Riding The Wind And Other Tales

This collection of tales represents James Hoggard's nearly thirty-year contribution to Texas literature.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The story of Cynthia Ann Parker and the last days of the Comanche In 1836, when she was nine years old, Cynthia Ann Parker was kidnapped by Comanche Indians from her family's settlement. She grew up with them, mastered their ways, and married one of their leaders. Except for her brilliant blue eyes and golden mane, Cynthia Ann Parker was in every way a Comanche woman. They called her Naduah—Keeps Warm With Us. She rode a horse named Wind. This is her story, the story of a proud and innocent people whose lives pulsed with the very heartbeat of the land. It is the story of a way of life that is gone forever. It will thrill you, absorb you, touch your soul, and make you cry as you celebrate the beauty and mourn the end of the great Comanche nation.

In Nevada in 1861, a young Pony Express rider races for his life, pursued by seven Paiute warriors who are determined to drive white settlers out of their territory.

A collection of essays that discuss the evolution of Texas literature from the state's settlement through the twentieth century.

Conjuring the voice of Edward Hopper, this collection of poetry investigates the mind of an iconic American painter. The poems convey both frightening and amusing messages as "Hopper" commentates on his own paintings--from the iconic Nighthawks to his depiction of his wife and himself taking a final bow in Two Comedians--as well as those of other artists. Shocking in their honesty, these poems also provide a window into the American Modernist period due to their biographical nature and evaluations of the visual arts.

This bilingual collection brings together renowned Chilean poet Oscar Hahn's two most recent works, Apariciones profanas (2002; translated here as Profane Apparitions), and En un abrir y cerrar de ojos, the winner of Spain's Casa de America Award (2006; translated here as In the Blink of an Eye) in one stunning volume. Hahn's work has been hailed by Mario Vargas Llosa as "magnificent and truly original... the most personal I've read in the poetry of our language in a long time." And in Ashes in Love, Hahn beautifully affirms his reputation as the premier poet of his generation. In these outstanding poems, Hahn displays an uncompromising intelligence and strength, blending horror and humor with droll inventiveness. A sly craftsman, Hahn has assimilated poetic tradition, but is not a slave to it: he employs a wide range of poetic techniques, opening himself to the possibilities of mystery, song, and story.

"Only one generation away from the pioneers who first broke the soil, Kiowa Falls is surrounded by newly discovered oil fields. Yet the daughter of the town's mayor, Ru-Marie, is a well-read young Romantic and budding artist. Her tastes in love, her parents insist, are not so refined. As they throw off their sham of civil behavior, a bitter family war erupts and with it, frontier justice"--Jacket flap.

James Hoggard's new collection of poems is an elegant, highly energetic volume that takes its readers through a wealth of settings, times, and forms. As versatile a poet as there is, Hoggard time and again turns his attention to forms like pantoum and ghazals that heighten the readers' responses to the stories he tells in verse. In fact, one of the signal pieces in the volume shows Hoggard unearthing an old story about Odysseus' trying through a wealth of trickery to get out of going to the Trojan War. What the tale adds up to, however, is a deeply moving love story that seems genuinely contemporary. Running throughout this collection is a powerful use of environmental collapse as both theme and metaphor.