Tales of Texas Books

In 1875, nearly forty years after the Mexican War, Mexicans and Texans are still spilling blood over ownership of the Nueces Strip--a hot, dry stretch of coastal prairie that bushwackers and horse thieves have turned into a lawless hell. Captain L.H. McNelly, a complex and determined Confederate veteran, is brought into the Nueces Strip for one purpose: to keep the peace. His measures are harsh and controversial--but McNelly wasn't sent in to be popular. In this boilerpot of killing and racial hatred, can any man bring lasting peace?

Joe Pepper is a Texas badman with quite a past. In fact, there isn't much that Joe hasn't done in his forty years of living on both sides of the Texas law-except face the hangman. Now, convicted of murder, Joe is about to get that privilege. But before he goes, Joe has a few things he wants to say-and a few stories that he wants to set straight. With Joe Pepper , legendary Western writer Elmer Kelton tells a fine and moving tale of the history of his home state of Texas.

Lieutenant David Buckalew and his men had left Texas on a march westward to claim the entire Southwest for the Confederacy. But defeat after humiliating defeat at the hands of the Union army has stranded Buckalew and nineteen battle-weary survivors in the New Mexico Territory-a territory crawling with hostile Comanches and Union soldiers. As Buckalew and his men make a run for their homeland of Texas, they learn the location of a cache of Union weapons and ammunition. If they could seize the weapons before the Union troops arrive to collect them, they might be able to shift the odds in the South's favor. However, those keeping the cache for the North have other ideas . . .