Books

This list, arranged in no particular order, is limited to books that were published in 2017 and written by authors who live in Dallas-Fort Worth. The Sandcastle Empire by Kayla Olson This dystopian thriller, published in June, focuses on a formerly privileged girl named Eden who escapes a labor camp…

First, he was a child prodigy who talked at 7 months. Later, he did enough cocaine to kill a baby rhinoceros. In a new authorized biography titled Everything’s Bigger in Texas: The Life and Times of Kinky Friedman, author Mary Lou Sullivan digs into the Texas Jewboy. And it turns…

They spent long periods of time tapping away at a keyboard in isolation and were ballsy enough to tell someone, perhaps a less-than-flattering editor somewhere, only to receive a rejection slip in return. Now, they have an audience. The literary series Rejected: Stories Unsold debuted at Wild Detectives bookstore last…

The pages of Abandon Me, a collection of essays by Melissa Febos, are filled with extraordinary and honest details of the author’s traumatic past. Febos, who will read from and discuss her work at The Wild Detectives on Thursday, takes us on her journey to find her birth father and…

The early days of comic books featured some ethnically diverse and multidimensional characters, but they were few and far between. Most nonwhite characters reinforced stereotypes and served as C- and D-tier backup to blond-haired, blue-eyed superheroes. “Growing up with superheroes like the Incredible Hulk, Captain America, Spider-Man, Batman and Superman,…

Bobby Goldstein moves from catching adulterers to writing a book.

Hector Rodriguez says he finally heard his calling to become a superhero comic artist and publish a superhero story that he created in college when a student came to him in tears. His father, the student said, had been deported. “He’s crying and that kind of hit me,” Rodriguez says. “What…

What are we even doing with our lives? That’s the question Dallas native Mary Dauterman and her co-author, BuzzFeed Animals editor Chelsea Marshall, pose in their new satirical children’s book of the same name. In the book — released by Harper Collins on Aug. 8 — the characters live in…

Joe Tone announced just over two years ago that he was leaving his position as Dallas Observer’s editor-in-chief to write a book about the drug war and horse racing. That book, Bones: Brothers, Horses, Cartels and the Borderland Dream, was released this month by One World, an imprint of Random House…

The titular child of S. Craig Zahler’s Hug Chickenpenny: The Panegyric of an Anomalous Child is a boldly conceived, cinematic protagonist. The boy, whose mother died giving birth to him and whose father is unknown, has pink skin with white patches. The inside of his mouth is purple and fanged. White…

As Doug Curtis, CEO of AT&T Performing Arts Center, took the stage Friday night, he joked about the pressure of introducing an artist with such a devoted following. The Neil Gaiman fans were out in force at the sold-out Winspear Opera House, and for the two-hour performance, one of four…

Chuck Klosterman speaks at the Dallas Museum of Art 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 20 Nostalgia is a controversial topic in artistic circles. Critics hate it (it’s uncritical and lazy), but audiences love it (it’s fun and escapist). Culture critic Chuck Klosterman traffics heavily in nostalgia, with essays and novels written…

Much has been made of the blossoming literary scene in Dallas; and yet, the daily struggle of being a writer, in Dallas and in general, is less openly discussed. To “make it” in most other professions is to climb to the top of a predetermined ladder, while a writer’s path…

In spring 2016, the co-owners of the Wild Detectives bookstore approached Dallas-based literary wunderkind Lauren Smart with a question: How can we address gender disparity in the publishing industry? Smart loved what the bookstore – which is also a bar, music venue and sometimes a theater – represented and saw…

The Devil’s Country, out April 11, is the latest crime thriller from local author Harry Hunsicker, whose novels and short stories tend to take place in and around his hometown of Dallas. The new book, however, is largely set in the fictional Piedra Springs in remote West Texas and centers…

Dallas is a city of contradictions: money and poverty, glitz and grime, corruption and piety all coexisting in a growing metroplex. Now imagine the arrival here of a six-foot-tall, Polish, rough-around-the-edges, flame-headed lesbian narcotics investigator. Who’s from Brooklyn. That’s the protagonist Dallas novelist Kathleen Kent created for The Dime, her…

For more than a year, Jeremy Ellis says he’s been turning over what a Dallas bookstore could and should be. While working as a general manager at Houston-based Brazos Bookstore he made attempts to return to Dallas with a new branch of that iconic bookstore, but was never able to…