Willie Nelson, Joe Ely, Marcia Ball, Tish Hinojosa, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Lyle Lovett...the list of popular songwriters from Texas just goes on and on. In this collection of thirty-four interviews with these and other songwriters, Kathleen Hudson pursues the stories behind the songs, letting the singers' own words describe where their songs come from and how the diverse, eclectic cultures, landscapes, and musical traditions of Texas inspire the creative process.

Conducted in dance halls, dressing rooms, parking lots, clubs-wherever the musicians could take time to tell their...

Rick Cunningham can't believe it when a caller to a radio talk show accuses his friend and co-worker, Marty Farber, of murder. He claims Marty planted a bomb in a school classroom that resulted in the death of a teacher sixteen years ago. The caller alleges the crime was never solved because Marty's influential father conspired with police to cover it up. He threatens "Providence" will take revenge on all the participants in the crime. Wrapping up a financial consulting job for Fort Lauderdale's Century Bank, Rick is asked by Louis, the bank's president and Marty's father, to uncover the...

Rick Cunningham has no reason to doubt the vicious killing of Ocean State Bank's executive vice president was due to a robbery gone wrong. However, when the swollen body of the EVP's brother washes ashore on a quiet stretch of Boca Raton beachfront, he begins to wonder. He keeps his suspicions to himself until Katherine Ainsley, the distraught and troubled sister of the deceased brothers, accuses Rick's boss, Ocean State's president Big Earl Hartwig, of the double murder. She alleges his motive is to thwart a trust that transfers controlling interest in the bank to her and her two dead...

Financial consultant Rick Cunningham and his wife, talk-show host Diana Ellis, are badly shaken with the news of her mother's kidnapping from her Palm Beach Bridge Club. To spare her life, Diana's famed oncologist father is whisked away to perform a cure on the dying perpetrator of the crime. In the meantime, Rick and Diana's search for her mother leads them to a securities brokerage firm. It is there that they confront the cancer patient's business partner, Mo Morgan, and learn of a giant fraud that is about to lose their investors, as well as Rick's bank, billions Risking their lives, they...

Inspired by true events, BATTLE OF MIAMI is an epic drama about love, sex, lies, betrayal and conspiracy during a colossal nation-wide financial meltdown. This novel has been edited and abridged for graphic content and has been fictionalized for legal reasons. Driven by the often twin desires of ambition and romantic interludes, Dan Fuller secretly revels in the latter until he's charged with gross negligence in his duties and unceremoniously fired from his position as president and CEO of a Miami bank. Though certain it was a conspiracy behind the unspecified charges levied against him, he...