New reads!!!

Ben English has a book out, called Yonderings!

You can click the cover to get it!

The Blurb-

It was a time before Terlingua Ranch and chili cook-offs, and you could drive a hundred miles without seeing another vehicle or another person.  The year was 1961, and the tides of humanity which ebbed and flowed into the lower reaches of the Big Bend were at their historical nadir.  It was a vast, empty land spotted by isolated ranch headquarters, a national park with few visitors, and the many ruins of a past shrouded in legend, lore, and improbable truths. There was no television, no daytime radio, few telephones, and very few people. 
 
Ben H. English came to the Big Bend at the age of two, the fifth of six generations of his family to call this enigmatic region home.  With his family headquartered at the old Lajitas Trading Post, he worked and lived on ranches and places now little more than forgotten dots on yellowing maps. He attended the one-room schoolhouse at Terlingua, prowled the banks of the Rio Grande, and crisscrossed the surrounding areas time and again on horseback and by foot.
 
Some fifty years later he writes about those many decades ago, as well as the history and legends of this singular land he knows so well.  Ben separates fact from fiction and brings the reader into a world that few these days can ever imagine, much less experience.  He also writes about the lower Big Bend as it is found now, and what one can still rediscover just over the next rise.  

If you like real history, written honestly, with self-depreciating humor, this book delves well beyond what you will get in any pamphlets at the National Park! 🙂

And Alma Boykin also has a new book out! Grasping for the Crowns is the second book in the alternate history of WWI from the Hungarian perspective.

You can click on the cover to get it!

The blurb-

In 1916, war has swept the entire world, along with famine and riot tearing countries apart from within and without.

István Eszterházy, now the Head of Hungary’s House Sárkány, struggles to lead its men, women, and True-dragons alike through the shifting tides of fortune, even as the Habsburg Empire is staggered by England’s treachery. While hunger and defeat stalk the streets, the Powers beneath the land grow poisoned and maddened.

When the spirits of the land attack each other, and rebels plot to destroy his House, István must fight not just for his own survival, but for his entire family!

This book moves the story forward to the end of the war, and doesn’t sugarcoat the privations that existed in that time period and area. Well written, historically correct in the actions of the various factions, it melds the ‘real story’ seamlessly into the alternate world Alma has created.

Comments

New reads!!! — 6 Comments

  1. That book on the Big Bend sounds like a great one. I think I need that in my library. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.

  2. $15.95 for a Kindle book????? Way out of my price range. Did add it to my wish list so maybe someone will buy it for me…

    • University Press books are all high. TCU’s price is actually not bad compared to some I’ve seen, in terms of being less than the print cost. Some charge the same for electronic and print.

      The argument is that print runs are smaller so the cost has to be greater to break even, and that institutions are the major buyers, not individuals, so market-price is not as important.

      If you really want sticker shock, look at some of Elsevier’s science books, or Oxford University Press’s publications. Jeebus H. Frog on a flaming pogo stick, $850 for an e-book and $1200 for print.

      Full disclosure – I have a non-fiction book published by an academic press under my “academic” name. It was an educational experience, not bad, just a lot of learning.

  3. I won’t repeat any of the rude words about the price of textbooks for my master’s program. OK, blame some of the cost on the additional fonts and layout time for equations (this was engineering and very math-heavy). This included an Elvesier book that made me do a long-term loan from my tech library for the current edition. They were unhappy with it being out for a semester, but I showed where it saved money.
    TxRed is being way polite about that racket.

    Oops, speaking of polite, I liked “Grasping for Crowns” and need to write and polish a review (about halfway through the book). Very good characters and some very well-written interplay among them. If feels like family, right down to the fights with cousins or younger brothers who go off the deep end of politics and life.