SECRETS DIVIDE A FAMILY... For Michael Cavanaugh’s entire life, his mother has kept a shocking secret: that she was married once before she married his father, and she gave birth to that man’s child. Stunned that the mother who’d loved him so would abandon a child and furious with his mother’s deceit, he sets out to find the older brother he has always wanted. Ian McLaren, the favorite son of Sweetgrass Springs, has a full plate: a wife he adores, a baby on the way, a ranch to run and a town that depends on him. When a stranger arrives in town with the staggering news that he and Ian share a mother—the woman he’ll never forgive for abandoning him and his dad—his world tilts off its axis. Gordon McLaren has had years to regret the path he chose that parted him from the only woman he’s ever loved. Now he is torn between his longing to see her again and the anguish doing so would cause the son he’s worked so hard to protect all these years. Walking away from the child she cherished and the man she loved was far from easy for Sophia Bancroft McLaren Cavanaugh. Facing them again would be the single most terrifying step she’s undertaken since the day she left to save her sanity—and Gordon forbade her to return. CAN LOVE REUNITE THEM? Secrets divide the four of them, and the anguish of the past makes it impossible to hope they could ever overcome the years of heartache-- Until the threat of an even more unbearable loss gives them one last chance to unite. "Jean Brashear's distinctive storytelling voice instantly draws in the reader. She writes with warmth and emotional truth. The depth of her understanding of human nature marks her as a writer to watch, a writer to read and a writer to enjoy."~#1 New York Times bestselling author Debbie Macomber

When a teenager goes missing from the Beacon of Hope School, Texas Ranger Wyatt Sheridan and school director Kate Winslow are forced into a dangerous struggle against a human trafficking organization. But the battle brings dire consequences as Wyatt's daughter is terrorized and Kate is kidnapped. Now it's personal, and Wyatt finds both his faith and investigative skills challenged as he fights to discover the mastermind behind the ring before evil destroys everyone he loves.

What happens when a woman on the run ends up married to the richest man in Texas? Keely O’Brien has spent the past five months on the run, but no matter what she does, she can’t seem to evade the ring of dangerous criminals that killed her brother in Chicago. When she spots an ad for a wife from the owner of a small ranch on a remote stretch of Texan desert, she knows she’s found the perfect hiding spot. The Wolf Point Ring might be searching far and wide for her, but they wouldn’t think to look in tiny, sun-scorched town of Twin Rivers, Texas. Now if she can just keep her new husband from finding out why she really married him… Agamemnon “Wes” Westin’s feet might be firmly planted in West Texas soil, but his heart is running… Running from the loss of his first wife and stillborn daughter, and running from the fear of suffering loss again. Unfortunately, he has little choice about needing to marry, but he does have a choice about who he marries. If he has to share his roof with someone, he wants a woman who works hard and doesn’t complain. That’s why he decides to run an ad for a bride, claiming that he owns a small ranch, rather than the sprawling cattle empire he inherited from his father. After all, what woman is going to be upset when she finds out her husband is one of the richest men in Texas? When Wes discovers Keely is hiding from criminals who want her dead, he can’t help but protect her—even if she’s irate with him for lying about the size of his ranch. When danger arrives in Twin Rivers, both Wes and Keely find themselves facing their deepest fears. Will they let their pain and past losses ruin their dreams? Or will Wes and Keely find a way to forge a new life together? From jagged mountains and green river valleys, to cattle ranches and vivid sunsets, Tomorrow’s Constant Hope offers a meaningful story about simpler times, sincere faith, and learning to love again after loss.

Texas-based affiliates in the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)—built on ideas, principles, and actions from the late Saul Alinsky—offer a strong, mature organizing model compared with other community organizations in the state and the United States as a whole. IAF affiliates’ members consist of institutions, most of them faith-based congregations and synagogues. Local volunteer leaders in those institutions work together in relationships of trust that draw strength, unity, and purpose from IAF principles and the social-justice precepts of their different faiths. In Hope for Justice and Power, Kathleen Staudt examines the twenty-first-century activities of the Texas IAF in multiple cities and towns around the state, drawing on forty years of academic teaching and on twenty years of active leadership experiences in the IAF. She identifies major contradictions, tensions, and their resolutions in IAF organizing related to centralism versus local control, reformist versus radical goals, stable revenue generation, greater gender balance in leadership, and evolving IAF principles. The political context in modern Texas is a challenging one compared to the Texas IAF founding period in the last quarter of the twentieth century, yet local IAF volunteer leaders achieve their goals with a strong political base in divergent urban regions around the state. With declining religious affiliation in U.S. society, the Texas IAF has begun to recruit members from broad-based institutions, such as schools and health clinics. The hope and winnable goals that sustain IAF organizing show the importance of organized power, trained volunteer leaders, and relationships with public officials in between elections. With cross-class alliances, IAF affiliates work to foster equitable change toward a more just society. To analyze the Texas IAF, Staudt draws on participant observation in El Paso, statewide meetings and training, on interviews, and on archival documents and media coverage. This book will appeal to those interested in community-based organizing and leadership, Mexican American and women’s politics, civic-capacity building in education, political socialization, and both Texas and urban politics.

A Michael L. Printz Honor Book "This is East Texas, and there's lines. Lines you cross, lines you don't cross. That clear?" New London, Texas. 1937. Naomi Vargas and Wash Fuller know about the lines in East Texas as well as anyone. They know the signs that mark them. They know the people who enforce them. But sometimes the attraction between two people is so powerful it breaks through even the most entrenched color lines. And the consequences can be explosive. Ashley Hope Pérez takes the facts of the 1937 New London school explosion—the worst school disaster in American history—as a backdrop for a riveting novel about segregation, love, family, and the forces that destroy people. "[This] layered tale of color lines, love and struggle in an East Texas oil town is a pit-in-the-stomach family drama that goes down like it should, with pain and fascination, like a mix of sugary medicine and artisanal moonshine."—The New York Times Book Review "Pérez deftly weaves [an] unflinchingly intense narrative....A powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism."―starred, Kirkus Reviews "This book presents a range of human nature, from kindness and love to acts of racial and sexual violence. The work resonates with fear, hope, love, and the importance of memory....Set against the backdrop of an actual historical event, Pérez...gives voice to many long-omitted facets of U.S. history."―starred, School Library Journal

THE STORY: In this hilarious, fast-paced comedy, the inhabitants of one of the smallest trailer parks in Texas—four doublewides and a shed—are thrown for a loop when they realize the nearby town of Tugaloo is determined to annex them. And it’s not as if they don’t already have enough to deal with. Joveeta Crumpler has had it up to here, having been passed over again for a promotion at work. On top of this, she has an ongoing battle to keep her feisty mother, Caprice, out of the local bar and worries that her good-ol’-boy brother, Baby Crumpler, is taking his participation in a womanless beauty pageant way too seriously. Joveeta’s big-hearted best friend, Georgia Dean Rudd, is struggling to keep her diner and finances afloat, but she just can’t curb her impulse to take in every stray cat, possum, and armadillo that wanders by. Then there’s Big Ethel Satterwhite, who’s nobody’s fool. But tough as she is, she’s continually frustrated by her clients at Stairway To Heaven Retirement Village as well as her mule-headed husband, O.C., who shows far more affection for his BarcaLounger than he does for Big Ethel. And all the residents are plagued by Haywood Sloggett, the curmudgeon from across the road, who loathes their “trailer-trash” ways, especially their keeping a life-size illuminated nativity scene up year ’round. But these friends, enemies, and neighbors realize they’ll have to work together to defeat the encroaching annexation if they—and their way of life—have a snowball’s chance to survive being swallowed up by “the big guys.” The rollicking mayhem of this flat-out funny Jones Hope Wooten comedy escalates as the residents attempt to secede from Texas, discover a traitor in their midst, and turn the tables in a surprising and side-splitting finale. So grab your Stetson and come on over to Doublewide, Texas, where life is double the fun, double the joy, and where audiences double over with laughter!

(Applause Books). Lawrence J. Quirk delves into every personal and professional aspect of Bob Hope's long, complex and dramatic life; rising by sheer dint of will to great wealth and fame. Why did Hope become so identified with sponsoring the Vietnam War? What's the real scoop on his relationship with Bing Crosby? How far astray did Hope's frankly oversexed nature lead him from the marriage he successfully maintained with Dolores for over sixty years? Quirk writes about Hope based on long experience. He knew and interviewed Bob Hope while serving as an army seargeant during the Korean war and later as entertainment editor, and interviewer of top stars for over forty years. Quirk approaches his subject with original observations born of years of studying this most celebrated, yet in some ways most mysterious of entertainment giants.