Reading Recommendations: One Ranger Returns, H. Joaquin Jackson with James L. Haley.

No Texas Ranger memoir has captured the publics imagination like Joaquin Jackson's One Ranger. An instant success when it was published in 2005, One Ranger became one of the fastest selling books in the history of the University of Texas Press. Readers thrilled to Jackson's stories of catching criminals and keeping the peace across a wide swath of the Texas-Mexico border, and clamored for more. Now in One Ranger Returns, Jackson reopens his case files to tell more unforgettable stories, while also giving readers a deeply personal view of what being a Texas Ranger has meant to him and his family.

Joaquin Jackson recalls his five year pursuit of two of America's most notorious serial killers, Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole. He sets the record straight about the role of the Texas Rangers during the United Farm Workers strike in the Rio Grande Valley in 1966-67. Jackson also describes the frustration of trying to solve a cold case from 1938, the brutal murder of a mother and daughter in the lonely desert east of Van Horn. And he presents a rogue's gallery of cattle rustlers, drug smugglers, and a tee totaling bootlegger named Tom Bybee, a modest, likeable man who became an ax murderer.

Joining Jackson in One Ranger Returns are his wife Shirley and sons Don Joaquin and Lance, whose stories about life with the Ranger reveal aspects of his character that weren't as fully displayed in the first book. Jackson himself pays tribute to the Rangers who have gone before him, as well as those who keep the peace today. As he says, "All Rangers know that we have been part of an organization with a long tradition of service and courage. The Rangers who move me are the ones who go against the social and political grain to do what is right."

And, In His Sights, A True Story of Love and Obsession, Kate Brennan.

What if a man you'd loved for years vows when you leave him, to destroy you? What if he transforms into a ruthless tormentor, stealing your freedom, undermining your sanity, and threatening your safety?

This is not a fictional scenario, it is Kate Brennan's life.

Kate is a well-respected writer and scholar, a highly independent woman with simple tastes and a complicated romantic past that leaves her perfectly content with singlehood. So when she meets Paul, a wealthy, charismatic businessman with a great deal of free time, she's wary of getting involved. Eventually, though, his polished charm and relentless wooing wins her over. Things move quickly, and it is only after the two have moved in together that Kate discovers the serial infidelity, the unbalanced psyche, and the sordid secrets lurking under the Mr. Right facade.

Kate lets Paul into her life with trepidation, and when she ends the relationship, she finds she can't get him out of it. With limitless resources, he dedicates himself to stalking her: he tracks her movements, arranges for people to break into her home, interferes with her work, and even relocates to her new neighborhood. His harassment lasts for more than a decade and, as Paul is still at large, it continues to turn Kate's life upside down today.

Both frightening and insightful, a gripping tale of one woman's descent into the dark side of love and how she has fought, and still struggles, to free herself.

Kate Brennan is an alias used to protect the author's real identity. Her stalker remains at large.

And, The First Billion is The Hardest, T. Boone Pickens.

Now eighty years old, T. Boone Pickens is a legendary figure in the business world. Known as the "Oracle of Oil" because of his uncanny ability to predict the direction of fuel prices, he built Mesa Petroleum, one of the largest independent oil companies in the United States, from a $2,500 investment.

This, then, is Boone Pickens personal and professional story, warts and all. And the reader can read it all right here.

See you at Rylander!