Max Maartinesz

White Leg, Texas, is becoming a dangerous place. Especially for Gil Blue, a small-time criminal who suddenly has a price on his head. The local police, the FBI and the Texas Rangers want him behind bars. The town boss and his badass hit man, Flaco, want him dead. So does a swarm of out-of-town killers. Set up to take a hard fall, Gil must survive in a town where no one wants him alive. Told with mordant wit, this classic tale of betrayal and revenge takes more twists and turns than a Texas tornado as it rushes to a climactic and shocking finish. With White Leg, MartÕnez has thrillingly updated a uniquely American genre.

Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States includes representative works by the most celebrated Cuban-American, Mexican-American and Puerto Rican writers of short fiction in the country. The texts cover a full range of expression, themes and styles of US Hispanics and are introduced by informative entries which place the authors in their cultural and historic frameworks. In these pages, the reader will not find picturesque, folksy or touristy renditions of Hispanic culture. Instead, Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States brings together works that are clear, incisive and authentic representations of Hispanic life in the United States. The selections are as diverse as Hispanic culture itself and as varied as the personalities of their authors. Here are Max Mart’nezÕs outrageous challenge of racial and social structures, Roberta Fern‡ndezÕs construction of Hispanic womenÕs aesthetics, Roberto Fern‡ndezÕs subversion of the English language, Nicholasa MohrÕs humorous attack on patriarchy, and Judith Ortiz CoferÕs poetic evocation of childhood and biculturalism. This collection engages in aesthetic and cultural experience that will result in a re-defined canon and a new identity for the country as whole. They are re-focusing our perception of ourselves as a people and a culture. The pressure and the commitment to do so, of course, make for excellence and innovation in literary expression. It also makes for enjoyable reading. Short Fiction by Hispanic Writers of the United States is recommended for the general fiction reader and for use in high school and college literature classes in search of a multicultural perspective.

Author Max Martinez once again finds murder and mayhem in the central Texas farm country featured in his tour-de-force White Leg. Here, a young, educated and hip Priscilla Arrabal had unwittingly become embroiled in a life threatening game of hide-and-seek with the police and an amoral killer. Her gradual awakening to her increasingly dangerous predicament makes for a suspenseful and surprise-filled read, one that regales readers with colorful characters, unexpected turns of plot and an unforgettable sampling of Texas back-country culture.

Schoolland depicts the daily life of a Mexican American family in rural Texas during the year of a great drought in the 1950Ís. Struggles with nature and society form the backdrop for the eternal tale of a child coming of age as his grandfather is waning. Rural life, dialects and family conflicts are all rendered poetically and with the authenticity of having been born and raised in Schoolland, Gonzales, Smiley, Texas„as was MartÕnez„and with the modern, critical eye of having returned to the family farm to examine the past„as did MartÕnez. We are all, consequently, enriched by this portrayal of Texas Mexican life as it has never before appeared in American literature.

This book is filled with intrigue, romance, humor and adventure. The story is about a young couple named Max and Mei who are destined to be together. When Mei discovers that she is pregnant her life immediately gets turned around and, now she is in a place she would never have imagined. Max is a young aristocrat coming from a wealthy family, and has seen his fair share of evil. Max could care less about his life until he first laid eyes on Mei Gordon at the local youth center. Although he was not yet old enough to even understand girls he knew in his heart one day she would be his. Now in their junior year of High school Max is losing hope on ever being with Mei as an unconscious last resort Max calls to her but, will she answer.

A collection of thirty-three essays from the program-magazine from the Tejano Conjunto Festival in San Antonio.

Lawlessness in Texas did not end with the close of the cowboy era. It just evolved, swapping horses and pistols for cars and semiautomatics. From Patrolman "Newt" Stewart, killed by a group of servicemen in February 1900, to Whitesboro chief of police William Thomas "Will" Miller, run down by a vehicle in the line of duty in 1940, Ron DeLord and Cliff Caldwell present a comprehensive chronicle of the brave--and some not so brave--peace officers who laid down their lives in the service of the State of Texas in the first half of the twentieth century.