Meetings start at 6:30 p.m. on the 3rd Thursday of each month at the Fielder Museum, 1616 W. Abram St. Arlington Texas, 76016
Club coordinators: O.K. Carter and Mark Dellenbaugh 

In an exciting collaboration between the library and the Arlington Historical Society, the new Texas Author Book Club will alternate between the best of nonfiction and fiction writers, from J. Frank Dobie and Larry McMurtry to John Graves and Cormac McCarthy, and will include some classic material as well as exploring more contemporary books - some old authors and some new ones.

To borrow from Larry McMurtry's In a Narrow Grave, the books under review by the club "...are native in the most obvious sense: set here, centered here, and, for the most part, written here."  

Many of the books are available through the Arlington Library but in very limited supply. All of them are, however, available at a reasonable price (particularly used editions) from online entities such as Amazon or Thrift Books. Many can also be purchased as eBooks. 
 

SCHEDULE

June 19, 2025 — Dan Jenkins, The Reunion at Herb’s Café
During a writing career that spanned an astonishing eight decades, Jenkins wrote 24 books, including Semi-Tough, which five years later became a movie starring Burt Reynolds as Billy Clyde Puckett. Jenkins’ book-length works of nonfiction include His Ownself: A Semi-Tough Memoir and 10 other titles. Novels include “Baja Oklahoma,” “Semi-Tough,” “You Gotta Play Hurt,” and “The Reunion at Herb’s Café” (his last book), a fictional yarn that reunites many characters from his books.

July 17, 2015 — Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm 
Erik’s first book of narrative nonfiction, Isaac’s Storm, about the giant hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas, in 1900, won the American Meteorological Society’s prestigious Louis J. Battan Author’s Award. The Washington Post called it the “Jaws of hurricane yarns.” Larson is not from Texas, but writing about things Texas qualifies him, at least for this book.

August 21, 2025 — Sandra Brown, Two Alone
Brown (By far and far, Arlington’s most successful author) has been living her American Dream as a #1 New York Times best-selling author of more than 70 novels (more than 70 million copies sold) and is proud to call herself a long-time Arlington resident. She’s an adventure/romance writer. In Two Alone, when their plane crashes in the remote reaches of the Northwest Territories, confident businesswoman Rusty Carlson finds herself hurt and alone with a man she can’t stand to be around. Vietnam vet Cooper Landry holds a deep-rooted grudge against beautiful women, but he’s survived far worse, and he’ll be damned if he lets them both die in the wilderness.

The ex-soldier’s training has prepared him with the skills to defend against the predators in the dense woods—both animal and human—but that’s not all that awaits the couple. What Rusty and Cooper couldn’t have expected is their shared desire for more than just survival.

September 18, 2025 — John Graves, Hard Scrabble
Our pal Larry McMurtry says of Hard Scrabble: “If Goodbye to a River was in some sense Graves’s Odyssey, this book is his [version of Hesiod’s] Works and Days. It is partly a book about work, partly a book about nature, but mostly a book about belonging. In the end John Graves has learned to belong to his patch of land so thoroughly that at moments he can sense in himself a unity with medieval peasants and Sumerian farmers, working with their fields by the Tigris.”

Graves lived near Granbury, and it’s easy to drive to the part of Texas he’s writing about in just over an hour.

October 16, 2025 — Stacey Swann, Olympus, Texas
Swann’s acclaimed debut novel "Olympus, Texas" has received critical acclaim and was named one of the Best Books of May 2021 by Amazon. The novel explores the lives of three generations of a family in a small Texas town and how their pasts and secrets collide. Stacey's work has been featured in various publications, including The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and Kenyon Review.

November 20, 2025 — Stephen Harrigan, They Came From the Sky
This work offers an exciting preview of Harrigan's sweeping, full-length history. This tantalizing "short" begins with the earliest native inhabitants over ten thousand years ago and continues through the ill-fated Spanish explorations of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In its pages, we encounter the prehistoric flint producers and traders who were Texas's first entrepreneurs; Spanish castaways and would-be conquerors; the Karankawas, Querechos (Apaches), and Caddos, whose lifeways were forever changed by contact with Europeans; and the "Lady in Blue," an abbess who mysteriously claimed to have visited the "Quivira and the Jumanas" in Texas while remaining within her Spanish cloister.

December 18, 2025 — Cormac McCarthy, The Road (Pulitzer Winner for Fiction).
A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls, it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food, and each other.

January 15, 2026 — Tui Snider, Santa Claus Bank Robber
Marshall Ratliff thought robbing a bank dressed like Santa at Christmastime would be easy. He didn't expect the citizens of Cisco to come at him with guns blazing! But in 1927, a $5,000 bounty was offered to any citizen who killed a bandit while the crime was in progress. Tui Snider's new book follows the true-crime action from this wild shootout with vigilantes to its tragic conclusion.

February 19, 2026 — Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
Born in Austin, and having served in Vietnam, Tim O'Brien is an American novelist best known for his book The Things They Carried. A powerful exploration of war and its effects on soldiers, The Things They Carried was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and is widely considered one of the best books on the subject.

March 19, 2026 — May Cobb, Big Woods
Born in Texas and raised in Wyoming, May Cobb is an award-winning author and essayist who has been featured in publications such as The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. Currently based in Austin, Texas, her debut novel, Big Woods, has been hailed as a thrilling and suspenseful read that will keep you on edge until the very end.

April 6, 2026 — Monica Munoz Martinez, The Injustice Never Leaves You
The author is a historian, author, and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her book The Injustice Never Leaves You: Anti-Mexican Violence in Texas explores the forgotten history of state-sponsored violence against Mexicans and Mexican Americans in Texas during the 20th century. Martinez's work sheds light on a painful chapter of American history and advocates for a more accurate and inclusive understanding of the past.

May 21, 2026 — Attica Locke, Black Water Rising
Locke hails from Houston, Texas and has won several awards and accolades for her works, including Black Water Rising, which was nominated for an Edgar Award. She is a master of crime fiction and has a talent for crafting intricate plots with raw and piercing prose. Her most recent novel, Heaven, My Home, takes readers deep into the world of East Texas and tackles issues on race, class, and social justice.