Booked Up in 2024: What to Read from a Strong Year in Texas Letters

3 days ago 27

Winding up your year by the fire (or by the pool) as the temperature rises and dips? Or just taking off on a long holiday drive? In any of these scenarios, you likely need an audio book or podcast to download, a recommendation for your digital library or an old-fashioned book.

Here are a few suggestions, courtesy of Texas Observer writers and avid Texas readers including Susan Post of Austin’s legendary Bookwoman book shop, for books either about Texas or penned by current or former Texans.

NONFICTION

(Fair warning: The content of these books might make you mad or swear aloud.)

The Highest Law in the Land by Jessica Pishko (Dutton) describes a movement among some conservative sheriffs to declare themselves supreme authorities under an atypical reading of the U.S. Constitution. Pishko until recently was a Texas investigative reporter. She’s since decamped to North Carolina, but who can blame her after all the crazy things she witnessed in reporting this book?
City Limits by Megan Kimble (Crown) unravels the tangled history of America’s highways and explains why the flawed strategy of bulldozing neighborhoods of color for supersized roads backfires by increasing urban blight and traffic jams. Kimble, an Observer alum, infuses her highly readable analysis with the stories of real people whose lives have been upended by highway expansion projects now underway in Austin and Houston.
Bringing Ben Home by Barbara Bradley Hagerty (Riverhead) sheds more light on a growing pile of evidence about Ben Spencer’s wrongful conviction in a 1987 Dallas murder. Hagerty, an ex-NPR reporter and The Atlantic contributor, directly participated in efforts to find new witnesses and documents that finally helped free Spencer in 2021.
They Came for the Schools by Mike Hixenbaugh (HarperCollins) dives into the history and the current status of the war on public schools in Texas. It is a gripping read by Hixenbaugh, who was formerly an investigative reporter at the Houston Chronicle and still covers these issues for NBC News.
The Monarch Butterfly Migration by Monika Maeckle (Oklahoma Press) examines a quiet group of migrants who visit Texas—millions of monarch butterflies. Maeckle, a San Antonio journalist and author, assesses the environmental changes that threaten these winged travelers.
Baptistland by Christa Brown (Lake Drive Books) reveals painful life experiences that transformed Brown from a traumatized girl into an activist attorney and blogger who became a beacon of hope for Southern Baptist sexual abuse survivors.

Audio/visual true crime bonuses:

“Hit Man,” Skip Hollandsworth’s signature Texas Monthly profile of Gary Johnson, an erudite Harris County investigator who pretended to be a hitman to foil real murder plots—was turned into an eponymous movie by Austin’s own Richard Linklater. The movie, starring native Texan Glen Powell, became a huge hit on Netflix. Viewers may wonder: What parts of this zany but violent rom com are real, and what’s fantasy? In Texas, the line between crime and over-the-top drama can be very thin.
A new docuseries and a separate podcast retell the shocking saga of Billy Chemirmir, a prolific serial killer who stalked and murdered more than two dozen people in upscale senior living centers and private homes in North Dallas. Astonishingly, investigators initially wrongly assumed most victims’ deaths to be natural despite signs of struggles and jewelry thefts. The docuseries Pillowcase Murders on Paramount+ reveals how a Dallas security guard tried to stop Chemimir years before his arrest. The Unforgotten: Unnatural Causes, a podcast series collaboration between Charlie Scudder and Free Range Productions, features Scudder’s interviews with victims’ families and with the unrepentant killer.

FICTION

The Young of Other Animals by Chris Cander (Amazon). This gifted Houston novelist’s fictionalized account of a violent attack that shaped her own life is a compelling must-read.
After Image by Jaime deBlanc (Thomas & Mercer). This attention-getting thriller from a debut novelist from Austin presents the fictional investigation of a missing person’s case—an all-too-common American issue—in sharp relief.
Freedom is a Feast by Alejandro Puyana (Hachette). Puyana’s multigenerational Latin American saga of love and revolution won the Westport Prize for Literature and praise from the New York Times, which describes him as squeezing “adventure, even dark comedy, from misery and horror.”
The Last Philosopher in Texas: Fictions and Superstitions by Daniel Chacón (Arte Público Press). These gritty and magical short stories about Texas and Texans by Chacón, an El Paso author, raconteur, and host of KTEP’s Words on a Wire podcast, are inventive, amusing, and reveal complex layers inside seemingly ordinary characters.
New Testaments by Dagoberto Gilb (City Lights Books). A longtime chronicler of the working-class Southwest, Gilb had two collections published, including this assemblage of short stories an Observer reviewer described as “quietly incorporating a theme that has hitherto been largely latent in his work: surrender as a form of salvation.”

POETRY

(Note: For seekers of brief but beautiful writing in these troubled times, Texans produced some truly amazing poetry in 2024.)

Grace Notes: Poems about Families by Naomi Shihab Nye (HarperCollins). Nye, National Book Award finalist and the Observer’s beloved poetry editor emeritus, deploys her legendary skill to probe love, kindness, and grief in 100 previously unpublished pieces.
The Book of Wounded Sparrows by Octavio Quintanilla (Texas Review Press). The second book by Quintanilla, the 2018-20 San Antonio poet laureate, was longlisted for the National Book Award.
Watcha by Stalina Villarreal (Deep Vellum)includes what its inventive Dallas publishers describe as: “A multidimensional exploration of art, identity, and consciousness, unveiling the experience of Latinx, Afro-Latinx, and Indigenous art through poetry and visual expression.”
Texas Being: a State of Poems edited by Jenny Browne (Trinity University Press). This collection includes 45 poems from and about the “beautiful and brutal state of Texas.”