A coming-of-age novel set against the background of the Palo Duro Canyon and two violent cultures that coexist in contemporary West Texas, "Snake Mountain" opens with Jason White's arrival in the Los Angeles airport on his way to Texas and college life. A sudden, violent murder in the airport confirms his belief that America is a senselessly violent country and strengthens his doubts about having left Malaysia, where he lived most of his life. His impression is confirmed when Angela, a hand on the ranch where he will live, meets him in Amarillo. Before she can even drive him to the ranch,...

Tall tales and "true stories" are mixed here with author Jerry Craven's mind-teasing musings on culture and language. Starting with West Texas, "Tickling Catfish" builds its way surely through anecdotes and allusion into the ways of people elsewhere-from a street musician playing a leaf in Mexico City to gem smugglers in Malaysia, from Texas boys tripping cows to Singaporians listening to dogs bark in Chinese. And all the stories are told with an appropriate dose of sophisticated prairie humor.
In his art of telling stories, Craven balances timing, rhythm, style, and content. His style...

This volume consists of twenty-five stories, five each by five Texas writers. Except for the five points of the Texas Lone Star, there's nothing particularly Texan about the number five--nor the number twenty-five--yet the stories whole-heartedly represent many facets of Texas. In fact, it doesn't get more Texas than this. Or more fittingly, I might say it don't get more Texas.
The stories in "Texas 5X5" offer both traditional themes and ideas and subjects that are pure Texan. These stories accomplish what solid fiction should in offering thoughts about the more profound ideas we ponder:...

In an attempt to regain a youthful innocence, Vietnam Veteran Tom Seal returns to El Tigrito, Venezuela, hoping to find his childhood friend, Rosa Rojas, nearly two decades after Tom's family returned to the United States.
Tom longs to recreate an adventure he and Rosa shared when they were young and to return to the "Eden of their childhood" they had stumbled upon as children.
But the ensuing eighteen years have changed not only the jungle, but the two friends as well. Departing for the jungle in the rainy season, Tom and Rosa try to regain the same joy and happiness they had...

Within hours of arriving in Malaysia, Amarillo cowboy Noland Fritch and East Texas artist Kent Day face both dangerous criminals and over-zealous local police. While some of the thugs who confront Noland and Kent in the streets of Kuala Lumpur seem harmless and comical, others, especially those trafficking in sex slaves and drugs, prove to be serious in planning to murder the two Texans. The "detective" who searches for and follows Noland and Kent is a bumbling playwright who hopes to catch the two by writing and producing a play about them.

Jerry Craven, a writer of literary fiction with a flare the dramatic, presents his best fiction in the 11 stories included in 'Ceremonial Stones of Fire.' Here you will meet Steven Duck, a Malaysian street dealer in coins who is determined to teach an American the way commerce can numb the spirit; Joko, a man in Bali who understands the true danger of magic monkeys and magic pigs; Weng, a man who must contemplate the moral implications of revenge upon a pirate; and other sympathetic characters who deal with what life brings them in what to us are exotic lands and events.