My name is Texas and this is my story. The daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor, I ran away from home when I was 17. For 28 years I traveled a path that took me to places from which few return. Unhealthy relationships and unbridled lusts corrupted my view of freedom and left me cornered in addiction--financed by crafty manipulation and drug dealing. My tainted knowledge of love and polluted desire for escape kept me on a treacherous treadmill that continually fed the heartache of those I loved. But, through it all, the One who loved me unconditionally remained. This is my unvarnished account of the years I spent running and what brought that season to its redeeming end.
Is he her shelter from the storm...or her biggest mistake? Valencia Donovan’s plan to dazzle the wealthy investor she needs for her horse rescue start-up takes an unexpected turn when a tornado strands her with Lorenzo Cortez-Williams. Giving in to attraction in a desperate moment only makes them hungry for more. After blowing away all boundaries, Valencia’s treacherous feelings for the guarded ranching heir could jeopardise her lifelong dream. But closing the deal — while walking away from their intimate affair — could cost her even more... Mills & Boon Desire — Luxury, scandal, desire — welcome to the lives of the elite.
A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.
“If Chaucer were a Texan writing today . . . this is how he would have written and this is how he would have felt.”— New York Times In Leaving Cheyenne (1963), which anticipates Lonesome Dove more than any other early novel, the stark realities of the American West play out in a mesmerizing love triangle. Stubborn rancher Gideon Fry, resilient Molly Taylor, and awkward ranch hand Johnny McCloud struggle with love and jealousy as the years pass.
Lucy Pier Stevens, a twenty-one-year-old woman from Ohio, began a visit to her aunt’s family near Bellville, Texas, on Christmas Day, 1859. Little did she know how drastically her life would change on April 4, 1861, when the outbreak of the Civil War made returning home impossible. Stranded in enemy territory for the duration of the war, how would she reconcile her Northern upbringing with the Southern sentiments surrounding her? Lucy Stevens’s diary—one of few women’s diaries from Civil War–era Texas and the only one written by a Northerner—offers a unique perspective on daily life at the fringes of America’s bloodiest conflict. An articulate, educated, and keen observer, Stevens took note of seemingly everything—the weather, illnesses, food shortages, parties, church attendance, chores, schools, childbirth, death, the family’s slaves, and political and military news. As she confided her private thoughts to her journal, she unwittingly revealed how her love for her Texas family and the Confederate soldier boys she came to care for blurred her loyalties, even as she continued to long for her home in Ohio. Showing how the ties of heritage, kinship, friendship, and community transcended the sharpest division in US history, this rare diary and Vicki Adams Tongate’s insightful historical commentary on it provide a trove of information on women’s history, Texas history, and Civil War history.
From the imagination of legendary animator and two-time Oscar nominee Don Hertzfeldt comes a hilarious fever-dream vision of the apocalypse, now available in wide release for the first time since the rare original edition sold out. Created during sleepless nights while he worked on his animated films, The End of the World was illustrated entirely on Post-It notes over the course of several years, slowly taking shape from all the deleted scenes, bad dreams, and abandoned ideas that were too strange to make it to the big screen, including essential early material that was later developed into the animated classic World of Tomorrow. Hertzfeldt's visually striking work transcends its unusual nature and taps into the deeply human, universal themes of mortality, identity, memory, loss, and parenthood . . . with the occasional monstrous biting eel descending from the sky.
His most important mission brought him to Texas—and reunited him with the son he never met… Black ops soldier Hunter Graham knew the rules: no family, no friends, no life outside the mission. But he never anticipated a woman like Erin Jamison. Two years ago, after a mission gone wrong, he met the brilliant scientist and they shared a week of passion before he vanished back into his secret life. Now, with Erin and their son the targets of an international terrorist plot, Hunter will go against his better judgment and break every agency rule to save the family he never knew he wanted. Coming out of hiding carries consequences far beyond this assignment, but he'll do anything to keep them safe—including kidnapping them.…
Mario is a star running back for Foggy Creek High. But when his classroom performance falls short, he risks missing the biggest game of the year. This problem is weighing on him when he runs headlong into a sinkhole, and he finds himself trapped. Chaos erupts in Foggy Creek as they search for the missing teen. Will Mario make his way out of the pit and back to the most important game of his high school career?
From most people’s point of view, a barrier beach is a paradox: appealing to visit but appalling to live on. An enjoyable day’s excursion requires shade, dark glasses, sunblock, drinking water, food, and, of course, a shower afterward. Take all those amenities away and consider existing alone on the island fulltime, even during hurricanes. When Wayne and Martha McAlister moved to Matagorda Island, a wildlife refuge off the central Texas coast, they anticipated staying perhaps five years. But sent to take up duties with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wayne McAlister fell under the island’s spell the moment he stepped out of his aging house trailer and met his first Matagorda rattlesnake. Seven years later, the McAlisters were still observing the flora and fauna of Matagorda. Except for the road and some occasional fence posts, the island appears untouched by humans. In Life on Matagorda Island, Wayne McAlister shows what life was like amid such isolation. McAlister revels in the ghostly twinkles of nights on the beach, as luminescent comb jellies, sea walnuts, and glow worms light up every crest of wave. He watches hungry whooping cranes snatch striped mullet trapped in tidal pools; hunts for Hurter’s spadefoots, reclusive amphibians that surface during warm deluges; and sinks to his knees in the sand, flashlight in hand, to catch a glimpse of a whip eel’s sharp snout. Not all observations are limited to the psammobionts—the creatures of the sand. McAlister recounts petting a fatbellied coyote pup and handing out kitchen scraps to wild turkeys. Badgers make their home on Matagorda Island, as do alligators, raccoons, and hundreds of varieties of insects, including the aggravating salt marsh mosquito. But McAlister doesn’t merely observe: he tells why and how. Why oysters spit, why pistol shrimp snap, or how debris from offshore boats affects the beach environment. He also relates the more sinister aspects of living on a barrier island, such as finding himself ankledeep in quicksand. But it’s all in a day’s work—or play—to the McAlisters, as they balance their lifestyle with the will of the island and its nonhuman inhabitants. “We try to stay in the background, enthralled observers,” McAlister writes. “We do not belong, can never truly belong, but we can coexist and commingle. Close enough.”
