No Country for Old Men
Thriller set on the ESSEX Coast
Ten Great Books set in TEXAS
11th December 2025
Ten great books set in Texas. Texas is defined by its massive scale and diverse identity, encompassing everything from arid deserts to pine forests and long Gulf Coast beaches. Known as the Lone Star State, it boasts a rich, complex history marked by its independence from Mexico and its frontier past, embodied by the Alamo in San Antonio.
Economically, Texas is a global powerhouse, historically famous for oil and gas, but now a major hub for technology, aerospace, and booming metropolitan centres like Dallas, Houston, and Austin. Austin, the state capital, is particularly known for its vibrant live music scene and culture, often contrasted with the traditional cattle ranching heritage of West Texas.
This unique blend of old West mythology, political conservatism, and rapid modern industrial growth creates a dynamic and distinct culture.
Blue Running by Lori Ann Stephens
In the new Republic of Texas, guns are compulsory and nothing is forgiven. Blue Running is a gripping coming-of-age thriller for fans of Station Eleven and Thelma and Louise.
Fourteen-year-old Bluebonnet Andrews is on the run across the Republic of Texas. An accident with a gun killed her best friend but everyone in the town of Blessing thinks it was murder. Even her father – the town’s drunken deputy – believes she did it. Now, she has no choice but to run. In Texas, murder is punishable by death.
There’s no one to help her. Her father is incapable and her mother left the state on the last flight to America before the secession. Blue doesn’t know where she is but she’s determined to track her down. First she has to get across the lawless Republic and over the wall that keeps everyone in.
On the road she meets Jet, a pregnant young woman of Latin American heritage. Jet is secretive about her past but she’s just as determined as Blue to get out of Texas before she’s caught and arrested. Together, the two form an unlikely kinship as they make their way past marauding motorcycle gangs, the ever watchful Texas Rangers, and armed strangers intent on abducting them – or worse. When Blue and Jet finally reach the wall, will they be able to cross the border, or will they be shot down in cold blood like the thousands who have gone before them?
Some things are worth dying for.
Blue Running pulls no punches. A fast-paced, page-turning, chilling book which looks unflinchingly at what the future could hold.
Sunset City by Melissa Ginsburg
Twenty-two-year-old Charlotte Ford reconnects with Danielle, her best friend from high school, a few days before Danielle is found bludgeoned to death in a motel room. In the wake of the murder, Charlotte’s life unravels and she descends into the city’s underbelly, where she meets the strippers, pornographers and drug dealers who surrounded Danielle in the years they were estranged.
Ginsburg’s Houston is part of a lesser known south, where the urban and rural collide gracelessly. In this shadowy world, culpability and sympathy blur in a debut novel which thrillingly brings its three female protagonists to the fore. Scary, funny and almost unbearably sad, Sunset City is written with rare grace and empathy holding you transfixed, praying for some kind of escape for Charlotte.
Isaac’s Storm by Erik Larson
On September 8, 1900, a massive hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas. A tidal surge of some four feet in as many seconds inundated the city, while the wind destroyed thousands of buildings. When the water and winds subsided, entire streets had disappeared and as many as 10,000 were dead–making this the worst natural disaster in America’s history.
In Isaac’s Storm, Erik Larson blends science and history to tell the story of Galveston, its people, and the hurricane that devastated them. Drawing from hundreds of personal reminiscences of the storm, Larson follows individuals through the fateful day and the storm’s aftermath. There’s Louisa Rollfing, who begged her husband August not to go into town the morning of the storm: the Ursuline Sisters at St. Mary’s orphanage who tied their charges to lengths of clothesline to keep them together: Judson Palmer, who huddled in his bathroom with his family and neighbours, hoping to ride out the storm. At the centre of it all was Isaac Cline, employee of the nascent Weather Bureau, and his younger brother–and rival weatherman– Joseph. Larson does an excellent job of piecing together Isaac’s life and reveals that Isaac was not the quick- thinking hero he claimed to be after the storm ended. The storm itself, however, is the book’s true protagonist–and Larson describes its nuances in horrific detail.
Lone Star Noir by Bobby Byrd and Johnny Byrd
If everything is bigger in Texas, then that includes the boldness of the criminals who call the state home. From large urban centers to the Cajun Gulf coast, there is big money to be made running guns, drugs, and catering to the greedy and disillusioned. Each distinctive region can claim its own special brand of outlaw.
In Lone Star Noir, you’ll find stories by James Crumley, Joe R. Lansdale, Claudia Smith, Ito Romo, Luis Alberto Urrea, David Corbett, George Wier, Sarah Cortez, Jesse Sublett, Dean James, Tim Tingle, Milton T. Burton, Lisa Sandlin, Jessica Powers, and Bobby Byrd.
“This isn’t J.R. Ewing’s Lone Star State. This is the Texas of chicken shit bingo, Enron scamsters, and a feeling that what happens in Mexico stays in Mexico . . . So what defines Texas noir? Who knows, but you better pray that blood doesn’t stain your belt buckle.” —The Austin Chronicle
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice – leave the scene as he found it, or cut the money and run. Choosing the latter, he knows, will change everything. And so begins a terrifying chain of events, in which each participant seems determined to answer the question that one asks another: how does a man decide in what order to abandon his life? ‘No Country for Old Men is a severed head and shoulders over anything else written in America this year’ Independent on Sunday ‘A Western thriller with a racy plot and punchy dialogue, perfect for a lazy Sunday’ The Times ‘[An] utterly absorbing, chilling tale . . . One of the most sinister characters in modern American fiction’ Herald ‘A fast, powerful read, steeped with a deep sorrow about the moral degradation of the legendary American West’ Financial Times ‘It’s hard to think of a contemporary writer more worth reading’ Independent.
Old Buildings in North Texas by Jen Waldo
Olivia is thirty-two and living back home with her mother in Caprock, small-town Texas. Her therapist is a girl she went to high school with; her promising career in journalism has dwindled to nothing, and she spends her days hawking jewellery in a Mall following a favour from a friend. Life is back on an even-keel after her descent into drug abuse, but it’s a far cry from the one she imagined …Then, under pressure to take up a hobby, she decides to try urban exploration. Soon she’s poking through derelict homes, churches and schools across North Texas. But Olivia knows her therapist would disapprove. What began as a harmless distraction soon becomes a lucrative business as she collects and sells antique fittings and fixtures online.Her new-found freedom starts to spiral out of control. Victimless trespass is fast evolving into criminal behaviour, and the path her rehabilitation is taking leads Olivia to question her own moral code. She’s not supposed to withhold information from her therapist – yet she does.Nor is she supposed to be stashing money in a secret account when she owes so much to so many – and although she’s supposedly prohibited from communicating with people from her past, old friends keep showing up, making demands and threats. To add to it all, her baby sister has turned up pregnant, the question of their absent fathers has once more been unearthed, and her prescribed medication is inducing an unnatural detachment that makes her feel as though she’s not present in her own life.Tackling difficult subjects with a warmth and humour, and creating an unforgettable protagonist, Jen Waldo brings an electrifying tone to fiction – she is an astonishing new American voice who will stop you in her tracks.
Playing Dead by Julie Heaberlin
The Letter: A few weeks after her father’s death, Tommie McCloud receives a letter in the post from a stranger. The woman claims that Tommie is her biological daughter, kidnapped from her as a baby over thirty years ago.
The Lies: Tommie is approached by journalist Jack Smith, who claims to know about her past. But is he really who he says he is?
The Truth: Not sure who to trust or what to believe, Tommie sets out to discover the truth about her identity and in doing so uncovers explosive secrets that threaten not only her life, but also the lives of those she holds dear.
Stardust by Carla Stewart
Shortly after burying her unfaithful husband, Georgia Peyton unexpectedly inherits the derelict Stardust motel from a distant relative. Despite doubts from the community and the aunt who raised her, she is determined to breathe new life into it. But the guests who arrive aren’t what Georgia expects: Her gin-loving mother-in-law: her dead husband’s mistress: an attractive but down-on-his-luck drifter who’s tired of the endless road: and an aging Vaudeville entertainer with a disturbing link to Georgia’s past.
Can Georgia find the courage to forgive those who’ve betrayed her, the grace to shelter those who need her, and the moxy to face the future? And will her dream of a new life under the flickering neon of the STARDUST ever come true.
Tequila Sunset by Sam Hawken
El Paso and Ciudad Juárez sit across the Texas / Mexico border from each other. They share streets, share industry, share crime. One gang claims territory in both: Los Aztecas. This single criminal organisation is responsible for most of the homicides committed in Juárez, and Felipe Morales is one of them. Recruited in prison, and now on the streets of El paso, ‘Flip’ has no choice but to step further into that world, but he has a secret that threatens his life. A witness to murder and intimidation, he tries playing both the cops and the outlaws in a bid to escape. On the American side, El Paso detective Cristina Salas struggles to balance the needs of single motherhood with those of life in the city’s anti-gang unit. When her path crosses with Flip, their relationship will spell the difference between a life behind bars for the young gang member, a grisly death or freedom. Meanwhile, Mexican federal agent, Matías Segura, must contend with the scourge of Los Aztecas while coordinating a long-term operation with the American authorities. The Aztecas, north and south, stand in the way of three lives. They have no qualms about crossing the line, about killing, about moving their deadly product, and it all comes together in a confrontation where the stakes are, truly, a matter of life and death.
Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
On a dark night, out on the Houston bayou to celebrate his wife’s birthday, Jay Porter hears a scream. Saving a distressed woman from drowning, he opens a Pandora’s Box.
Not the lawyer he set out to be, Jay long ago made peace with his radical youth, tucked away his darkest sins and resolved to make a fresh start. His impulsive act out on the bayou is heroic, but it puts Jay in danger, ensnaring him in a murder investigation that could cost him is practice, his family and even his life. Before he can untangle the mystery that stretches to the highest reaches of corporate power, he must confront the demons of his past.
A provocative thriller with an exhilarating climax, Black Water Rising marks the arrival of an electrifying new talent.
The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese
When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unravelling, relocates to Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at a county hospital.
There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from a drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security, in the sport they love and in each other. But when the dark beast that is David’s addiction emerges once again, almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened.
Enjoy our selection of great books set in Texas!
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