Sam Houston is a Texas icon. General Houston signed the Texas Declaration of Independence on his 43^rd birthday, and six weeks later he led the Texas Army to a spectacular victory at San Jacinto. “Old Sam Jacinto” twice was elected president of the Republic of Texas; he served thirteen years as U.S. Senator from the State of Texas; and he won election as governor of the Lone Star State.

Before he came to Texas Houston twice lived with the Cherokee. As a young army officer he was severely wounded while leading charges at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and while still in his twenties Houston became major general of the Tennessee State Militia. In Tennessee he was elected to Congress and to the governorship, ultimately becoming the only man ever elected governor of two states. He knew and worked with fourteen consecutive U.S. presidents, from Thomas Jefferson to Abraham Lincoln, as well as Jefferson Davis, who became president of the Confederacy.

Contributing writers include: Joe R. Lansdale, David Bowles, Russell C. Connor, Anna L. Davis, Stephen Patrick, Tom Alexander, Michael H. Price, Joe McKinney, Alan Beauvais, Michael Baldwin • David Robledo • Carmen Gray, Glen Coburn, Ernie Lee, Tom Bont, E. R. Bills, Bret McCormick

Decapitated: Jack Fields—Wharton County, and Charles Myers— Tarrant County were both completely decapitated and Clemente Apolinar—Bexar County was almost decapitated.

Had to be hanged twice: Joseph Brewster—El Paso and Jack Williams—Wharton County, and Jack Post of Young County had to be hanged twice at their executions.

Famous Hanging: Joshua Bowen—Gonzales County was the brother-in-law of John Wesley Hardin and declared up to his death that the witness identified him wrong, and that it was John Wesley Hardin who committed the murder.

Mass Hanging: In 1917, thirteen African American soldiers from the 24th Infantry Division were hanged in Bexar County for murder and mutiny, when they took part in the Houston riot on August 23, 1917.

The racial disparity of those executed in Texas is also of note when you consider 280 of those executed out of the 467, or 60% were African American, during a time when African Americans made up only about 22% of the population in all of Texas.

Thoroughly researched by West Gilbreath, a career law enforcement officer, this book is a must for any Texas history buff, as well as school and public libraries.

A growing number of Texans are tired of Lone Star Conservatives, sick of being embarrassed by their political representatives and horrified by the devolution of the state conversation in terms of race, sex, sexual orientation, immigration, religious freedom, environmental responsibility, etc. From 2006-2016, Texas contrarian E.R. Bills came out swinging on these issues, and in these insightful, evocative missives, spares no purveyor of the farcical Lone Star status quo.

Bills unique perspective on these tops is indispensable. His last offering, Black Holocaust: The Paris Horror and a Legacy of Texas Terror (Eakin Press, 2015) documented an era when Texans burned an average of one African American a year at the stake for three decades. And his seminal book, The 1910 Slocum Massacre: An Act of Genocide in East Texas (The History Press, 2014) was a catalyst for the dedication of a historical marker commemorating the atrocity.

The second volume of the critically acclaimed Road Kill Series from Eakin Press, featuring seventeen Texas writers. Some of the writers are established and have been published in a variety of mediums, while others are upcoming writers who bring a wealth of talent and imagination. Edited by E.R. Bills and Bret McCormick, this collection of horror stories is sure to bring chills and make the imagination run wild. Writers include Jacklyn Baker, Andrew Kozma, Ralph Robert Moore, Jeremy Hepler, R. J. Joseph, James H. Longmore, Mario E. Martinez, E. R. Bills, Summer Baker, Dennis Pitts, Keith West, S. Kay Nash, Bryce Wilson, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Stephen Patrick, Crystal Brinkerhoff and Hayden Gilbert.

Chisum was a true pioneer, seeking open range grass farther and farther and still farther to the west. During three decades on a succession of frontier ranches, Chisum endured Indian raids, stock thievery, drought, financial reverses, and the murderous Lincoln County War. Chisum had courage, a taste for adventure, a shrewd head for business, and he confidently operated his risky frontier profession on an enormous scale.

His last ranch was the biggest, stretching for 200 miles along the Pecos River and grazing as many as 80,000 head of Jinglebob cattle. He built a headquarters complex worthy of a cattle king, relishing the role of host to one and all. After thirty spectacular years as a western rancher, Chisum died at sixty, just as his beloved open range was being enclosed by barbed wire. But he was known throughout cow country as the "Jinglebob King," the "Cattle King of the Pecos," and the "Cattle King of the West."

The couple owned a home, rental property, stocks, businesses, and two cars. They hobnobbed with local, state, and national dignitaries. They vacationed in faraway places like Montreal, Canada. The Sawners excelled in their respective spheres and claimed the social, political, and economic accoutrements commensurate with their successes. Material trappings and stature aside, the Sawners never severed their roots.

Despite their undeniable attainments, the Sawners, like other African Americans in Oklahoma, often swam against the current, regularly battling waves of bigotry and intolerance. Reminiscent of the Jim Crow South, the political waters in Oklahoma, particularly as they cascaded over racial matters, became increasingly contaminated.

This is their story—a tale of triumph amidst a backdrop of tragedy. George and Lena Sawner lived and, through their living, enhanced and enriched our lives in ways great and small.

Billy Dixon triggered the most celebrated shot in the history of the West at the Battle of Adobe Walls in 1874. A few months later, while serving as an army scout, Billy earned a Medal of Honor during an even more desperate engagement, as one of six men battling for their lives against a band of 125 warriors at the Buffalo Wallow Fight. Both of these actions took place in the Texas Panhandle, where Dixon became an icon of heroism.

Billy ran away to the West during boyhood, eagerly seeking adventure on the frontier. He worked as a woodchopper, a trapper, a bullwhacker and a muleskinner. Dixon became a buffalo hunter, displaying exceptional skills as a sharpshooter. After almost a decade as an army scout, Dixon returned to Adobe Walls to establish a bachelor home on the sparsely-settled plains.

A fellow adventure-seeker, Olive King, came to the Panhandle from back East to visit her cowboy brothers. She became a frontier schoolmarm, and she met her famous neighbor, Billy Dixon. Billy and Olive fell in love, married, and had eight children. Olive persuaded Billy to dictate his memoirs to her, and the result was a classic frontier biography, Life of “Billy” Dixon: Plainsman, Scout, and Pioneer. During a long widowhood, Olive Dixon became a significant force in Panhandle history, helping to establish the Panhandle-Plains Museum, writing and speaking about her own pioneer experiences as well as Billy’s, and erecting impressive monuments at Adobe Walls and at Buffalo Wallow.

Tucker’s career as a lawman brought him into contact with several legends of the era, including Isaac Charles Parker, better known as the “Hanging Judge.” Tucker was also present during several of the best-known episodes in the history of the “Old West,” including the lawlessness of the Indian Territory, the Johnson County Range War in Wyoming, and the Oklahoma Land Rush.

George Redman Tucker documented his life in an unpublished manuscript that tells of his exploits in law enforcement. This manuscript was the basis of much of the information in Man Hunter in Indian Country. But the author also did extensive research to separate the facts from what could best be described as embellishment by Tucker.

The story of Bonnie and Clyde—their love, their desperate killings, and their destruction in an explosion of gun fire—has fueled an American legend more than seventy years. But it is only with this book by the last surviving officer of the six who shot Bonnie and Clyde that the full story of their capture has been told.

Ted Hinton's description of a secret, illegal police trap—hidden at the time from the press and public—is one of many revelations he draws from his intimate knowledge of the greatest manhunt of the 1930s. As a Dallas lawman he spent seventeen months, night and day, on the trail of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. He knew the notorious criminals personally from the seamy, hoodlum-ridden Dallas neighborhoods where they all grew up. He shared their code of toughness and genu­inely admired the extraordinary courage, skill, and loyalty that made Bonnie and Clyde stand out almost as heroes in the public imagination. Hinton admired them, but he never doubted that they had to be stopped. The long trail could only end in a shootout and their deaths-or his.

Hinton's experiences as a green young sheriff's deputy and his compassion for outlaw lovers give Ambush an unusual dimension of humanity. Twenty-seven photographs underscore the book's vivid au­thenticity. And the author's meticulous research, using sources avail­able to no one else, makes this the definitive work of fact. The result is a powerful human drama of crime and the law: the real story of Bonnie and Clyde.

Black Wall Street 100 is a window into what distinguishes the Tulsa of today from the Tulsa of a century ago. Before peering through that porthole, we must first reflect on Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District in all its splendor and squalor, from the prodigious entrepreneurial spirit that pervaded it to the carnage that characterized the 1921 massacre to the post-massacre rebound and rebuilding that raised the District to new heights to the mid-twentieth-century decline that proved to be a second near-fatal blow to the current recalibration and rebranding of a resurgent, but differently configured, community.

Tulsa’s trajectory may be instructive for other communities similarly seeking to address their own histories of racial trauma. Conversely, Tulsa may benefit from learning more about the paths taken by other communities. Through sharing and synergy, we stand a better chance of doing the work necessary to spur healing and move farther toward the reconciliation of which we so often speak.

Thus begins Sophie's second journal, written two years later. She is now fifteen years old, and the Civil War is three years old.

Her first journal, Sophie's War, tells how she and her family live in constant danger as Unionists in the hill country of Texas, a state that has left the Union and joined the Confederacy.

Now, as the war goes on, all the able men in Comfort have been forced to leave and fight on one side or the other, including Sophie's papa and her true love, Eduard. Sophie and other women must protect themselves from vigilantes and hostile Indians.

Can Sophie and her family survive? Will the war ever end? Will Papa and Eduard return?

In 1884 the Montana Stockgrowers Association was organized in Miles City, which hosted the event for thirty-four years. Stock thieves plagued open range ranchers, and young Theodore Roosevelt impulsively called for “a war against rustlers.” But pioneer Montana cattleman Granville Stuart already was quietly organizing deadly retaliation, and soon his fourteen “Stuart’s Stranglers” killed nineteen rustlers in the countryside.

Fort Keogh at its height boasted a garrison and civilian employees totaling nearly 1,000 men. Every night the troopers caroused at the saloons and parlor houses of Miles City. There were frequent brawls involving fists and boots, but deadly encounters were rare. There was one fatal shooting, one throat-cutting, and one lynching. Otherwise, troopers and civilians enjoyed hard-drinking fun. Fort Keogh became known as a party post, complete with balls and parties for officers and ladies - including a memorable evening with John Philip Sousa and his US Marine Band. Meanwhile, Miles City became famous as a good time town, with street dances and frequent parades.

The Ride captures the heartbeat of the man and the moment in this profoundly moving historical narrative that will leave readers in suspense. For what happened next would forever be etched in rodeo history and lore . . .

Somewhere Out There, There’s More is a deeply personal and eye-opening memoir about adoption, identity, and the stories we think we know about ourselves.

For decades, the author believed she understood her adoption story so well that she wrote her first book, Somewhere Out There: My Experience of Adoption and My Search for Understanding. But years later, a shocking discovery revealed that what she had been told—and what she had believed—was not the whole truth.

Her journey began with a simple and practical need: medical history. Like many adoptees, she had little to no accurate information about her origins. What started as a search for health records became an investigation that exposed the barriers adoptees face when trying to access their own histories—and the carefully crafted narratives adoption agencies often provided.

Adopted through the Homestead Maternity Home in Fort Worth, Texas, the author uncovers how agencies “marketed” children to adoptive parents, often repeating identical and sometimes misleading birth-parent profiles. With the help of a professional searcher—and her own persistence—she follows the trail from Texas to Hawaii to North Dakota, discovering just how small the world can be, and how complicated the truth often is.

Drawing on her experience as a professional counselor, the author explores the feelings of abandonment, emptiness, and longing that many adoptees experience at some point in their lives. She reflects honestly on reunion, connection, and the realization that finding biological family does not automatically make someone whole. DNA, she reminds us, does not define family.

Written with vulnerability, insight, and unexpected twists, Somewhere Out There, There’s More is for anyone touched by adoption—adoptees, adoptive parents, birth families, and professionals—as well as readers who enjoy heartfelt stories of self-discovery. Ultimately, it is a powerful reminder that self-acceptance is the journey we all share, and that even when we think the story is complete, there may always be more.