In Joe Pepper, the title character, while awaiting a hangman’s noose, tells the story of how he discovered a propensity for violence while seeking revenge. The irony is that Joe’s keen sense of justice puts him on he wrong side of the law. Long Way to Texas, taking place just after the Civil War battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico, is the story of Lt. David Buckalew, whose remnant of Confederate riflemen is under siege and low on rations and water. Complicating matters is the young officer’s self-doubt and fear of failure. Thomas Canfield of Eyes of the Hawk, known to the Mexican citizens of his town of Stonehill, Texas, as "El Gavilán" — the Hawk — is not a man to forgive a wrong. He sets out to prove this to an insolent ranchman rival who intends building a fortune at Canfield’s expense. The Hawk has a radically different idea: he will destroy the town before yielding to his enemy. This omnibus edition features a new introduction by Dale L. Walker, author of twenty-three novels and a past president of the Western Writers of America. At the publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied.

On a long dark road in deep East Texas, James Byrd Jr. was dragged to his death behind a pickup truck one summer night in 1998. The brutal modern-day lynching stunned people across America and left everyone at a loss to explain how such a heinous crime could possibly happen in our more racially enlightened times. Many eventually found an answer in the fact that two of the three men convicted of the murder had ties to the white supremacist Confederate Knights of America. In the ex-convict ringleader, Bill King, whose body was covered in racist and satanic tattoos, people saw the ultimate monster, someone so inhuman that his crime could be easily explained as the act of a racist psychopath. Few, if any, asked or cared what long dark road of life experiences had turned Bill King into someone capable of committing such a crime. In this gripping account of the murder and its aftermath, Ricardo Ainslie builds an unprecedented psychological profile of Bill King that provides the fullest possible explanation of how a man who was not raised in a racist family, who had African American friends in childhood, could end up on death row for viciously killing a black man. Ainslie draws on exclusive in-prison interviews with King, as well as with Shawn Berry (another of the perpetrators), King's father, Jasper residents, and law enforcement and judicial officials, to lay bare the psychological and social forces—as well as mere chance—that converged in a murder on that June night. Ainslie delves into the whole of King's life to discover how his unstable family relationships and emotional vulnerability made him especially susceptible to the white supremacist ideology he adopted while in jail for lesser crimes. With its depth of insight, Long Dark Road not only answers the question of why such a racially motivated murder happened in our time, but it also offers a frightening, cautionary tale of the urgent need to intervene in troubled young lives and to reform our violent, racist-breeding prisons. As Ainslie chillingly concludes, far from being an inhuman monster whom we can simply dismiss, "Bill King may be more like the rest of us than we care to believe."

This affecting novel follows the troubled lives of three teens in deep South Texas

Describes growing up in small town West Texas in the early twentieth century focusing on fishing, festivals, and friendships. Also discusses the difficult struggles which many people experienced as well as portraying unusual people in humorous anecdotes.

America's dialogue on race relations has fragmented into specialized, often academic discussions. Now, after seven years of extraordinary, on-the-ground reporting, bestselling author Jonathan Coleman revives a broader perspective by showing us, dramatically and poignantly, how race continues to affect us all on a human level: in our daily lives, in our workplaces, in our hopes, and in our fears.

The new Confederacy, facing into the Union cannon, had too much on its hands to send troops to the Texas frontier to hold back the Indians. Instead, it authorized the State of Texas to raise its own troops. Many kinds of men drifted into the Texas Mounted Rifles. Some thought it might be safer than fighting in far off Virginia. Many were merely young men a-thirst for adventure. Some were settlers who saw this as the best way to protect their families and homes against the murderous thrusts of the Comanche. And some were men who still loved the Union, who had lived too long under that gallant flag to turn their guns against it now. Such a man was Scout Sam Houston Cloud... At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower—and a Texas native—takes us on a journey through the most controversial state in America. • “Beautifully written…. Essential reading [for] anyone who wants to understand how one state changed the trajectory of the country.” —NPR Texas is a red state, but the cities are blue and among the most diverse in the nation. Oil is still king, but Texas now leads California in technology exports. Low taxes and minimal regulation have produced extraordinary growth, but also striking income disparities. Texas looks a lot like the America that Donald Trump wants to create. Bringing together the historical and the contemporary, the political and the personal, Texas native Lawrence Wright gives us a colorful, wide-ranging portrait of a state that not only reflects our country as it is, but as it may become—and shows how the battle for Texas’s soul encompasses us all.