Texas books

Here's a place to talk about fiction/nonfiction set in Texas.

I have a couple of mystery series that I enjoy which are set in Texas, but for this one I am counting Dearly Depotted, which is actually the third or so in a series about a florist who is always sleuthing.

Thanks, Cindy I couldn't remember what state that series was set in. Now I've got another state done!

Nice!

The China Bayles series by Susan Wittig Albert is set in Texas - someplace between Austin and San Antonio.

Almost all of Joan Lowery Nixon's young adult mysteries take place in Houston.

I really enjoyed Elizabeth Berg's Durable Goods, which is set in Texas.

Sarah Bird's early works are set around UT and conjure up Austin in the good ole 80s: The Boyfriend School and Alamo House or Women Without Men, Men Without Brains are two of my all-time favorites.

Julie Ortolon's "Pearl Island" romances (Lead Me On, Don't Tempt Me, and Falling for You) are set on Galveston, about some siblings running a bed and breakfast. Each one deals with a different sibling falling in love.

Parts of Julie and Julia take place in Austin. Julie Powell is a homegirl. I laughed throughout the book at places I remembered as a kid.

Are there any of Larry McMurtry's books that AREN'T Texas based? Check out Lonesome Dove, Streets of Laredo or The Last Picture Show.

I have to rave since he's a fellow alumnus of UNT (actually NTSU). :)

The only one I can think of right away that takes place somewhere else is Pretty Boy Floyd, which takes place in Oklahoma.

True Women by Janice Woods Windle.
It was highly recommended in the Texas History group here at LT. Really enjoyed the story, and 'the sense of place' was well drawn.

“Vivid stories of the women in my family had been passed down ... for six generations: stories about the widows of the Alamo and how Euphemia nearly died in the Runaway Scrape and how her sister Sarah outsmarted the Comanches, stories about the women in my family who lived and loved and died in a river of time reaching back to the Alamo and Sam Houston. They were great epic tales of war and adventure, love and murder, violence and redemption."

I read this several years ago and still think of it from time to time, obviously I thought it was a great read. I kept my copy and have loaned it many times!

One of Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, Echo Burning is set in Texas. These are kind of hard-hitting action thrillers and in this one, Reacher moves into the bunkhouse on a ranch in order to try and protect a woman.

When Zachary Beaver Came to Town is an award winning young adult book about what happened when a 600 pound boy came to live in small Texas town in the summer of 1971.

I recently finished Revenge of the Girl with the Great Personality by Elizabeth Eulberg, a mainstream YA novel set in a Dallas suburb, in which the teen protagonist is tired of arranging her life around her seven-year-old sister's beauty pageant circuit. Although I know that these pageants can take place all over the country, Texas does seem to me to have a higher-than-usual preoccupation with beauty pageants, debutantes, cheerleading, and the like.

But now I'm reaing Galveston by Sean Stewart, a magic realism/fantasy novel set in Galveston after a "food" of magic has wiped out industrialization, and a permanent Mardi Gras is taking place just on the other side of reality, where people can get stuck if they wander.... Loving it so far! I believe it won the World Fantasy Award years ago.

I am doing the 50 states challenge, but I live in Houston, so these two books have been especially fun for me.