Spur Awards

A story set during the Reagan era that centers on a small Texas county that embraces its legends, not its actual history, and what happens as the population of a small town changes.

As the Mexican Revolution sweeps into Cuernavaca, two young women - English & Mexican - are hurried into a high-stakes adventure that will help determine the nation's future.

After the author heard Jimmy Driftwood's ballad "Tennessee stud" he began to imagine the story behind the lyrics and set out to research the song's history: a story of the legendary exploits of the greatest horse that ever lived and his owner. Traveling the same route that the song chronicles, he invented characters along the way. The resulting novel captures the spirit of the ballad while telling the story of Robert Johnson, a man who holds love in his heart though adventure rules his time. Pursued by a bounty hunter, Indians, and his conscience, Johnson and his horse are tested, strengthened, and made resolute.

Sheriff Hackberry Holland patrols a small Southwest Texas border town, meting out punishment and delivering justice in his small square of this magnificent but lawless land. When an alcoholic ex-boxer named Danny Boy Lorca begs to be locked up after witnessing a man tortured to death by a group of bandits, Hack and his deputy, Pam Tibbs, slowly extract the Indian man’s gruesome tale. It becomes clear that the desert contains a multitude of criminals, including serial murderer Preacher Jack Collins (whom The New York Times called “one of Burke’s most inspired villains”). Holland’s investigation leads him to Anton Ling, a mysterious Chinese woman whose steely demeanor and aristocratic beauty compel Hackberry to return to her home again and again as the investigation unfolds.

In her stunningly original and haunting debut novel, Amanda Coplin evokes a powerful sense of place, mixing tenderness and violence as she spins an engrossing tale of a solitary orchardist who provides shelter to two runaway teenage girls in the untamed American West, and the dramatic consequences of his actions.

Ben Crowell, now in his 80s, looks back on what was the most wonderful and meaningful time of his life-the summer of 1874-his 14th year. Port Caddo, TX, a once-thriving riverboat community, is struggling for survival in the face of the threat of coming railroads. A series of events, starting with the suspicious explosion of the steamboat Glory of Lake Caddo, on which Ben was a passenger, and his heroic rescue by the steamboat's cook, Billy Treat, resurrect the dying community. Billy Treat decides to remain there, and his discovery of a perfect pearl sets off the "Great Caddo Pearl Rush" of 1874, which at least for that summer brings prosperity to the town. Readers meet "Pearl" Cobb, Ben's first love; his friends; and Judd Kelso, the villain of the story whose murder remains a mystery for 40 years.

Young Ty Hardin weathers the Great Depression by becoming an apprentice to Fenton Pardee, the last of the great packers; and when he is wounded during the war, he returns back to the Montana mountains he has grown to love.

The undertaker practices the Dismal Trade with consummate skill. He has raised it to an art through the high craft of the Connable Method. He has transformed the ugliness of death into a thing of dignity and beauty. Victims brutalized by war, street fights, fires - every hazard in a raw West - in his hands, become presentable. Everywhere on the frontier he offers his skill: to the rich of San Francisco, to Kansas cowboys, outlaws, soldiers, and sheriffs. He is devoted to dignifying the dead.

Win MacNaughton had always lived for the game--until his father was killed at Gettysburg, and Win decided to enlist in the Union Army. Captured by the Rebels in Louisiana, Win is then sent to Camp Ford, Texas, the largest prison west of the Mississippi. To keep up their spirits, the Union soldiers challenge their guards to a game of baseball, a game that becomes a war in its own right...with life-or-death stakes.