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Texana / Science /Aquaculture
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Pages: 256
Publication Date: May 21, 2024

When you think of a marine environment, what do you picture? Wetlands, possibly; coastal shores, perhaps. When you think of a shrimp farm, what do you picture? Some folks who know a thing or two a bout aquaculture might say any marine or freshwater environment will do.
Bart Reid, one of the founders of the Permian Sea Shrimp company, is here to tell you otherwise. Shrimping West Texas is the story of that business and the history of the harebrained notion that farming shrimp is possible in the West Texas desert.
Spanning twenty years of successes and failures, Reid captures the quintessential West Texas entrepreneurial spirit, tallies the unique environmental factors that made this possible, and depicts the motley crew of business folks, scientists, and schemers who were part of the tale.
Texas Tech U Press | Amazon | Bart’s Bay Armor



Bart Reid is a marine biologist with a master’s degree from Texas A&M. He has been in the aquaculture (fish farming) business for over 30 years. After many years of farming shrimp in west Texas he now farms algae for Omega 3 supplements and bioplastics. He also owns Bart’s Bay Armor, a fishing appareland wading boot company based out of Port Mansfield, Texas, where he fishes on the Laguna Madre.
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This is the first (and only) English-language version of the award-winning Italian novel, The Nine Lives of Tito d’Amelia. Nine Lives is a love story about a cat, a family, and an Italian town. Mixing fiction with fact, Nine Lives tells the story of the town of Amelia, Italy, throughout the 32 centuries of its history. In fact, Amelia is considered the first organized city of central Italy, being four centuries older than Rome. The author uses the multiple lives of a cat named Tito as the way to span the centuries.
Author Ettore Farrattini Pojani is the heir of the Farrattini dynasty, a centuries-old family in Umbria whose family palazzo is in Amelia, north of Rome. Tito’s first life occurs in pre-historic Umbria, and his ninth is in the future. Tito’s mission through all nine of his lives is to help the town and the family to succeed.
A changing cast of characters traces the Farrattini line through the centuries, with Tito joining up with a Farrattini in each generation. Using his feline wiles, Tito bends humans to his will, helping them through many challenges from drought to wars to lovelorn marriages to selfish politicization of joint crises.
In this highly imaginative novel, the author mixes fictional lives with non-fictional information about historical figures as well as the Farrattini family and the town of Amelia. Readers are left wondering about details, such as what is fiction and what is fact. The last chapter will evoke surprise, though a clue that the surprise is coming is contained in the very first chapter. Originally published in Italy in 2022, this first English-language translation is published by Bayou City Press in Houston, Texas, and includes additional drawings, maps, lists of characters, a listing of foreign words and special terms, and notes on sources.



Ettore Farrattini Pojani is the heir of the noble Italian Farrattini dynasty, whose family palazzo is in Amelia, Italy, north of Rome. A music expert and critic, Ettore has published extensively on music topics and currently is a collaborator on the website Broadwayworld.com.
This, his second book, was published in Italy in 2022 and has won numerous awards. Prior to focusing on writing, Ettore studied art restoration and specialized in furniture restoration. For almost 20 years he had a workshop in Rome in which hundreds of valuable, unique pieces were brought back to their splendor thanks to his dedication and expertise. In 2001 he transformed the family palazzo into a hotel de charme, which he personally ran for 15 years until it was damaged by the 2016 earthquake.
A dedicated traveler, Ettore is fluent in French and English besides his native Italian.
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Fiction / Agriculture / Nature / Stewardship
Publisher: Stoney Creek Publishing
Pages: 144
Publication Date: August 26, 2024

Sam Bartlett’s formidable antagonist has four legs. Sol, a miniature donkey, schemes daily to outwit his kindly caretaker. This delightful rural drama regales a symbiosis of plants, humans, dogs and livestock, with wild creatures observing from secluded, weedy perimeters.
Retired from teaching, artist Sam farms thirty acres. His popular paintings of vast prairies at sunset are selling well. He plans to market organic herbs and produce, hiring local after-school teens. Begrudgingly raised on a farm, he once swore that when he grew up, he’d never go back. Time and age break promises.
Elysia boasts a pretty town square, complete with a handsome county courthouse. Sam’s girlfriend, Annie, is a food writer who travels a lot. Bartlett Farm is her sanctuary.
The Art of Farming is a hopeful tale about stewardship of the land, the animals, and of each other. It honors the integrity of agriculture, as expressed in ancient literature and art.
Stoney Creek Publishing | Amazon | B&N


T.D. Motley writes about art and organic farming. Born in Beaumont, Texas, he has been drawing since the age of three. His family has farmed in Texas since the mid-19th century. For many years, he and his wife, artist Rebecca, marketed their organic, heirloom herbs and produce to North Texas chefs and farmers’ market customers.
Motley is Professor Emeritus of Art and Art History at Dallas College. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited nationally and are included in numerous collections across the U.S. and Texas. He has lectured at the Dallas Museum of Art, the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum in Austin, the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth. He is a contributing author for Eutopia and ArtSpiel and has written about mid-century modern Texas artists for DB/Zumbeispiel and the Grace Museum in Abilene. Motley has received Fulbright grants to Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
Motley is the past president of the board of Artist Boat, a Galveston-based nonprofit that teaches students about coastal nature through art and science. He served for several years as chair of the North Texas Fulbright Teacher Exchange Peer Review Committee. Previously, he worked as a printer in the U.S. Air Force, an illustrator for Ling-Temco-Vought Corporation, and a cartoonist for the infamous Dallas Notes from the Underground newspaper. His artworks can be seen at J. Peeler Howell Fine Art in Fort Worth.
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Harriet Kocher Lewis is the award-winning editor and publisher of Bariso Press. Titles she has edited have been honored with Will Rogers Medallion Awards, Spur Finalist designations, and Independent Author Awards.
Memoir
Publisher: She Writes Press
Pages: 304
Publication Date: 9/10/24

Growing up in West Texas, Jane Little Botkin didn’t have designs on becoming a beauty queen. But not long after joining a pageant on a whim in college, she became the first protégé of El Paso’s Richard Guy and Rex Holt, known as the “Kings of Beauty”—just as the 1970’s counterculture movement began to take off.
A pink, rose-covered gown—a Guyrex creation—symbolizes the fairy tale life that young women in Jane’s time imagined beauty queens had. Its near destruction exposes reality: the author’s failed relationship with her mother, and her parents’ failed relationship with one another. Weaving these narrative threads together is the Wild West notion that anything is possible, especially do-overs.
The Pink Dress awakens nostalgia for the 1960s and 1970s, the era’s conflicts and growth pains. A common expectation that women went to college to get “MRS” degrees—to find a husband and become a stay-at-home wife and mother—often prevailed. How does one swim upstream against this notion among feminist voices that protest “If You Want Meat, Go to a Butcher!” at beauty pageants, two flamboyant showmen, and a developing awareness of self? Torn between women’s traditional roles and what women could be, Guyrex Girls evolved, as did the author.
The memoir is an engaging time capsule of trendsetting southwestern beauty pageantry. A revealing look behind the glamour and illusion of beauty queens. ~Kirkus Reviews
The Pink Dress isn’t a beautiful walk down memory lane. It’s a wild ride through the turbulent 1970s, West Texas style. Here she is, Janie Botkin, taking the town by storm. —Johnny D. Boggs, nine-time Spur Award winner and author of upcoming books Longhorns East and Bloody Newton
Amazon | B&N | Bookshop.org | Simon & Schuster


National award–winning author Jane Little Botkin melds personal narratives of American families, often with compelling stories of western women. A member of Western Writers of America since 2017, Jane judges entries for the WWA’s prestigious Spur Award, reviews new releases, and writes articles for various magazines. Her books have won numerous awards, including two Spur Awards, two Caroline Bancroft History Prizes, and the Barbara Sudler Award; she has also been a finalist for the Women Writing the West’s Willa Literary Award, High Plains Book Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and Foreword Review and Sarton Book awards, both in women’s studies. She is currently working on a biography of Mary Ann (Molly) Goodnight titled The Breath of a Buffalo, A Biography of Mary Ann Goodnight. A lifelong Texan, Jane said she had no idea Texas grew native trees until she moved from El Paso, to Dripping Springs near Austin! Now Jane blissfully escapes into her literary world in the remote White Mountain Wilderness near Nogal, New Mexico–a hop, skip, and a jump to El Paso.
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Contemporary Romance/ Comedy / Football
Publisher: Temair Media
Pages: 390
Publication Date: September 14, 2023

Rumor has it that Texas just got a little hotter! Fans of Tessa Bailey and K. Bromberg will fall for this sexy story of mistaken identity, electric attraction, and irresistible romance in the first installment of the addictive new series, Austin Heat.
Jake is desperate to rewrite his past with women and leave behind the media storm surrounding his off-the-field antics that cloud his potential. He’s done with the stream of models, actresses, and NFL cheerleaders that have warmed his bed since he made a name for himself as starting quarterback for the University of Texas. He desperately wants to meet a normal girl in his hometown of Austin.
After moving to Austin to be the hired girlfriend of one of her long-term escort clients, Rakell finds herself wishing she could live a normal life with an average guy. Turned off by the billionaire clients she’s been serving for the last five years, she longs to get out of the business and build a life where she doesn’t live in the shadows of her escort persona.
Their worlds collide and the spice is off the charts. “Pretty boy” Jake Skyler has met his match with saucy-mouthed, Rakell McCarthy. Both think they’ve fallen for an average person. Both are wrong! What happens when their physical connection explodes, their hearts take charge and the secrets they are concealing are revealed?



Amari Nylix (alter ego to author Tara Delaney) tells sordid stories revolving around tempestuous love affairs that are inspired by the secret liaisons of Old West villains, heroes, and the temptress women who lure those powerful men into their webs. Amari delights in sharing her torrid stories of heart-wrenching, epic love that begin with the desires of the flesh and evolve into affairs of the heart.
In the Austin Heatseries, Amari works closely with bestselling author of both non-fiction and fiction, Tara Delaney 😉. Tara has been a pediatric occupational therapist for more than thirty years and has extensive professional experience in sensory processing and nervous system development, while also having studied how early trauma impacts our responses as adults. Tara is responsible for trimming back Amari’s numerous spicy scenes, allowing room for all the FEELS.

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Literary Fiction / Southern Gothic / Rural Fiction
Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
Pages: 328
Publication Date: August 20, 2024

Award-winning author James Wade blends atmospheric prose with soul-stirring themes in Hollow Out the Dark, a gothic adventure set against a Depression-era landscape where a whiskey war threatens to decimate a small Texas town.
A veteran of the Great War, Jesse Cole is grateful for the quiet life he now leads. But when his closest friend runs afoul of local criminals Frog and Squirrel Fenley, Jesse is forced to spin his moral compass and enter a violent and volatile underworld. There he encounters corrupt lawmen, hired assassins, and a dark family secret that will upend all he once knew.
Complicating matters are Texas Ranger Amon Atkins—who arrives to investigate the Fenleys just as their empire is threatened by a deadly new competitor—and the green-eyed, raven-haired Adaline, a love Jesse thought he’d lost forever.
With resources scarce and winter falling hard on the town, a desperate Jesse must choose between the law and the lawless and find a way to survive while still protecting the people he loves.
A heart-pounding tale full of plot-twisting revelations, Hollow Out the Dark brings readers into a whiskey-fueled world where everyone has a secret, and love everlasting balances on the edge of a knife.
Bookshop.org | Blackstone Publishing



James Wade is the award-winning author of Beasts of the Earth, All Things Left Wild, and River, Sing Out. He is the youngest novelist to win two Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, and the recipient of the MPIBA’s prestigious Reading the West Award. James’s work has appeared in Southern Literary Magazine, the Bitter Oleander, Writers’ Digest, and numerous additional publications. James lives and writes in the Texas Hill Country with his wife and children.
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