Stirring Prose: Cooking with Texas Authors is a delightfully revealing look at some of Texas's best writers. Initially conceived as a Who's Who of Texas authors, Deborah Douglas quickly realized that asking authors to write about their favorite recipes freed them from "the big toe-digging constraints of having to talk directly about themselves. The resulting off-center reflections are brilliant slices of their personalities and their writing styles." A traditional cookbook this is not. Each author contributed to Stirring Prose in a personal, distinctive way. Billy Porterfield reveals his fantasies about a voluptuous restaurant owner and a dream-enhanced recipe for "game hen fricassee with a French New Guinea twist." Sunny Nash gives us an enticing snapshot of her grandmother, Bigmama, and divulges the secret to beautiful skin with Bigmama's Mysterious Rose Water Splash. And John Erickson shares his Bachelor Cowboy's Delight, the meal he eats over and over when his wife and children are out of town, and which consists of steak, lettuce salad, and green peas. Robert Flynn, Liz Carpenter, Elmer Kelton, and thirty-three others also share their recipes and food stories. Some of these recipes, such as Dr. [Larry L.] King's Asian Flu Hot Liquid Life-Saver, almost beg for a "do not try this at home" warning. Others, such as Cindy Bonner's Bohemian Kolaches and Clay Reynolds's Tex-Mex Breakfast, will inspire readers to start cooking. All are enticing for their tasty prose. Each recipe is accompanied by a photograph, a publication list, and an engaging, personalized introduction by Douglas, herself a fine writer, funny and charming. Although not an exhaustive collection of Texas writers, Stirring Prose: Cooking with Texas Authors is a tantalizing peek at thirty-nine talented Texas writers and their work.

In these nine evocative essays, Barbara Hurd explores the seductive allure of bogs, swamps, and wetlands. Hurd's forays into the land of carnivorous plants, swamp gas, and bog men provide fertile ground for rich thoughts about mythology, literature, Eastern spirituality, and human longing. In her observations of these muddy environments, she finds ample metaphor for human creativity, 9imagination, and fear.

This lovely book pairs selections of translated Greek and Roman verse from Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, among others, with fine examples of paintings, sculpture, vases, and decorative objects. The excerpts, which cover the period from the eighth century B.C. to the early Middle Ages, were chosen from famous works, such as Homer's Iliad as well as less well-known pieces, such as the writings of the Greek poet Ibycus. This book demonstrates that the human preoccupation with love in all its forms has inspired writers for millennia: from the expression of enduring faithfulness and familial affection in Homer's description of Hector and Andromache to the passionate intensity portrayed by the later Greek lyric poets and the light-hearted depiction of love as a lost little boy by the anonymous authors of the Inacreontea. The book includes a brief introduction to Greek and Roman views on love and marriage, a short biographical note on each of the major poets, and a glossary of mythical and geographical names.