Peruse our plethora of Texas-connected new titles where MAYbe you will discover a new favorite author or MAYhap, a new gem from a go-to author. Whether you want to tumble into a twisty-turny mystery or get swept up in topsy-turvy romance, Lone Star Lit has you covered.

Hunting El Despiadado (A Cass Callahan Novel)

Chris Mullen

Fueled by a relentless determination to bring down the notorious Camargo Cartel, Cass allies with his hardened former partner, Lieutenant Ray Tucker, to hunt down the cartel's elusive leader and his ruthless sicario, El Despiadado. Together, they embark on a covert mission south of the border—where all bets are off should they get caught.

When El Despiadado cuts ties with the cartel, a storm of violence leads to Cass crossing paths with the infamous sicario. After a deadly betrayal threatens his mission, he becomes trapped in a web of danger, and, in a heart-pounding clash of gunfire and explosions, Cass is faced with an impossible choice—escape with his life or risk everything to continue hunting El Despiadado.

Marked (Morningstar Academy series, Book Three)

L. R. W. Lee

Fallen angel Gladriel, her new fallen friends, and her former celestial squadron mates have failed to shift a world ending prophecy and feel increasingly helpless as war, famine, and plague rage, killing millions of the humans they long to protect.

With conditions worsening on Earth, Kessien, Glad’s former squadron leader and romantic interest, is less available. At the same time, Morningstar Academy forces her to do increasingly heinous things to humans, and the distance stretches their relationship to the breaking point.

Glad and her fallen friends’ only hope for rescue is to throw themselves on the Almighty’s mercy and beg him to reverse their sentences. Trouble is, Glad will never be sorry for what caused her to fall and she can’t bear putting them in jeopardy.

Notorious in North Texas (Metroplex Mysteries, Volume III)

Published and Written by Sisters in Crime

The anthology is a collection of twelve short mystery / thriller stories by award-winning authors. All stories are set in North Texas and vary from scary to humorous, but all with a crime or mystery.

One of Four: World War One Through the Eyes of an Unknown Solider

Travis Davis

From New York Harbor to the battlefields of France, relive World War One through the eyes of an unknown soldier, as told through his diary. See how the 100-year-old diary brings a father and his estranged son back together by retracing his experiences fighting in the battlefields of France in 1917 - 1918 to his final resting place—the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Perfect Blend (Lost Creek, Texas Hill Country, Book One)

Alexa Aston

Braden Clark’s world crashes when his family’s vineyard is seized and his father is sent to prison. Event planner Harper Hart discovers her fiancé has been cheating on her with her best friend. She returns home to the Texas Hill Country to become an event planner at her family’s winery, meeting Braden, the new winemaker taking her father’s place.

Braden prefers to devote his time to his new job, but Harper proves a sexy distraction he can’t seem to avoid. Soon, their professional and personal lives intertwine, and friendship turns into love.

Can two people damaged almost beyond repair heal emotionally?

Pretty: A Memoir

KB Brookins

By a prize-winning, young Black trans writer of outsized talent, a fierce and disciplined memoir about queerness, masculinity, and race.

Even as it shines light on the beauty and toxicity of Black masculinity from a transgender perspective—the tropes, the presumptions—Pretty is as much a powerful and tender love letter as it is a call for change.

“I should be able to define myself, but I am not. Not by any governmental or cultural body,” Brookins writes.

“Every day, I negotiate the space between who I am, how I’m perceived, and what I need to unlearn. People have assumed things about me, and I can’t change that. Every day, I am assumed to be a Black American man, though my ID says ‘female,’ and my heart says neither of the sort?"

Recipes from a Tasteless Machine: A Culinary Journey through Artificial Intelligence

Preston Lewis & Harriet Kocher Lewis

In Recipes from a Tasteless Machine: A Culinary Journey through Artificial Intelligence the authors put ChatGPT to the taste test, challenging it to develop recipes on a variety of themes. The result provides an amusing mix of recipes and a fascinating look into how artificial intelligence thinks in the kitchen.

Recipes from a Tasteless Machine is the third book in the Magic Machine Series from award winning authors Preston Lewis and Harriet Kocher Lewis. The book organizes recipes around themes based on the months of the year and related holidays.

From breakfast meals in January and to holiday fare at the end of the year, the authors provide a culinary calendar of dishes that'll bring a smile to the face, if not to the tastebuds.

The Sky King (Skyriders, Book Two)

Polly Holyoke

In this soaring adventure for fans of Skandar and the Unicorn Thief and Wings of Fire, a new kind of monster launches an attack on the empire of Prekalt. Who can Kiesandra and her skysteed turn to for help in this life-and-death battle?

Source Code

E.M. Rensing

Daelia Hall has a problem.

Several, in fact.

Her academic advisor won’t get off her back. Her dad is pushing her to leave her doctoral program and work for him. The new pilot up at the squadron almost just crashed her favorite AI-enabled airplane, one of the fabled emergent abiota. Oh yeah, and an unidentified object just crashed into a nearby park, and the Air Guard wants to know what is going on. Because there’s something alive inside this thing, something that seems to be driving every military abiota on the airfield absolutely insane.

With the annual air show on and a power struggle brewing, it’s up to Daelia to uncover the true nature of the object, before the consequences turn deadly.

Wheeling and Dealing (The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series, Book 18)

Becki Willis

When Chief of Police Brash deCordova is hurt in the line of duty, a new threat rolls into The Sisters.

With Otis Perry temporarily at the helm, the police department is thwarted by the man’s inflated ego. Newly appointed Deputy Nate Stone does his best to serve justice, but ‘his best’ turns out to be hiring Madison and In a Pinch to investigate what Perry won’t.

Madison has a bad habit of finding danger, and this time is no different.

Read the latest from the award-winning The Sisters, Texas Mystery Series!

The Brigands (The Texicans Series, Volume I)

Parris Afton Bonds

Before there was New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, or Utah, there was Texas. Molded by Old Mexico and a new rough-and-ready breed of hearty settlers from around the world, The Lone Star Republic was the thing of dreams—land, riches, liberty, home. For the Paladín family, it is all of those things and so much more.

Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors

Anthology (edited by A. Balsamo)

Do you need to know who done it?

Detectives, Sleuths, and Nosy Neighbors is a mystery anthology with short stories which range between the classic nosy neighbor and detective to a space sleuth.

Curated and edited by A. Balsamo, these tales twist and turn until the very end.

Many of the authors have published books available, so you might just find a new favorite to read.

Stories by A.R.R. Ash, Mark Beard, L.N. Hunter, Mary Sophie Filicetti, Tiffany Seitz, J.F. Benedetto, N.M. Cedeño, Cassondra Windwalker, Joe Giordano, Kay Hanifen, Robert Richter, Tracy Falenwolfe, Veronica Leigh, Michelle Kaseler, Kevin A Davis

This Tangled Body: Poems

Carmen Calatayud

This Tangled Body by Carmen Calatayud reads as surreal poetic memoir, navigating family history, war, migration and the grit of relationships. Through lyrical language, she searches for ways to rescue a body that knows pain, addiction and generational trauma.

Elegies, love letters and concussions cross paths here, along with planets and stars, demonstrating that the potential to heal is possible when raw truth and grace are present. Calatayud’s willingness to face the land of the dead and cross all borders is on full display. As she invites us to “leave this continent and/light the path behind us on fire,” her poetry insists we return to love, and love hard. 

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!

There are so many Texas-connected books publishing this month that we couldn’t feature all of them. The following books also publish in May:

CHILDREN'S, MIDDLE GRADE, & YOUNG ADULT BOOKS 

Ace by Heather Black

Charlotte & Penelope and their Magical Menagerie by Teresa Argenbright

Grace Notes by Naomi Shibab Nye

Hot Boy Summer by Joe Jimenez

Hurdles in the Dark by Elvira K. Gonzalez

Los Monstruos #2: Rooster and the Dancing Diablo by Diana Lopez

The Redemption of Daya Keane by Gia Gordon

Road Home by Rex Ogle

Shaper by Angelo Bowles

The Silver Dragon by Ellis Colton

Something Maybe Magnificent by R.L. Toalson

They Built Me For Freedom by Tonya Duncan Ellis

NONFICTION 

The Ahern Home of Texarkana by Doris Douglas Davis

Aroma of Czech Cuisine by Denise Mazal Resnerova

A Baseball Gaijin: Chasing a Dream to Japan and Back by Aaron Fischman

Bringing Davy Home by Sherri Steward

The Call to Serve by Jon Meacham

Corsicana / Evanston Salt Costs Climbing by Will Arbery

The Day My Mother Never Came Home by Reginald L. Reed, Jr.

The Edge Rover by Timothy E. Green

Fiestas in Laredo by Norma E. Cantu

Framing Oak Cliff  by Richard Doherty

From the Courtroom to the Boardroom by Deena Varner

Galveston's Tremont House Hotel by Katherine Shanahan Maca

Home, Heat, Money, God: Texas and Modern Architecture by Kathryn E. O'Rourke and Ben Koush

Landmark Maps of Texas by Frank H. Holcomb

Making the Unknown Known edited by Victoria H. Cummins and Light Townsend Cummins

Oil Cities by Henry Alexander Wiencek

One Year in Uvalde: A Story of Hope and Resilience by John Quiñones & María Elena Salinas

Outlaw Country Reporter by Sam Kindrick

A Passion for Places by Roy R. Pachecano

Physicians of the Future, UT Press

Reflections on Wright: Essays on the Career of Speaker Jim Wright edited by James W. Riddlesperger & Anthony Champagne 

Restore by Jim Donnelly and Steve Welch

Rick Perry by Brandon Rottinghaus

Run For Your Lives by Linda English

SFA: 100 Years of Excellence edited by Kimberly Verhines

Shrimping West Texas by Bart Reid

Spirit in a Bottle by Tito's Handmade Vodka

They Came for the Schools by Michael Hixenbaugh

Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition by Silky Shah

Undefeated by Shaunie Henderson

The Whole Story by John Mackey

William Hanson and the Texas-Mexico Border by John Weber

POETRY 

Watcha by Stalina Emmanuelle Villarreal

MYSTERY / HORROR

Black Mass by Mark A. Daniel

Blond Hair, Blue Eyes by Chris Kelsey

Clover Covered Corpse by Jackie Layton

Death by Matchmaker by Brittany E. Brinegar

Firearms and Foxes by Verena DeLuca

Five Tries to Get It Right by Kathryn Dodson

Fluffy, Flip Flops, and Foul Play by Leanne Leeds

The Last to Know by Mary Alford

Liars Point by Laura Griffin

Lost Time by J.T. Bishop

Midlife Gumbo by Reggi Dupree

One Big Lie by L.J. Breedlove

One Desperate Life by D.J. Maughan

ROMANCE

The Billionaire's Auction by Barb Shuler

Chasing Time by Tess St. John

Cowboy Homecoming by Peggy McKenzie writing as Nikki Malone

Deal with the Cowboy by Annee Jones

Falling for the Marquess by Alexa Aston

Flaming Her Affection by Jenna Brandt

Forever the One.Com by Connie Y. Harris

Guarding the Target by Liz Shoaf and Hope White

Hill Country Hero by Kit Hawthorne

Home to Her Cowboy by Sasha Summers

Inevitable by Erin Rose

It Would Have Been A Great Story by Emma Hill

A Little Kissing Between Friends by Chencia C. Higgins

Lovers and Liars by Amanda Eyre Ward

Malone's Fate by Laylah Roberts

A Match Made in Heaven by Kimberly Smith

Mountain Man Protector by Natasha L. Black

The Mummy Effect by Lori Wilde

My Wild Horse King by Bridget E. Baker

Outplayed by Courtney W. Dixon

Resisting Love by Katrina Marie

Resolute Bodyguard by Leslie Marshman

Ride a Cowboy by Mari Carr

Rocco by Angel Vane

Shot in the Dark by Mary Dublin & Anne Kendsley

Sisters in Paradise by Carolyn Brown

Smooth as Whiskey by Lyra Parish

Texas Forsaken by Sherry Shindelar

Wallflower Gone Wild by Cecilia Rene

Worth a Fortune by Nancy Robards Thompson

OTHER FICTION

Bloodwoven by G.J. Terral

Frozen Girl of Spirit Lake by Meg Lelvis

Lady of Basilikas by Ronie Kendig

The Medicine Woman of Galveston by Amanda Skenandore

On Wahoo Reef by Tim W. Jackson

Price of Magic by Martha Carr & Michael Anderle

The Runners Acts of the Adherents by Matthew Normand

We Were the Universe by Kimberly King Parsons

Wolf Chosen by Tim Frankovich

Women and Children First by Alina Grabowski

The Worst Traitors in the Confederacy by Skyler Ramirez