Thousands of books have sought to capture the American road-trip experience—hundreds of them, over the years, on Route 66 alone.

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Why another one?

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Authors Barbara Brannon and Kay Ellington, who across decades as journalists, travel writers and preservationists pondered as America approached the 100th birthday of the Mother Road: What is it about this one partly-surviving stretch of highway from Chicago to Los Angeles—much of it paved over and passed by already—that so embodies the dreams of drivers the world over? What compels so many to take the two-lane, seek out the souvenirs, sleep in a tepee or watch the stars beneath multi-hued vintage neon?

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If ever there was a time to drive all of Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles and find out, it’s now. With partner Kay Ellington, in 2024 she made her first through-drive of the Route, crafting a 10-part newspaper series along the way.

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The truths travelers discover are not solely in the giant roadside icons or food-and-beverage specialties or even in the rich array of museums, attractions, and landscapes found on Route 66. They’re not found in sunset vistas or interesting people or art and music alone. They are deep within our souls: and given time to flourish along the open road, they bubble to the surface, teaching us as much about ourselves as our history, our nation, and the people with whom we share it. 

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ISBN 978-1-935619-66-6 (casebound) $29.95

ISBN 978-1-935619-65-9 (softcover) $22.95

When a Fort Worth heiress and her younger sister seem to have gone missing, the best man to track them is consulting detective Derrick Miles. Except—as the world knows—he’s dead.

More than a year after the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair has drawn to an end amid a devastating financial recession, a twenty-three-year-old teacher who’s recently come into an inheritance hasn’t made it home to Texas—and neither has her younger sister. They aren’t the only ones, either: there’s reason to fear that a new stripe of murderer is leaving a trail of bodies across multiple cities.

In the bustling cattle-shipping hub of Fort Worth, far from the world’s great commercial centers, a three-story brick hotel has been crudely constructed on a busy street a stone’s throw from the new courthouse project. But this turreted pile exhibits some strange features indeed, and it bears an eerie resemblance to one that’s just caught fire a thousand miles away in the Windy City.

Toss in a series of swindles, a gambling den, and a stable of stolen racehorses, and the municipal police don’t know which way to turn. Without the expertise of the famed Captain Derrick Miles to turn to—however reluctantly—how will they stand a chance of catching the killer?

Drawn from true-life history and documentary sources, as well as favorite works in the Sherlock Holmes canon, The Castle of Fear sheds light on a grisly chapter in American crime that’s still not fully understood more than 125 years later. 

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Western mystery/ historical / Texas

Boldface Books
September 2025, 282 pages

978-1-935619-54-3 (paperback), $18.95

Also available as Kindle eBook

In the rowdy frontier cowtown of Fort Worth, can the real killer be brought to justice?

A recuperating Dr. Frank Hooper has only this morning arrived on the outskirts of the rough-and-tumble cowtown of Fort Worth, Texas—but before he completes his diary entry for the nineteenth of July, 1876, he finds himself taking an unexpected ride, landing smack in the middle of a barroom brawl, and sharing digs with a stranger of quite peculiar habits.

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Yet the allure of tagging along with self-proclaimed consulting detective Capt. Derrick Miles appeals to both his sense of adventure and the urgent need to apply his own military medical skills.

A grisly murder in a blood-stained Hell’s Half Acre crib swiftly tests Miles’s mettle as new city marshal “Longhair Jim” Courtright reluctantly enlists his assistance. Inept lawmen, wily malefactors, and enigmatic clues yield to Derrick Miles’s superior intellect in familiar fashion, made fresh in this twist on the venerable tradition of Sherlock Holmes pastiche.

At the same time, the backstory of multigenerational revenge draws on one of the most gripping chapters of true 19th-century Texas history.

Fast-paced and laced with authentic local detail, this second book in the award-winning Derrick Miles series will satisfy Western enthusiasts everywhere, as well as devotees of the Great Detective. 

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Western mystery/ historical / Texas

Boldface Books

November 2023, 160 pages

978-1-935619-54-3 (paperback), $16.95

WILL ROGERS FINALIST

In the desolate Croton Breaks of West Texas a spectral creature with a six-inch pawprint has spooked livestock of late.

When British-born cattle baron Basil Wolverton is found dead outside his own ranch gate, cowhands and nesters whisper of an ancestral curse, the dire wolf of legend. Sir Basil's executor calls in detective Derrick Miles and his assistant Dr. Frank Hooper to deduce whether there's been a crime committed ... or some diabolical force at work. Transporting the Sherlock Holmes classic The Hound of the Baskervilles to the American West circa 1891,

The Wolf Hunt reimagines Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's thrilling tale with a Texas twist on a murderous beast, a fugitive outlaw, greed and grit, affairs of the heart, and a landscape yet untamed.

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Western mystery/ historical / Texas

Boldface Books paperback
April 2022, 308 pages

ISBN 978-1-935619-52-9 (paperback), $19.95

Also available in hardcover, $25.95

Every writer knows you can’t go home again. But that’s just what is required of West Texas expatriate Dee Bennett-Kaufmann when her mother is badly injured in a mysterious car accident. 

Single-again “Dr. Dee” has never been on the "A-team" in her trendy East Coast MFA program. When a prestigious summer fellowship gives her the chance to finally finish her book, salvage her career, and spend some quality time with her college-age daughter, Dee’s certain her luck is about to change. Returning to care for her irascible, widowed mother threatens all of that. 

With so much at stake, Dee engineers a series of unorthodox strategies and creative tradeoffs to keep her options in play—and despite herself finds friendship, love, and the power of words in the unlikeliest of places.

Can she piece together a dream on a shoestring?As new owner of the falling-apart family homestead in West Texas, Dee Bennett is wrangling ways to earn a living, mend fences with farm and family, and manifest her dreams as a writer—all while nurturing the budding relationship with her beau, outdoorsy photographer Max Miller. But when a drop-dead-gorgeous, high-powered handler for a candidate in a key statewide election blows into Claxton, rivalries bigger than politics and football develop. With stakes running high on the campaign trail, as well as in publishing dreams and love lives, a Bennett family wedding must be attended to. And Dr. Dee, with the assistance of her motley writing-group protégés, must search her soul and fend off a host of challenges to live the life she just might learn to love.

The third book in this popular series is waiting in the wings!

The citizens of Ryder, Texas, are justifiably possessed with a healthy thirst — on the dusty plains of West Texas, they're in the midst of a seven-year drought when the town finally votes to go wet. The opposition faction, and its leader, Miss Jessica Cater, manage to shut down the promotion beer-store owner Buck Turlock has cooked up just in time for the Fourth of July celebration. But will Buck's schemes lead Miss Jessie to rethink her position?

by Barbara Brannon

Part travel journal, part travel guide, The Ferries of North Carolina is the first comprehensive guide to all the state's passenger and vehicle ferries--public and private--covering waterways from Cape Fear to Currituck Sound. Each of the state's 17 coastal and river routes is described in detail, including directions to landings, schedule and fare information, a guide to shore facilities and nearby attractions, and interviews, anecdotes, and observations based on years of firsthand experience.

WILL ROGERS MEDALLION BRONZE WINNER 2023 

by Barbara Brannon

The poems in this collection spring from the “bad blessing” of leaving a beloved homeplace back East—then unexpectedly finding a voice in the West. 

978-1-935619-49-9

Paperback, 66 pages, $16.95

by E. Hamblen (Author), Vicki Hamblen (Introduction)

William Henry Hamblen was a man with a dream. He was a pioneer with a purpose, a trail blazer, a man of action and persistence. With no formal training in road building, at a time when resources and funds were slim, he left a monument to his dream: an automobile road across America's second largest canyon, connecting remote communities, boosting trade, and opening the way for the Texas state highway to come. In 1969, his daughter-in-law Eutha set out to tell the story of this remarkable man, his life and times in the Texas Panhandle, and the family he raised there in the small town of Wayside, in Armstrong County. She published Will's story as Rim to Rim, a slim, illustrated book that went into a second printing and eventually out of print. Today yet another Hamblen descendant has brought this important chapter of Texas history back, amplified with never-before-published photographs, an index, and a new hsitorical introduction. A new generation will appreciate the adventures and acquaintances of this Panhandle pioneer as they traverse Texas State Highway 207 across Palo Duro Canyon, widely known as one of the most scenic drives in the Lone Star State.brief description of this person’s role and responsibilities, or add a short bio.