Kelly Ames for the Stars

  JUST A HAT By Shanah Khubiar   Young Adult / Coming of Age / Jewish Fiction / Small-Town Texas / 1970s Publisher: Blackstone Publishing Pages: 254 Publication Date: July 18, 2023     SYNOPSIS Action-packed, humorous, and bittersweet, this 1970s-era coming-of-age novel is more relevant than ever--exploring how a second-generation immigrant kid in a new hometown must navigate bullying, unexpected friendships, and the struggle of keeping both feet firmly planted in two very different cultures. It's 1979, and thirteen-year-old Joseph Nissan can't help but notice that small-town Texas has something in common with Revolution-era Iran: an absence of fellow Jews. And in such a small town it seems obvious that a brown kid like him was bound to make friends with Latinos--which is a plus, since his new buds, the Ybarra twins, have his back. But when the Iran hostage crisis, two neighborhood bullies, and the local reverend's beautiful daughter put him in ...

DANGEROUS LATITUDES By Jack Woodville London Historical Fiction Publisher: Stoney Creek Publishing Pages: 326 Publication Date: February 18, 2025 SYNOPSIS From the author of the French Letters trilogy comes a sweeping historical adventure full of unforgettable Texas legends! Six years after the fall of the Alamo, Mexican armies invade freely across the Rio Grande, and Texas is but one skirmish away from losing its hard-won independence. Against this backdrop, naïve surveyor Alexandre LaBranche accepts a dubious commission to map the Rio Grande boundary between Texas and Mexico but soon finds himself far out of his depth. Laced with exuberant, Texas-sized historical figures such as Sam Houston, Mirabeau Lamar, and Jack Hays, Dangerous Latitudes is a quest across a war-torn frontier that becomes a race to save two hundred captured Texans who the Mexican army has marked for death. CLICK TO PURCHASE Amazon | B&N | Bookshop.org ABOUT THE AUTHOR Jack Woodville London is a histor...