Genre: Humorous Literary Fiction Publisher: Boldface Books Date of Publication: June 7, 2016 Number of Pages: 270 You’re never too old to learn—or too young Good-looking, good-hearted Charley Bristow’s the most sought-after hair stylist in five West Texas counties. He’s an expert on the dance floor and sharp at the pool tables, too—but when it comes to picking cars, dogs, and women, luck hasn’t quite gone his way lately. And there’s the ever-present worry over his mother, whose own trailer-park plight he’d just as soon steer clear of. Just when he’s sworn off temptation of the female sort, an evening at the local honky-tonk drives two prime targets right into his path. Weighing the sudden wealth of options in his love life, while also searching for the right choice of wheels to suit his needs, Charley stumbles upon a long-hidden secret and an unforeseen road to redemption. The colorful denizens of the Wild Hare Salon, Jarod’s Automotive, and Hopper’s nightclub, along with those of the Briargrove First Methodist Church and the Sulfur Gap Centennial Celebration, will two-step their way right into your heart, to music as familiar as Willie Nelson and Charley Pride. And you just might start to fall in love with an old Johnny Mercer tune, too, as Charley Bristow faces his past and embraces the challenge of his future. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE 7/29/2016 SUMMER VACATION The Adventures of Mackenzie and Cristen by Belinda Everette Review + GiveawayRead NowGenre: Middle Grade / Contemporary Fiction Date of Publication: June 12, 2016 # of pages: 70 It's the beginning of summer and Uncle Mike and Aunt Melanie invite Mackenzie for an extended summer vacation in their hometown of Houston, Texas. On the first day, Mackenzie finds her cousins, Cristen and Chloe, helping their parents prepare a special meal. Come and learn about the holiday and celebration of Juneteenth with this first book in The Adventures of Mackenzie and Cristen, a cultural journey of joy, family, and fun! Summer Vacation is the first installment in The Adventures of Mackenzie and Cristen, a five part journey of family love and fun. Each adventure finds the cousins learning history, exploring cultural themes and traditions, and discovering the joy in the world around them. CLICK TO PURCHASE: Amazon PayPal Genre: Political Suspense Publisher: Dead Tree Date of Publication: June 30, 2016 Number of Pages: 266 “Doing the right thing means you don’t eat” So begins the sweltering narrative of District Manager, Mason Dixon, a haunted man serving Texas House District 100. After a constituent reaches out to his office with disturbing information about twisted activities going on in district, Mason finds himself drawn into a game of cat and mouse with a malevolent entity. While these events unfold, Mason begins dating a county judge’s assistant. Brenna is a single mother who is ready to start the next chapter of her life. Can she and the stoical Mason connect? Or will she become collateral damage to his unorthodox, occupational hazards? Mason soon finds that the danger has reached the highest ranks of the district, and that the century-old structure where he offices is not haunted, but instead possessed by an all too real menace. Can a man who is profoundly broken restore order when the very core of order itself has been corrupted? “Matt Minor knows Texas politics from the inside, and he weaves a devious tale of deceit and death and even a little romance. Buckle your seat belt and hang on for the ride.” — Bill Crider CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE Genre: Contemporary Inspirational Romance / Christian Publisher: Revell Date of Publication: July 5, 2016 Number of Pages: 320 Love and Politics Collide in This Emotion-Packed Fourth Texas Gold Novel Kellie Coates Gilbert strikes gold once again in the latest book in the Texas Gold Collection. Readers will be drawn into the story through Gilbert’s deeply emotional writing that highlights the complexities of human relationships. Out of her desire to care for her mother who is suffering from dementia, Leta Breckenridge drops out of college. Her next step means leaving her comfort zone. After learning that a delinquent account may force her mother into a less desirable facility, Leta takes a leap and lands a high-paying job at an Austin public relations firm. But her dream job soon turns into a nightmare when she learns that the firm she is working for is a front for a political opposition organization—and that the research she has been collecting will be used against Nathan Emerson, the handsome senator she’s swiftly falling in love with. Nathan is a rising political star being pressured to run a bid to unseat the current governor of Texas. He’s already in a relationship with a woman much better suited to be a politician’s wife, but he’s never met anyone like Leta. Could this feisty woman hold the key to his heart—and his future? AMAZON CHRISTIANBOOK.COM BARNES & NOBLE BAKER RETAIL My ReviewGenre: Historical Romantic Fiction Publisher: Lake Union Press Date of Publication: May 31, 2016 Number of Pages: 400
7/2/2016 WEST TEXAS MIDDLEWEIGHT: The Story of LaVern Roach by Frank Sikes Author Interview + GiveawayRead NowGenre: Biography Publisher: Texas Tech University Press Date of Publication: June 30, 2016 Number of Pages: 288 LaVern Roach, a skinny kid from the small town of Plainview, Texas, rose from obscurity to become one of boxing’s most popular figures during the 1940s. Roach’s rise to prominence occurred during an era when boxing shared the spotlight with baseball as the nation’s top two professional sports. As a result of Roach’s death—which marked the first nationally televised fight during which a boxer died from injuries received in the ring—the sport of boxing came under closer scrutiny by the general public than ever before. West Texas Middleweight is the story of Roach’s all too brief journey from a West Texas amateur, to enlistment in the US Marines, where he captained the nation’s most successful military boxing team, to becoming a Madison Square Garden main eventer. He received the distinction of being named The Ring Magazine’s “Rookie of the Year” for 1947 and was considered a top ten contender for the middleweight championship of the world. This book chronicles Roach’s road to his final fight—and it explains why, as noted by legendary boxing trainer Angelo Dundee, “boxing changed because of LaVern Roach.” Purchase From: http://www.ttupress.org/ How has being a Texan influenced your writing?
Since my subject is a Texan, it has allowed me to relate to him since we both come from similar backgrounds and heritage. Why did you choose to write in your particular field or genre? It was a godsend. Where did your love of bookish things come from? My 9th grade English teacher, Mrs. Williams, gave me a love for literature. I won an essay writing contest that year and got to fly for the first time the 45 miles between Plainview and Lubbock, go see the movie Dial M for Murder, and picnic at McKenzie Park. What a thrill for a 14-year-old boy. How long have you been writing? This is my first, but hopefully not my last book. 6/21/2016 THE DARKNESS THAT COULD BE FELT: Treasure of the Raven King Book One by C. Wayne Dawson Excerpt + GiveawayRead NowGenre: Historical Military Fiction / Mystery Publisher: White Bird Publications, LLC. Date of Publication: May 22, 2016 # of pages: 304 Women are disappearing off the streets of Vienna in 1684 and Captain Mathis Zieglar vows to find out why. Defying orders to break off his investigation, he discovers they are being trafficked into the Muslim slave market. His only hope of ransoming them from a life of abuse is to find the treasure of the Raven King. The treasure is a secret code lodged inside an ancient text that will rock the Ottoman and Holy Roman Empires to their foundations. November, 1462
Wallachia, near Castle King’s Rock “The Mohammedans have found us, Sire.” Vlad Dracula, War Lord of Wallachia and Transylvania, jerked his horse to a stop. Dracula snapped his head around to look at his companion. “How close, Grigore?” An excited buzz broke out amongst the warlord’s ten bodyguards. They came to a halt, sending up billows of dough-colored dust that contrasted with the forest’s darkness. Sweat dripped down their leather armor. Their horses pawed the ground impatiently, straining to resume their canters. Grigore steadied himself with one hand against the back of his panting horse and caught his breath. He turned his steed around and pointed to a mountain pass five hundred feet up the road. “They’re there, Prince. If we pause for a short rest, they’ll be upon us and have our necks.” Genre: Mystery Publisher: Cinco Puntos Press Date of Publication: October 27, 2015 # of pages: 306 1959. Delpha Wade killed a man who was raping her. Wanted to kill the other one too, but he got away. Now, after fourteen years in prison, she’s out. It’s 1973, and nobody’s rushing to hire a parolee. Persistence and smarts land her a secretarial job with Tom Phelan, an ex-roughneck turned neophyte private eye. Together these two pry into the dark corners of Beaumont, a blue-collar, Cajun-influenced town dominated by Big Oil. A mysterious client plots mayhem against a small petrochemical company-why? Searching for a teenage boy, Phelan uncovers the weird lair of a serial killer. And Delpha — on a weekend outing — looks into the eyes of her rapist, the one who got away. The novel's conclusion is classic noir, full of surprise, excitement, and karmic justice. Sandlin's elegant prose, twisting through the dark thickets of human passion, allows Delpha to open her heart again to friendship, compassion, and sexuality. PURCHASE LINKS: AMAZON CINCO PUNTOS PRESS
Read More for Giveaway + Review6/3/2016 FINDING DOROTHY SCOTT: Letters of a WASP Pilot by Sarah Byrn Rickman Blog Tour Author Interview + Giveaway!Read NowGenre: Military History / Biography Publisher: Texas Tech University Press Date of Publication: May 30, 2016 Number of Pages: 288 More than eleven hundred women pilots flew military aircraft for the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. These pioneering female aviators were known first as WAFS (Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) and eventually as WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots). Thirty-eight of them died while serving their country. Dorothy Scott was one of the thirty-eight. She died in a mid-air crash at the age of twenty-three. Born in 1920, Scott was a member of the first group of women selected to fly as ferry pilots for the Army Air Forces. Her story would have been lost had her twin brother not donated her wartime letters home to the WASP Archives. Dorothy's extraordinary voice, as heard through her lively letters, tells of her initial decision to serve, and then of her training and service, first as a part of the WAFS and then the WASP. The letters offer a window into the mind of a young, patriotic, funny, and ambitious young woman who was determined to use her piloting skills to help the US war effort. The letters also offer archival records of the day-to-day barracks life for the first women to fly military aircraft. The WASP received some long overdue recognition in 2010 when they were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal-the highest honor that Congress can bestow on civilians. PURCHASE FROM TEXAS TECH PRESS: http://www.ttupress.org/ email: [email protected] phone: 800.742.2982 Rickman Author Interview #1How long have you been writing? Since I was 5. I started by making up stories in my head. What kind(s) of writing do you do? I wrote for the high school newspaper senior year after taking an excellent journalism course from an extraordinary high school teacher in my junior year. I went literary in college and wrote short stories; but I returned to journalism after graduation, going to work as a reporter on first a weekly newspaper and then a metropolitan daily. Spent 20 years in the newspaper business as a reporter, columnist and editor, then took my skills freelance, became my own boss, and wrote, edited and produced newsletters for non-profits. I also wrote my first novel. I went back to school to get my Masters in Creative Writing and wrote my second novel as my thesis. I have now written 4 novels. The last two are published. They are all good, but not the Great American novel. I hope to publish the other 2 novels some day. I think I am a better nonfiction writer. I write creative nonfiction, which is a good marriage between my journalistic background and my creative side expressed in my four novels. With this biography, Finding Dorothy Scott, I now have seven published books. Five are nonfiction— three of which are biographies — and two are fiction. Read More for Giveaway!Genre: Historical Western Romance / Inspirational Publisher: Bethany House Publishers Date of Publication: June 7, 2016 Number of Pages: 368 Men are optional. That was the credo Emma Chandler's suffragette aunts taught her and why she established Harper's Station, a women's colony that offers a fresh start to females in need. But when a dangerous and shadowy assailant tries repeatedly to drive the women out, Emma is forced to admit they might need a man after all. One who can fight. And there is only one man she trusts enough to ask. Malachi Shaw has finally earned the respect he's always craved by becoming an explosives expert for the railroad. Yet when Emma's telegram arrives, he rushes back to Texas to repay the girl who once saved his life. Only she's not a girl any longer. She's a woman with a mind of her own and a smile that makes a man imagine a future he doesn't deserve. As the danger intensifies, Emma, Mal, and the ladies of Harper's Station must choose between safety or risking everything to fight for their future.
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