An eclectic mix of Texas icons highlight this selection of locally produced titles recently added to BARD. Audie Murphy, LBJ, and Janis Joplin share the spotlight, with a cameo by Bear Bryant. Add an underground classic, a collection of short stories as varied as the Lone Star state, and a touch of romantic suspense, and you have a blockbuster of reading.
AUDIE MURPHY, AMERICAN SOLDIER by Harold B. Simpson
DBC 26801
Audie Murphy, a Texas farm boy, became the highest decorated soldier in American history and went on to win additional fame as movie actor, song writer, and poet before his early death in a plane crash.
BEYOND DANGER by Kat Martin
DBC 26721
Texas mogul Beau Reese is furious. All six feet three obscenely wealthy, good-looking inches of him. His sixty-year-old father, Stewart, a former state senator no less, has impregnated a teenager. Barely able to contain his anger, Beau is in for another surprise. It appears that Stewart has moved an entirely different woman into the house. Beau assumes that stunning Cassidy Jones is his father’s mistress. At least she’s of age. But those concerns take a sudden backseat when he finds Stewart in a pool of blood on the floor of his study—and Cassidy walks in to find Beau with his hand on the murder weapon. The shocks just keep coming. Someone was following Stewart, and Cassidy is the detective hired to find out who and why. Now she’ll have to find his killer instead. Her gut tells her it wasn’t Beau. And Beau’s instincts tell him it wasn’t Cassidy. Determined to track down the truth, they form an uneasy alliance—one that will bring them closer to each other—closer to danger and beyond. Commercial audiobook. Unrated. 2018.
BEYOND REASON by Kat Martin
DBC 26720
Five weeks ago, Carly Drake stood at her grandfather’s grave. Now she’s burying Drake Trucking’s top driver, and the cops have no leads on the hijacking or murder. Faced with bankruptcy, phone threats and the fear of failure, Carly has to team up with the last man she wants to owe—Lincoln Cain. Cain is magnetic, powerful, controlling—and hiding more than one secret. He promised Carly’s granddad he’d protect her. The old man took a chance on him when he was nothing but a kid with a record, and now he’s the multi-millionaire owner of a rival firm. But Linc’s money can’t protect Carly from the men who’ll do anything to shut her down, or the secrets behind Drake Trucking. If she won’t sell out, the only way to keep her safe is to keep her close…and fight like hell. Commercial audiobook. Unrated. 2017.
DEMASIADOS MUERTOS by M.L. Estefania
DBC 26807
Una novela de vaquera de clase bolsilibro. DEMASIADOS MUERTOS (Too Many Dead Folks) is an example of a popular form of the western novel from Mexico called a bolsilibro (pocketbook).
LAST DAYS OF LOUISIANA RED by Ishmael Reed
DBC 26840
Reed’s highly acclaimed literary achievement is one of the most outspoken satires ever published in America. An underground classic, it exposes the hypocrisy of our contemporary political and social scenes.
LEGEND OF BEAR BRYANT by Mickey Herskowitz
DBC 26778
Ten years after the death of Coach Paul (Bear) Bryant in 1983, this is a re-issue of Houston Post sports columnist Mickey Herskowitz’s classic legacy of the remarkable coach who led both Texas A&M University and the University of Alabama. It is an honest portrait of the legendary football coach who was also one of the most complex and controversial personalities in the world of sports. Includes an Afterword written for this 1993 revised edition. Strong language.
PEARL: THE OBSESSIONS AND PASSIONS OF JANIS JOPLIN: A BIOGRAPHY by Ellis Amburn
DBC 26782
The author explores the life of Texas native Janis Joplin, one of the greatest rock stars of the 1960s counterculture. Through interviews with scores of people who knew her, the author relates Joplin’s trendsetting ways in San Francisco’s back-to-the-roots movement, and her ultimately doomed search for happiness in sex and drugs, money and fame. Descriptions of sex and strong language.
SEMI-PRIVATE ROOMS by Jim Sanderson
DBC 26793
The source of these stories are the antique beauty parlors, honky-tonks, and Texas Dairy Queens, as well as glass high rises and football stands. Cowboy wannabes, roughnecks, single mothers, illegal aliens, witches, and day laborers populate a fatalistic, ironic, and transient Texas landscape. Explicit descriptions of sex and strong language.
STONE BRUISE by James C. McCormick
DBC 26749
This semi-autobiographical, earnest first novel offers an engaging view of American life during the past few decades. The protagonist rises from Depression-era poverty to vast wealth and power, yet his life is marred by a spiritual emptiness. Ultimately, personal tragedy and a pilgrimage guide him toward a closer relationship with God and afford him a greater sense of inner peace.
STRANGE PEACHES: A NOVEL by Edwin Shrake
DBC 26809
A TV western star quits his successful series and returns to Dallas to make a documentary film that reveals the truth about his hometown. His quest forces him to learn if he is capable of using his six-gun for real as he moves from booze and radical politics in oil men’s palaces into the infamous Carousel Club and the underworld of arms and dope smuggling in a city ripe for the murder of a President. Some sex and some profanity.
SUMMER STOCK: BEHIND THE SCENES WITH LBJ IN ‘48: RECOLLECTIONS OF A POLITICAL DRAMA by Joe Phipps
DBC 24993
An insightful and funny look inside LBJ’s 1948 Senate campaign—the race that put him in the national political fast lane—by an aide-de-camp with a good memory and a flair for the descriptive. Strong language. For adult readers.
VETERANO RURAL by Fred Dennis
DBC 26806
Una novela de vaquera de clase bolsilibro. VETERANO RURAL (The Old-Timer) is an example of the popular form of western novel from Mexico called bolsilibro (pocketbook).