LITERATURE + LECTURES

Saturday, August 25th at 4:30pm, Murder by the Book presents a book signings and discussions with Bill Crider and Reavis Wortham.

Bill Crider will sign and discuss Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen (Minotaur; $24.99).

Sheriff Dan Rhodes is called to The Beauty Shack, where a young and pretty girl has been found dead, bashed over the head with a hairdryer. While he investigates, Rhodes must also deal with the theft of copper and car batteries, not to mention a pregnant goat terrorizing the town.

Bill Crider is the winner of two Anthony Awards and an Edgar Award finalist. An English college professor for many years, he’s published more than seventy-five crime, Western, and horror novels, as well as a number of children’s books. He lives with his wife in Alvin, Texas.

Reavis Wortham will sign and discuss Burrows (Poisoned Pen Press; $24.95 and $14.95).

Lyndon B. Johnson is President, "Beatlemania "is in overdrive and gasoline costs 30 cents a gallon""when Ned Parker retires as constable in Center Springs, Texas. But his plan to live a quiet life as a cotton farmer is torpedoed. A phone call leads Ned to a body in the Red River and into the urgent investigation headed by his nephew, the newly elected constable Cody Parker. Together they work to head off a multi-state killing spree that sets northeast Texas on fire.

As the weeks pass, Ned's grandchildren, ten-year-old Top and his tomboy cousin Pepper, struggle with personal issues resulting from their traumatic experiences at the Rock Hole only months before. They now find themselves in the middle of a nightmare for which no one can prepare. Cody and Deputy John Washington, the law south of the tracks, follow a lead from their small community to the long abandoned Cotton Exchange warehouse in Chisum. Stunned, they find the Exchange packed full of the town's cast off garbage and riddled with booby-trapped passageways and dark burrows. Despite Ned's warnings, Cody enters the building and finds himself relying on his recent military experiences to save both himself and Big John.

Unfortunately, the trail doesn't end there and the killing spree continues...

As a boy, award-winning writer, Reavis Z Wortham hunted and fished the river bottoms near Chicota, Texas, the inspiration for Center Springs. He is the author of Doreen’s 24 HR Eat Gas Now Café. Humor editor and frequent contributor for Texas Fish and Game Magazine, he writes on everything from fishing to deer hunting.

In addition to several other magazines, his work has appeared in American Cowboy and Texas Sporting Journal. A retired educator of 35 years, he and wife Shana live in Frisco, Texas.