BONNIE AND CLYDE: DAM NATION by Clark Hays and Kathleen McFall

Monday Roundup: TEXAS LITERARY CALENDAR May 21-27, 2018

Giveaway & Guest Post: Eliza Maxwell, author of THE WIDOW'S WATCHER

Review: A PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF THE VAMPIRE UPRISING by Raymond A. Villareal

Monday Roundup: TEXAS LITERARY CALENDAR May 28-June 3, 2018

IN MEMORIAM

Review: THE TEXAS LIBERATORS: VETERAN NARRATIVES OF WORLD WAR II

Monday Roundup: TEXAS LITERARY CALENDAR June 4-10, 2018

Review: HOW TO WALK AWAY by Katherine Center

Monday Roundup: TEXAS LITERARY CALENDAR June 11-17, 2018

Review: WIRE MOTHER MONKEY BABY by Rob Reynolds

2017 PEN Southwest Book Award Winners

Monday Roundup: TEXAS LITERARY CALENDAR June 18-24, 2018

Texas Camel Corps in AUTHENTIC TEXAS magazine

Review: GODDESS OF ANARCHY by Jacqueline Jones

Excerpt & Giveaway: CINCO DE MURDER by Rebecca Adler

Monday Roundup: TEXAS LITERARY CALENDAR June 25-July 1, 2018