John Randolph Jones

A novel of star-crossed lovers, set in the circus world circa 1932. When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, grifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there...

In 1848, while on a wagon train headed for Oregon, fourteen-year-old Francis Tucket is kidnapped by Pawnee Indians and then falls in with a one-armed trapper who teaches him how to live in the wild.

Francis, Lottie, and Billy survive a series of hair-raising adventures while on their way West to the Oregon Trail where they hope to find the Tucket family.

When fifteen-year-old Francis and two younger children lose their way in the wilderness of the Southwest, they face capture at the hands of dangerous men.

"The Rough Riders (1899) is the story of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the regiment Roosevelt led to enduring fame in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt recounts how the regiment was raised from an unusual mixture of hardened southwestern frontiersmen and privileged northeastern college graduates, and how it trained in Texas and then sailed "southward through the topic seas toward the unknown." Writing at a time when war could still...

The wife, sons, and daughter-in-law of Noe, a man touched by God, describe their struggles to understand and to help when Noe instructs them to gather wood and animals and prepare to spend an unspecified amount of time living together trapped on an ark.

Four stories by the Booker Prize-winning author. Includes "The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios," "the Time I Heard the Private Donald J. Ranking String Concerto with One Discordant Violin, by the American Composer John Morton," "Manners of Dying," and "The Mirror Machine," each in its entirety. Written earlier in Martel's career, these tales display that startling mix of dazzle and depth that have made Yann Martel an international phenomenon....

"Hailed as one of "the best novels ever set in America's fourth largest city" (Douglas Brinkley, New York Times Book Review), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers is a powerful demonstration of Larry McMurtry's "comic genius, his ability to render a sense of landscape, and interior intellection tension" (Jim Harrison, New York Times Book Review). Desperate to break from the "mundane happiness" of Houston, budding writer Danny Deck hops in his...

The Lone Star state has been a subject of pride and admiration for generations of writers. Forever Texas features the works of some of the most memorable men and women who ever lived in Texas. With essays by President George W. Bush, H. Ross Perot, Sam Houston, David Crockett, Stephen F. Austin, Lyndon Baines Johnson and many more, this informative and ceaselessly entertaining collection celebrates the undeniable attraction of Texas and serves as...