West Texas Kill

West Texas Kill
Author: Johnny D. Boggs
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2011-04-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0786027835

An American original, the great Johnny D. Boggs weaves a Texas-sized tale of an 1880s badlands--under the grasp of a lawman gone rogue. . . In For Justice In For The Kill Between the Pecos River and Rio Grande a vast, harsh land was ruled by Texas Rangers Captain Hector Savage. Savage's motive wasn't duty, it was money; he's turned this desolate place into a bloodied, terrorized kingdom. Now, a protégé of Savage, Sergeant Dave Chance, has come with a prisoner--a big-talking murderer in his own right--shackled at his side. A decent, honest Ranger, Chance cannot stand idly by while Savage runs roughshod over the territory. Now, to save a traumatized people, he must turn his prisoner loose and give him a gun. Only their combined firepower can penetrate Savage's fortress and kill him. That is, if they don't kill each other first. . . "Johnny Boggs has produced another instant page-turner. . .don't put down the book until you finish it." --Tony Hillerman on Killstraight "Johnny D. Boggs tells a crisply powerful story that rings true more than two centuries after the bloody business was done." --The Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier on The Despoilers "Boggs is unparalleled in evoking the gritty reality of the Old West." --The Shootist

The Johnson-Sims Feud

The Johnson-Sims Feud
Author: Bill O'Neal
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2010
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 1574412906

The Johnson & Sims families were pioneer ranchers, settling in the same region--Lampasas & Burnet counties--in the dangerous years before the Civil War. After the War, Billy & Nannie Johnson & Dave & Laura Sims establish large ranches in adjoining counties in West Texas. At the turn of the century the two families united in a marriage of 14-year-old Gladys Johnson & 21-year-old Ed Sims. Several years later a nasty divorce ensued due in part to Gladys willfulness & Ed's drinking. More trouble followed over custody of their two children & Gladys took matters into her own hands.....

Tulia

Tulia
Author: Nate Blakeslee
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 428
Release: 2006-09-12
Genre: History
ISBN: 0786735465

This true story of race and injustice in a small west Texas town "resembles . . . a modern day To Kill a Mockingbird -- or would, that is, if the novel were a true story and Atticus had won" (New York Times Book Review) In the summer of 1999, in the tiny west Texas town of Tulia, thirty-nine people, almost all of them black, were arrested and charged with dealing powdered cocaine. At trial, the prosecution relied almost solely on the uncorroborated, and contradictory, testimony of one police officer. Despite the flimsiness of the evidence against them, virtually all of the defendants were convicted and given sentences as high as ninety-nine years. Winner of the J. Anthony Lukas prize for excellence in nonfiction, Tulia is the story of this town, the bust, the trials, and the heroic legal battle that ultimately led to the reversal of the convictions. But the story is much bigger than the tale of just one bust. As Tulia makes clear, these events are the latest chapter in a story with themes as old as the country itself. It is a gripping, marvelously well-told tale about injustice, race, poverty, hysteria, and desperation in rural America.

Death on the Lonely Llano Estacado

Death on the Lonely Llano Estacado
Author: Bill Neal
Publisher: University of North Texas Press
Total Pages: 235
Release: 2017-07-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1574417061

In the winter of 1901, James W. Jarrott led a band of twenty-five homesteader families toward the Llano Estacado in far West Texas, newly opened for settlement by a populist Texas legislature. But frontier cattlemen who had been pasturing their herds on the unfenced prairie land were enraged by the encroachment of these “nesters.” In August 1902 a famous hired assassin, Jim Miller, ambushed and murdered J. W. Jarrott. Who hired Miller? This crime has never been solved, until now. Award-winning author Bill Neal investigates this cold case and successfully pieces together all the threads of circumstantial evidence to fit the noose snugly around the neck of Jim Miller’s employer. What emerges from these pages is the strength of intriguing characters in an engrossing narrative: Jim Jarrott, the diminutive advocate who fearlessly champions the cause of the little guy. The ruthless and slippery assassin, Deacon Jim Miller. And finally Jarrott’s young widow Mollie, who perseveres and prospers against great odds and tells the settlers to “Stay put!”

Murder Most Texan

Murder Most Texan
Author: Bartee Haile
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Total Pages: 133
Release: 2014-11-11
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1625852622

A chronicle of sixteen ruthless killings from Lone Star history and the dirty details that have shocked and bewildered Texans for decades. Texas has long boasted of its iron fist and strict treatment of criminals. Nevertheless, a number of homicidal scoundrels and fiends have slipped through the state’s justice system despite even the best efforts of the legendary Texas Rangers. In 1877, Texas saw its first high-profile murder case with the slaying of a woman in Jefferson and the subsequent “Diamond Bessie” trial. More than a century later, state legislator Price Daniel Jr., was shot in cold blood by his wife at their home in Liberty, TX. True crime writer and historian Bartee Haile unburies these and other stories from Texas’s murderous past. With these stories and more—from senseless roadside murders to political assassinations—discover the seedy underbelly of the Lone Star State’s murderous past.

The Killing Trail

The Killing Trail
Author: Johnny D. Boggs
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2016-04-05
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1634507622

“Boggs is among the best Western writers at work today. He writes with depth, flavor, and color.” —Booklist “Boggs' narrative voice captures the old-fashioned style of the past.”—Publishers Weekly After visiting his late mother's people on the Mescalero reservation, Comanche tribal policeman Daniel Killstraight waits to catch a train home when local cowboys bring disturbing news: an Chiricahua Apache has brutally murdered a teenage girl in the railroad town of Deming—and a bunch of locals plan on lynching him. Killstraight has no jurisdiction in this territory. He knows nothing about Deming, the murdered girl, or the accused killer; and he doesn't really care much for Apaches anyway. Yet, still heartbroken over the death of his beloved Rain Shower, he is in no hurry to return home. So he hops on a train to Deming to help a fellow Indian. However, once he arrives Killstraight learns that the man in jail isn’t really an Apache. Francis Groves, is a brooding, embittered, binge-drinking white man who had lived with the Chiricahuas and was known as "Walking Man." He had once been an excellent tracker who scouted and interpreted for the Army during the last of the Apache wars, but has had nothing to live for sinceh is wife and daughter were murdered by Mexican scalp hunters. Killstraight sets out to prove Groves innocent—in a town that hates Indians and where he has few allies and many enemies—all the while with this thought in the back of his mind: What if Groves is really guilty? Skyhorse Publishing is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction that takes place in the old West. Westerns—books about outlaws, sheriffs, chiefs and warriors, cowboys and Indians—are a genre in which we publish regularly. Our list includes international bestselling authors like Zane Gray and Louis L’Amour, and many more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

West Texas

West Texas
Author: Mike Cochran
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Total Pages: 196
Release: 1999
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780896724266

The Big Bend, the Big Country, the Big Empty. The High Plains, the Permian and the Panhandle. Cowboys, Cowtown and the curl of a killer tornado. A place where “you can stretch your eyeballs.” Where the Hale-Bopp comet, “hardly visible above some smoggy, light-polluted cities, looked like it could drop into the Pecos River at any moment.” West Texas, home to the state’s biggest legends, is chronicled by two authors who have spent most of their careers crisscrossing it. Mike Cochran and John Lumpkin, Associated Press journalists, bring their experiences to the pages of this handsome volume, accompanied by fifty photographs of the West Texas landscape, its people and its history. Converse with West Texas characters like Stanley Marsh 3, conman Billy Sol Estes, and Big Spring’s merry messiah, Marj Carpenter. Meet Gordon Wood, Friday night football’s winningest coach, and Groner Pitts, Brownwood’s liveliest undertaker. Remember ranching icon Watt Matthews, the founders of Santa Rita No. 1, and Lubbock’s C. W. Stubblefield, magnet to blues and country music stars. Honor Hallie Stillwell, Frenchy McCormick, and even modern art’s Georgia O’Keeffe, who put their stamp on Texas’s most fascinating region. A West Texan once said, “They show no pictures of my province or even neighboring provinces. They leave a big hole in Texas.” No more is that the case, thanks to Mike Cochran and John Lumpkin.

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas
Author: Anand Giridharadas
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-05-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0393239500

Describes how a Bangladeshi immigrant, shot in the Dallas mini mart where he worked in the days after September 11 in a revenge crime, forgave his assailant and petitioned the state of Texas to spare his attacker the death penalty.