Entertainment

12:46 PM CDT on Monday, June 12, 2006

By JEROME WEEKS / The Dallas Morning News

When it comes to the current seasonal downpour of summer book releases, several buckets' worth of Texas authors (and Texas topics) are headed our way. Here are 10 coming out before Labor Day – from histories to bios to pop thrillers to serious fiction.

The General & The Jaguar: Pershing's Hunt for Pancho Villa , by Eileen Welsome (Little, Brown, $25.95). Ms. Welsome, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, takes on a brutal sideshow to World War I and the Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa's raids into New Mexico and Texas, the deployment of Gen. "Black Jack" Pershing in response and the slide into an outright, racial war between the U.S. and Mexico. A timely story, vividly told.

The Flamenco Academy, by Sarah Bird (Knopf, $25). Texas Monthly humorist and Austin novelist (The Yokota Officers Club ) turns serious in this novel about a young girl in Albuquerque, N.M., who loses her father to cancer but finds solace with a flamenco guitarist and his great-aunt from Spain. Ms. Bird will be signing books in Dallas June 27 at 7 p.m. at Lincoln Park Barnes & Noble, 7700 Northwest Highway.

Just Short of Crazy, by Nina Foxx (Avon, $12.95). Considered one of the pioneers of "African-American chick lit," Austin author Nina Foxx brings back lawyer Alexis Pearson from Marrying Up . Her fiancé has dumped her, so Alexis takes up tae kwon do to lift her spirits – and breaks a man's arm. An attractive man's arm.

The Worthy: A Ghost's Story, by Will Clarke (Simon & Schuster, $23). The Worthy was actually Dallasite Will Clarke's first, self-published novel, but it was picked up by Simon & Schuster with his spy spoof, Lord Vishnu's Love Handles. With The Worthy , Mr. Clarke still twists genres into funny shapes: A frat-boy ghost possesses people, getting them drunk.

The Sweet and the Dead, by Milton Burton (Thomas Dunne, $23.95). Tyler thriller writer Milton Burton made his debut with The Rogues' Game, a flavorful slice of late-'40s, con-man noir set in a corrupt Texas town. Now it's the '70s, and retired Dallas sheriff Hog Webern goes undercover in Mississippi, fighting the fabled Dixie Mafia.

The Next Time You Die, by Harry Hunsicker (Thomas Dunne, $23.95). Dallas author Harry Hunsicker started a well-received detective series with Still River, and Next Time is the second time around for his gumshoe, Lee Henry Oswald (yes, what were his parents thinking?). This time, he's searching for a missing file while dodging a psychopathic gunman.

President's Counselor: The Rise to Power of Alberto Gonzales , by Bill Minutaglio (Rayo, $24.95). From his humble beginnings in Texas, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales worked his way into becoming our most powerful Hispanic-American – partly, some argue, because of his ability to argue the law to suit the president's agenda. A former Dallas Morning News reporter, Mr. Minutaglio is the author of First Son: George W. Bush and the Bush Family Dynasty.

Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, by Ben Fountain (Ecco, $24.95). Dallas author Ben Fountain makes his debut with this collection of eight short stories, often about Americans confronting the world overseas: An aid worker unwillingly becomes a diamond smuggler, an ornithologist is kidnapped in Colombia, the wife of a Special Forces officer faces voodoo in Haiti.

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright (Knopf, $27.95). A New Yorker journalist, screenwriter (The Siege) and Dallas memoirist (In the New World ), Mr. Wright traces the rise of militant jihadists from their origins in Egypt with the Muslim Brotherhood to the Twin Towers.

Ricochet, by Sandra Brown (Simon & Schuster, $25.95). Suspense novelist Sandra Brown (Chill Factor) – Arlington's biggest-selling best-seller – brings together a judge's wife who shot an intruder and the detective who suspects she's guilty of murder but is attracted to her anyway. Then she goes missing.

E-mail jweeks@dallasnews.com