From June 15th to August 10th, 2024, explore captivating new reads across all genres, spotlighting the best in adult fiction and nonfiction. Don't miss out on discovering your next favorite book, supporting Texas authors, and diving into summer adventures with exclusive sponsorship opportunities and a whole lot of reading fun!
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New books added daily through July 27, 2024
HISTORICAL FICTION
A Beggar's Bargainby Jan Sikes
Fresh Ink Group
324 pages; Paperback, Hardcover, eBook
Layken Martin vows to do whatever it takes to save the family farm. Once the Army discharges him following World War II, Layken returns to Missouri to find his legacy in jeopardy. A foreclosure notice from the bank doubles the threat. He appeals to the local banker for more time—a chance to rebuild, plant, and harvest crops and for time to heal far away from the noise of bombs and gunfire. The banker firmly denies his request, but makes an alternative proposition—marry his unwanted daughter, Sara Beth, in exchange for a two-year extension. Out of options, money, and time, Layken agrees to the bargain. Now, he has two years to make a living off the land while he shares his life with a stranger. If he fails at either, he’ll lose it all.
The Knotted Ringby Myra Hargrave McIlvain
Next Chapter
412 pages; Paperback, Hardcover, eBook
Susannah Mobley, expecting a baby by her lover, a slave owned by her family, submits to an arranged marriage to Hezekiah James who is headed to Texas to claim a Spanish land grant. Caught in a series of lies about the origin of a beautiful ring woven from her red hair and the circumstances of her pregnancy, Susannah embarks on the harsh trip to Texas, grieving for her lost love and determined to control her destiny.
Looking After Lilyby Cindy Bonner
Deck Night Press
286 pages; Paperback, eBook
Lily is as hardworking and independent as they come. Haywood is a tough Texas outlaw who likes hard liquor, soft women, and a life free of fetters. So when he promises to look after his jailed brother's young wife, he faces the first problem his .45 can't solve. He wants to settle her someplace but finds it's not so easy to leave Lily behind. For one thing, she keeps coming up with what he needs: a horse, money, the common sense he doesn't have. When they journey through dangerous country, and he witnesses how brave she is, Haywood finds himself coming close to breaking the only law he ever vowed to respect—yielding to his desire for the one woman he knows he cannot touch.
by Lisa A. Traugott
398 pages; eBook, Paperback
It’s 1739. An abused girl accused of witchcraft must be defended by a man married to an actual witch. William MacLeod takes on a daunting task—rescue young Annaliese from the clutches of her tormentors in the Virginia colony and deliver her safely to her aristocratic father in London. But lurking in the shadows are enemies eager to expose MacLeod’s own wife, Fiona, as a witch with a dark secret. Their perilous journey takes an unexpected turn when their ship wrecks, and Annaliese’s haunting nightmares and unexplained Devil Marks trigger suspicion among the crew. Tension peaks when MacLeod must become Annaliese’s unwavering protector in a witch trial. To Rescue a Witch navigates themes of betrayal and redemption, in a spellbinding narrative that blends history, magic, and the unyielding resilience of the human spirit.
MYSTERY / CRIME
by Amber Royer
Golden Tip Press
277 pages; ebook, Paperback
Felicity Koerber is finally getting her life together. She has a fiancé, her bean to bar chocolate shop on Galveston’s historic Strand has become a gathering spot for the community, and she is ready to embrace whatever the future holds. She’s ready for another launch party – despite the disaster at her grand opening, when she’d first gotten involved with solving a murder. And this time she’s embracing her status as a sleuth. She’s hosting a murder mystery weekend to celebrate the new Mystery Flavor line of craft chocolate bars. She’s held a contest to choose the attendees, who will all stay at her aunt’s flip hotel and enjoy the island. It’s all supposed to be perfectly random – only, Felicity starts to uncover connections between her guests. When one of them winds up murdered, Felicity has to keep her aunt from becoming the main suspect.
The Desk from Hobokenby ML Condike
Harbor Lane Books, LLC
446 pages; Paperback, eBook, Hardcover
After a personal loss, forensic genealogist RaeJean Hunter accepts what she believes is a straightforward case to ease back into the game: a student at Connecticut College has found human remains on the school campus. The College hires RaeJean to confirm their tentative identification that it’s a woman named Mary Rogers, whose cause of death has never been determined. Unfortunately, it becomes downright dangerous. Someone thwarts her investigation of the same case that inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.” Still, she meets relatives, some helpful and others not, amid escalating threats. Using her skills, including DNA analysis, historical records research, genealogy mapping, and guidance from a mystical antique desk, she follows every clue.
Sugar on the Bonesby Joe Lansdale
Mulholland Books
317 pages; ebook, Hardcover
In this holy mess of a case for the "perpetual bad boy" (New York Times) sleuths in the beloved Hap and Leonard series, PI Duo Hap and Leonard investigate the untimely death of a woman whose family stood much to gain from her passing.
Minnie Polson is dead. Burned to a crisp in a fire so big and bad it had to be deliberate. The only thing worse is that Hap and Leonard could have prevented it. Maybe. Did Minnie’s foolish, cash-strapped family really have it in them to commit a crime this grisly? Or is there a larger, far more sinister scheme at work?
Irreverent, wise-cracking, and full of atmosphere and bite, Sugar on the Bones is not to be missed.
ROMANCE
by Kimberly Packard
Abalos Publishing
286; Paperback, eBook
Josie Gardner's life revolves around her amazing children and her career. But, when her husband threatens to take her kids in their divorce, and her business is at risk of failing, a panic attack shatters her grip on reality...and the present. Josie wakes up in her teenage bedroom, thirty years in the past. She's forced to relive her emotionally devastating senior year of high school. Determined to get back to her children in her own time, Josie tries to fix the mistakes she made, in the hope that righting wrongs will send her back to the present. But when tempted by her high school crush Josie faces the possibility of losing her future for good. Would you take a second chance for love...even if it meant losing everything?
SHORT STORIES
Shaharazad's Giftby Gretchen McCullough
Cune Press
198 pages; Paperback, eBook
Shahrazad’s Gift is a collection of linked short stories set in contemporary Cairo—magical, absurd and humorous. The author focuses on the off-beat, little-known stories, far from CNN news: a Swedish belly dancer who taps into the Oriental fantasies of her clientele; a Japanese woman studying Arabic, driven mad by the noise and chaos of the city; a frustrated Egyptian housewife who becomes obsessed by the activities of her Western gay neighbor; an American journalist who covered the civil war in Beirut who finds friendship with her Egyptian dentist. We also meet the two protagonists of McCullough's Confessions of a Knight Errant, before their escapades in that story. These stories are told in the tradition of A Thousand and One Nights.
THRILLER / SUSPENSE
by Joel Burcat
Sunbury Press, Inc.
244 pages; Paperback, eBook
REAP THE WIND is THE PERFECT STORM meets THE FIRM.
The novel is an action/adventure thriller in which three lawyers flee Houston heading to Cincinnati in a rented Lincoln Town Car. They must drive across Texas and the Midwest in the midst of the worst climate change-induced hurricane of the century so Josh Goldberg can be with his girlfriend who is giving birth to their baby. They have to survive a hurricane, tornado, hailstorm, driving rain, and each other to get there.
MEMOIR
by Babette Fraser Hale
Winedale Publishing
312 pages; Paperback
In this intimate rendering of a relationship we learn how deceptive surface impressions can be.
Leon Hale, author of Bonney’s Place, was sixty years old, a “country boy” who wrote about rural Texans with humor and sensitivity in his popular column for The Houston Post and, later the Houston Chronicle. Babette Fraser at thirty-six was a child of privilege, a city girl educated abroad, struggling in her career while raising a young son. No one thought it could work.
Even Hale himself held serious doubts. But it did endure. The interior congruencies they discovered through a long and turbulent courtship knit them tightly together for the rest of his life.
And when he died during the Pandemic isolation period, searing levels of grief and doubt threatened Babette’s understanding of the partnership and marriage that had sustained her for forty years. Had he really been the person she thought he was? Had he kept secrets that would forever change her view of him?
In candid, evocative prose, she explores the distorted perceptions that often follow the death of a cherished spouse, and the loving resolution that allows life to go on.
TRUE CRIME
by Christena Stephens
Stoney Creek Publishing
286 pages; Paperback, eBook
On a nearly moonless night in October 1943, a single gunshot rang out in Littlefield, Texas. A prominent Texas doctor and his wife were found bound, shot, beaten, and murdered. The only witness: their five-year-old daughter, who was bound to silence and refused to speak about what happened. Author and historian Christena Stephens spent more than a decade researching, re-examining every twist and turn in the legal process, uncovering new evidence, and drawing new conclusions about who might have been responsible. She also convinced Jo Ann Hunt to break 70 years of silence and tell her story for the first time. Bound in Silence is a true crime tour-de-force, a meticulously researched, impeccably told tale of unsolved murder on the High Plains.
SCIENCE
by Ralph B. Lilly, Diane F. Kramer, Joyce Stamp Lilly
Stoney Creek Publishing
Paperback, eBook, Audiobook, Hardcover
“Discharged from a hospital just means you’re not dead.” These words of Ralph B. Lilly, M.D., describe his early struggle to recover from a traumatic brain injury. Lilly was a forty-four-year-old practicing neurologist sitting on his motorcycle at a red light when a drunk driver rear-ended him in 1980. In the ICU, after regaining consciousness and being told what happened, he asked, “What’s a hospital? What’s a motorcycle?” This tragic experience transformed his life and his approach to his neurology practice: doctors treat those with brain injury; but loved ones heal them. This memoir weaves together Ralph Lilly’s experience with a collage of stories about his patients and their healers. After his recovery, Lilly retrained in the emerging field of behavioral neurology, which focuses on behavior, memory, cognition, and emotion after brain injury.
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