Thirty-eight years in Muleshoe, Texas, has gifted me with a wealth of stories about the people, places, and history of our little town in the Blackwater Valley. But as time goes by, these priceless stories and town history are often lost forever as the people who know the details die and take their history to the grave with them. The Bright Lights of Muleshoe is a repository of West Texas lore set in a place with a name as unique as its people-Muleshoe. From a great newspaper sting to the travels of a fiberglass mule, this book tells the rich history of small-town life. But you don't have to be from Muleshoe to enjoy these stories because the common denominator in each and every one is the human experience. "Stories of intrigue and history define so many small towns in our Texas, and Muleshoe has a unique version of its own. From the life-size statue of "Ol' Pete," the memorial to a mule, to the many individuals who have claimed this town on the Llano Estacado their home, The Bright Lights of Muleshoe gives insight into this island upon an ocean of land." -WYMAN MEINZER, award-winning photographer "As its tongue-in-cheek title suggests, The Bright Lights of Muleshoe offers a refreshing take on small-town life in remote West Texas. The collection of entertaining, well-researched stories ranges from the origin of one of the state's oldest Mexican restaurants to the shock-and-awe experience of latter-day dust storms. Profiles of local personalities reveal an area where residents value hard work, honesty, and humor. An accomplished photographer, the author illustrates this delightful compilation with numerous color photographs." -NOLA MCKEY, former senior editor of Texas Highways and author of From Tea Cakes to Tamales: Third-Generation Texas Recipes "Meet the people and places of Muleshoe, Texas, through the eyes of Alice Liles. If you have never heard of Muleshoe you will want to visit the place with a most unusual name and see the National Mule Memorial, the Muleshoe Heritage Foundation, the Muleshoe Area Public Library, and the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, the first established in the state of Texas. If you are from Muleshoe, you'll love the stories about your hometown. The people of Muleshoe make a difference!" -MAGANN RENNELS, Owner of Gil Lamb Advertising/Channel 6, www.muleshoetv.com "Bravo to Alice Liles for capturing the broader texture of small-town America through the stories from her adopted home on the Texas High Plains. One has to chuckle at the thought of how poetic the name of the town would have been had the founders named it "Jennyslipper" instead of "Muleshoe." -GERALD E. MCLEOD, Author of Day Trips for the Austin Chronicle

Winner, 2020 Liz Carpenter Award For Best Book on the History of Women The realm of ranching history has long been dominated by men, from tales—tall or true—of cowboys and cattlemen, to a century’s worth of male writers and historians who have been the primary chroniclers of Texas history. As women’s history has increasingly gained a foothold not only as a field worthy of study but as a bold and innovative way of understanding the past, new generations of scholars are rethinking the once-familiar settings of the past. In doing so, they reveal that women not only exercised agency in otherwise constrained environments but were also integral to the ranching heritage that so many Texans hold dear. Texas Women and Ranching: On the Range, at the Rodeo, and in Their Communities explores a variety of roles women played on the western ranch. The essays here cover a range of topics, from early Tejana businesswomen and Anglo philanthropists to rodeos and fence-cutting range wars. The names of some of the women featured may be familiar to those who know Texas ranching history—Alice East and Frances Kallison, for example. Others came from less well-known or wealthy families. In every case, they proved themselves to be resourceful women and unique individuals who survived by their own wits in cattle country. This book is a major contribution to several fields—Texas history, western history, and women’s history—that are, at last, beginning to converge.

Widely disliked muleshoer Jarvis Dickle is murdered at his shop in Muleshoe, Texas, and Sheriff Asa Hunt investigates.

Sooner tells the remarkable rise of Lincoln Riley, formerly America’s youngest college football head coach and the “quarterback whisperer” of the University of Oklahoma. Legendary University of Oklahoma head coach Bob Stoops shook the college football world in 2017 when he handpicked Lincoln Riley to be his successor at the perennial powerhouse. At age thirty-three. In his first three seasons at Oklahoma, Riley’s teams dominated the Big 12 to reach the national semifinals each year, and two of his quarterbacks—Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray—won the Heisman Trophy and were No. 1 overall picks by the Cleveland Browns and Arizona Cardinals in the NFL draft. In Sooner, Brandon Sneed charts Riley’s remarkable ascent from small-town star quarterback in West Texas, to walk-on turned assistant coach at Texas Tech, where he learned the revolutionary Air Raid system from Mike Leach, to offensive coordinator at East Carolina, to football titan Oklahoma. It takes more than sheer talent to go toe to toe with the brilliant strategists of the modern game—like The University of Alabama’s Nick Saban, University of Texas’s Tom Herman, and Ohio State’s Urban Meyer—and Sneed shows how this wunderkind’s commitment, grit, relationships, pain, brains, and passion have empowered him to compete. And win. More important than the zealous fans, the intense rivalries, and the multimillion-dollar contracts, are the human connections that lie at the heart of Lincoln Riley’s triumphs as a coach. Sooner is not only the story of a mastermind in the making, but also a reminder of the many people who make each of us who we are.

“Stories of intrigue and history define so many small towns in our Texas, and Muleshoe has a unique version of its own. From the life-size statue of “Ol’ Pete,” the memorial to a mule, to the many individuals who have claimed this town on the Llano Estacado their home, The Bright Lights of Muleshoe gives insight into this island upon an ocean of land.” -WYMAN MEINZER, Award-winning photographer “As its tongue-in-cheek title suggests, The Bright Lights of Muleshoe offers a refreshing take on small-town life in remote West Texas. The collection of entertaining, well-researched stories ranges from the origin of one of the state’s oldest Mexican restaurants to the shock-and-awe experience of latter-day dust storms. Profiles of local personalities reveal an area where residents value hard work, honesty, and humor. An accomplished photographer, the author illustrates this delightful compilation with numerous color photographs.” -NOLA MCKEY, Former senior editor of Texas Highways and author of From Tea Cakes to Tamales: Third-Generation Texas Recipes “Meet the people and places of Muleshoe, Texas, through the eyes of Alice Liles. If you have never heard of Muleshoe you will want to visit the place with a most unusual name and see the National Mule Memorial, the Muleshoe Heritage Foundation, the Muleshoe Area Public Library, and the Muleshoe National Wildlife Refuge, the first established in the state of Texas. If you are from Muleshoe, you’ll love the stories about your hometown. The people of Muleshoe make a difference!” -MAGANN RENNELS, Owner of Gil Lamb Advertising/Channel 6, www.muleshoetv.com “Bravo to Alice Liles for capturing the broader texture of small town America through the stories from her adopted home on the Texas High Plains. One has to chuckle at the thought of how poetic the name of the town would have been had the founders named it “Jennyslipper” instead of “Muleshoe.” -GERALD E. MCLEOD, Author of Day Trips for the Austin Chronicle

"Her feet may be in town, but her ass - and the rest of her is in the county," said Canyon Police Chief Haskell Maddox. "Obviously she was shot in the city --- she just fell into the county," responded Sheriff's Patrol Deputy Savanna Breeze. "That means I've got -- at best -- assault with a deadly weapon and attempted murder in the city. She didn't die until she was in the county. So, this is in the county's lap."Nobody wanted to deal with the murder of Myrtle Dagmar Puckett; the head of the North American Atheists Foundation. But when there's a Corpse In Canyon, a small town in the Texas Panhandle, it's somebody's case to solve and mess to clean up. Sometimes murder is just a bitch.

Texas boasts greater bird diversity than almost any state, with more than six hundred species living in or passing through during spring and fall migrations. Jennifer L. Bristol’s Parking Lot Birding speaks to people who would love to observe a wide variety of birds in easy access locations that don’t require arduous hikes or a degree in ornithology. As she explains, “I have personally trudged down hundreds of miles of trails in Texas, loaded down with gear, searching for birds, only to return to the parking lot to find what I was looking for.” Drawing on her experience as a former park ranger and lifelong nature enthusiast, Bristol explores ninety birding locations that are open to the public and accessible regardless of ability or mobility. Divided by geography, with each of the nine sections centered on a large urban area or defined ecoregion, Parking Lot Birding: A Fun Guide to Discovering Birds in Texas will take readers to birds in locales from the busy heart of Dallas to the remote Muleshoe Wildlife Refuge in the plains north of Lubbock. Each birding stop includes the name and address of a specific birding location, number of species that have been recorded, and types of birding amenities offered. Locational accounts end with a “Feather Fact” that provides interesting and relevant details about selected birds in a particular region. You never know what you might see when on the beaten path, especially in a state as big and ecologically diverse as Texas. So grab your binoculars and let’s go birding!