Focusing on one of the most impressive collections of horse spurs in Texas, expert
appraiser Bruce Bartlett of San Antonio has compiled a fact-filled 96-page book with

Relive many of the more colorful adventures of “the Rhino,” the Texas bail enforcement agent who has taken more than 5,000 fugitives off the streets in a career spanning 25 years. “I am not being immodest; I am the best hunter around,” says James. “I find the prey when everyone else has already given up.”

$24.95  Our Gang Publishing

This popular history carefully distinguishes known facts from myth and legend while profiling some of the worst outlaws and shootists Texas has ever produced. Written in a breezy, non-academic style, it details obscure but intriguing gunfights, chases and robberies that occurred between the Civil War and the Great Depression.

$16.95  Pelican Publishing Company

by Beth Goulart

I like to read cookbooks before bed. These days, The Taste of Country Cooking by the late guru of southern cooking, Edna Lewis, graces my bedside table – and I’m loving every sentence.

Lewis came of age during the Great Depression, growing up in a small agrarian community founded by freed slaves in Virginia. Her childhood, as she recalls it, was simple but joy-filled. Joy fills the pages of her book in even the most unexpected places, like this one, in the introduction to her chapter called "Spring":

Another pleasure was following the plough. I loved walking barefoot behind my father in the newly ploughed furrow, carefully putting one foot down before the other and pressing it into the warm, ploughed earth, so comforting to the soles of my feet.