Texas Proud

A powerful businessman seeks refuge …but his secrets never stay hidden. Before he testifies in an important case, businessman Michael “Mikey” Fiore hides out in Jacobsville, Texas. On a rare night out, he crosses paths with softly beautiful Bernadette, who seems burdened with her own secrets. He hears whispers about a life-threatening condition, her solitary existence. This doesn’t stop him from wanting her, which endangers them both. Their bond grows into passion…until shocking truths surface.

This is a story that is raw and real. Fiercely independent, in true Texas fashion, Stark Wiseman struggles to hold his family heritage together against forces that seem bent on destroying what his grandfather and father had created. The unexpected death of his daughter seems to be the final assault on his resolvethe proverbial straw that breaks the camels back. But Stark fights on against insurmountable odds, determined to preserve his family heritage. The only thing that sustains him is his East Texas pride.

A powerful businessman seeks refuge …but some secrets never stay hidden. Before he testifies in an important case, businessman Michael “Mikey” Fiore hides out in Jacobsville, Texas. On a rare night out, he crosses paths with softly beautiful Bernadette, who seems burdened with her own secrets. He hears whispers about a life-threatening condition, her solitary existence. This doesn’t stop him from wanting her, which endangers them both. Their bond grows into passion…until shocking truths surface. Plus, a classic story from the Men of Medicine Ridge series, Circle of Gold! Sparks fly the moment Kasie Mayfield arrives at Gil Callister’s sprawling ranch to care for his two adorable daughters. Gil is difficult to read, but he still sweeps her off her feet. Can Kasie convince the hard-edged widower that a circle of gold belongs on her finger? New York Times Bestselling Author

Texas-shaped ashtrays, belt buckles, earrings, kitchen utensils--"Texas kitsch"--fill gift shops alongside highways and in airports. The Lone Star State's unmistakable shape is appropriated by advertisers to hawk everything from beans to automobiles inside Texas' borders and beyond. As a billboard-sized neon sign glowing atop a popular honkey-tonk, the Texas map illuminates the Fort Worth night sky, attracting tourists in search of a good time--and a share of the Texas experience. Over the years America's most recognizable state outline has become one of its most potent symbols, a metaphor for Texas popular culture. In the last decade, the private, commercial, and official use of the Texas map as cultural symbol has boomed. Richard V. Francaviglia identifies this current trend as "Tex-map mania," and contends that the Texas map as icon integrates geography with history--and gives shape to a mythic landscape and to abstracted notions of what Texas is and who Texans are. Written in a lively style that engages both the scholar and the general reader in a discussion of the power of symbol and the meaning and significance of a shared aesthetic, The Shape of Texas is at the crossroads of cartography and popular culture. Francaviglia uses more than one hundred illustrations in offering a provocative visual and written account of this important, yet much neglected, aspect of Texas history and the dynamics of a still emerging Texas identity.

BESTSELLING AUTHOR COLLECTION Reader-favorite romances in collectible volumes from our bestselling authors. Texas Proud by New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer Before he testifies in an important case, businessman Mikey Fiore hides out in Jacobsville, Texas, to maintain his privacy. On a rare night out, he crosses paths with beautiful Bernadette Epperson, who seems burdened with her own secrets. Mikey hears whispers about her life-threatening condition and solitary existence. But nothing stops him from wanting her, which endangers them both. Their bond grows into passion…until shocking truths surface. FREE BONUS STORY INCLUDED IN THIS VOLUME! Irresistible Forces by New York Times bestselling author Brenda Jackson Taylor Steele only wants a baby—not a relationship. Sexy, intelligent Dominic Saxon seems like a man with perfect genes. Their week of no-strings-attached fun in the Caribbean is simply meant as a “procreation vacation,” but when it’s over, will either of them be able to say goodbye?

A former Congressman and the author of We Can Overcome presents his case for a conservative Texas. Texas is booming. In recent years, the Lone Star State has experienced some of the most rapid growth in the country, both in its economy and in its population. This is thanks to an influx of businesses relocating to Texas to take advantage of all its benefits. But this increase in population has also brought about a shift in the political dialogue within Texas’s borders. As more people pour into Texas, they bring with them liberal and socialist ideologies as they try to swing the state from red to blue. These plans for changing policies will suffocate the highly successful capitalist state and its residents, and according to Lt. Col. Allen West (Ret.), allowing these liberal ideals to creep into the legislative branch will be the death of Texas. In Hold Texas, Hold the Nation: Victory or Death, West explains how the longstanding conservative capitalist policies within the state’s government have allowed it to flourish over the years, providing hard-to-ignore evidence and allowing his experience in Congress to support his argument. He makes his stand, asserting that Texas must hold fast to its conservative ways and resist succumbing to liberal mindsets, or else cease to prosper, and begin to perish. Texas is a sustaining force for America, truly embodying the founding principles of the nation: those unalienable individual rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In Texas, it’s “Victory or Death.” Praise for Hold Texas, Hold the Nation “A must-read for anyone who bleeds red, white, and blue.” —Brian Kilmeade, cohost, Fox & Friends; host, The Brian Kilmeade Show; New York Times bestselling author

Vartan Gregorian's tale starts with a childhood of poverty, deprivation, and enchantment in the Armenian quarter of Tabriz, Iran. As the world reeled from depression into six years of warfare, his mother died, leaving his grandmother Voski as the loving staff of his life. Through unlettered example and instruction, he learned about the first of his many worlds: the strenuousness required for survival, the fairy tale that explained existence, the place and name of his own star in the night sky, how to maneuver as a member of a Christian minority in a benevolent Muslim kingdom, the beauty and inspiration of Armenian Church liturgy, the exciting foreign world of ten-year-old American westerns, the richness of life on the streets. He learned the magic of the innumerable worlds he could find in books -- and he wanted to visit them all. As the spell books cast on him grew more powerful, so did the constraints imposed by his father's indifference to his dreams of redirecting his life through learning. So, one day when he was fifteen years old, he presented himself at an Armenian-French lycee in Beirut, Lebanon, to start the arduous task of becoming a person of learning and consequence. This book tells not only how he reached that school but also about the many people who guided, supported, taught, and helped him on an extravagantly absorbing and varied journey from Tabriz to Beirut to Palo Alto to Tenafly to London, from Stanford University to San Francisco State University to the University of Texas at Austin to the University of Pennsylvania to the New York Public Library to Brown University and, currently, to the presidency of Carnegie Corporation of New York. With witty stories and memorable encounters, Dr. Gregorian describes his public and private lives as one education after another. He has written a love story about life.