Riley Hayes, the playboy of the Hayes family, is a young man who seems to have it all: money, a career he loves, and his pick of beautiful women. His father, CEO of HayesOil, passes control of the corporation to his two sons; but a stipulation is attached to Riley's portion. Concerned about Riley's lack of maturity, his father requires that Riley 'marry and stay married for one year to someone he loves'. Angered by the requirement, Riley seeks a means of bypassing his father's stipulation. Blackmailing Jack Campbell into marrying him ""for love"" suits Riley's purpose. There is no mention in his father's documents that the marriage had to be with a woman and Jack Campbell is the son of Riley Senior's arch-rival. Win-win. Riley marries Jack and abruptly his entire world is turned inside out. Riley hadn't counted on the fact that Jack Campbell, quiet and unassuming rancher, is a force of nature in his own right. This is a story of murder, deceit, the struggle for power, lust and love, the sprawling life of a rancher and the whirlwind existence of a playboy. But under and through it all, as Riley learns over the months, this is a tale about family and everything that that word means.

Named a “Top Pick” by RT Book Reviews Named a “Fall Must-Read” by RedbookMag.com * PopSugar * Parade Magazine * Brit + Co * SoulCycle Hailed as a “Best Fiction Book by Women of Color” at Bustle.com Pitched as “a poor man’s Halle Berry,” forty-one-year-old soap star Jo Randolph, has successfully avoided waiting tables since she left Midland, Texas at eighteen. But then, in the span of twenty-four hours, Jo manages to lose her job, burn her bridges in Hollywood, and accidentally burn down her lover/director’s beach house—after which she is shipped home to Texas by her agent to stay out of sight while she sorts out her situation. The more Jo reluctantly reconnects with her Texas “roots” and the family and friends she left behind, the more she regains touch with herself as an artist and with what is meaningful in life beyond the limelight. The summer of 2007 is cathartic for Jo, whose career and lifestyle have allowed her to live like a child for forty years, but who now must transition to making grown-up decisions and taking on adult responsibilities. In the Heart of Texas is a wry, humorous commentary on the complexities of race, class, relationships, politics, popular culture, and celebrity in our current society.

My name is Texas and this is my story. The daughter of a Southern Baptist pastor, I ran away from home when I was 17. For 28 years I traveled a path that took me to places from which few return. Unhealthy relationships and unbridled lusts corrupted my view of freedom and left me cornered in addiction--financed by crafty manipulation and drug dealing. My tainted knowledge of love and polluted desire for escape kept me on a treacherous treadmill that continually fed the heartache of those I loved. But, through it all, the One who loved me unconditionally remained. This is my unvarnished account of the years I spent running and what brought that season to its redeeming end.

It wasn’t supposed to be this hard. If America could send a man to the moon, shouldn’t the best surgeons in the world be able to build an artificial heart? In Ticker, Texas Monthly executive editor and two time National Magazine Award winner Mimi Swartz shows just how complex and difficult it can be to replicate one of nature’s greatest creations. Part investigative journalism, part medical mystery, Ticker is a dazzling story of modern innovation, recounting fifty years of false starts, abysmal failures and miraculous triumphs, as experienced by one the world’s foremost heart surgeons, O.H. “Bud” Frazier, who has given his life to saving the un-savable. His journey takes him from a small town in west Texas to one of the country’s most prestigious medical institutions, The Texas Heart Institute, from the halls of Congress to the animal laboratories where calves are fitted with new heart designs. The roadblocks to success —medical setbacks, technological shortcomings, government regulations – are immense. Still, Bud and his associates persist, finding inspiration in the unlikeliest of places. A field beside the Nile irrigated by an Archimedes screw. A hardware store in Brisbane, Australia. A seedy bar on the wrong side of Houston. Until post WWII, heart surgery did not exist. Ticker provides a riveting history of the pioneers who gave their all to the courageous process of cutting into the only organ humans cannot live without. Heart surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley, whose feud dominated the dramatic beginnings of heart surgery. Christian Barnaard, who changed the world overnight by performing the first heart transplant. Inventor Robert Jarvik, whose artificial heart made patient Barney Clark a worldwide symbol of both the brilliant promise of technology and the devastating evils of experimentation run amuck. Rich in supporting players, Ticker introduces us to Bud’s brilliant colleagues in his quixotic quest to develop an artificial heart: Billy Cohn, the heart surgeon and inventor who devotes his spare time to the pursuit of magic and music; Daniel Timms, the Brisbane biomedical engineer whose design of a lightweight, pulseless heart with but a single moving part offers a new way forward. And, as government money dries up, the unlikeliest of backers, Houston’s furniture king, Mattress Mack. In a sweeping narrative of one man’s obsession, Swartz raises some of the hardest questions of the human condition. What are the tradeoffs of medical progress? What is the cost, in suffering and resources, of offering patients a few more months, or years of life? Must science do harm to do good? Ticker takes us on an unforgettable journey into the power and mystery of the human heart.

The Texas Children's Hospital Handbook of Congenital Heart Disease is authored by physicians, nurses, and allied staff across a wide variety of disciplines at theHeart Center at Texas Children's Hospital. The book is not intended as a comprehensive textbook in congenital heart disease but rather as a practical handbook to be used by students, residents, fellows, nurses, and congenital heart specialists for the day-to-day management of these complex patients. The Handbook describes the philosophy, protocols, and nuances of management of patients with congenital heart disease at Texas Children's Hospital.

This carefully documented book with its unusual photographs is a powerful triute to the strengths and acheivements of Texas Jews. The heroes, heroines, and hell-raisers are all here.

After a traumatic ordeal Emily Pearce ran from her home in Texas to start a new life in New York City.Finding herself engaged to a rich and successful new man three years later, she has no choice but to go back home armed with her best friend for moral support, to confront her family and past to ask her country boy husband Luke for a divorce. Will Emily be able to resist the familiar charms of the home and the people she left behind? Can she put the past behind her and move on with her new life? Both drawn to Luke and terrified of him at the same time, Emily must depend on those closest to her as she reconnects with the world she left behind.

It's 1952 and in the small town of Yoakum, Texas, Tessa Louise Carter-a quirky, sassy, back-talking nine-year-old-finds herself torn between her deeply religious but foul-mouthed grandmother and her beautiful bed-hopping mother. Tessa doesn't have many friends and takes solace from talking with the ghosts of her dead great-grandmother and great-aunt-which doesn't sit well with her mother or grandmother. What Tessa wants and needs more than anything is a father figure, but the men her mother brings home are either mean and cruel or are totally uninterested in the musings of a nine-year-old. When her mother becomes pregnant by the local pastor, he flees, and out of convenience she marries yet another of her men friends. Tessa is miserable and is sent back to live with her grandmother. When Tessa finds a human skeleton, half-buried in the mud outside her grandmother's home, the family's ghastly dark secret is revealed. Tessa becomes haunted by the spirit of her great-grandfather, which won't leave her alone-but her nightmare is only just beginning...