Carlton Stowers

Book by Stowers, Carlton

When the bodies of three teenagers were found on the shores of Lake Waco, Texas in July, 1982, even seasoned lawmen were taken aback by the savage mutilation and degradation they had been subjected to. Yet only 52 days after the gruesome triple-murder was discovered, frustrated authorities suspended the case indefinitely.Patrol Sergeant Truman Simons, who had been called to the scene that night, saw the carnage first-hand -- and vowed to find the ferocious killer or killers. He soon became a man with a mission, risking his career and his family's safety in search of evidence. Plunging himself into a netherworld of violence and evil, Simons finally got close enough to a murderous ringleader to hear his careless whispers--and ultimately, put him and his three accomplices behind bars for the brutal slayings.Now, in his Edgar Award-winning account of the Lake Waco killings, acclaimed true crime writer Carlton Stowers lays bare the facts behind the tragic crimes, the twisted predators, and the heroic man who broke the investigation--with important updated information based on new developments in the case.

Carlton Stowers, the two-time Edgar Award winner and New York Times bestselling master of true crime, is back. Scream at the Sky is his masterful chronicle of one man's murderous career, and another man's sworn promise to deliver justice and closure to the people of Texas.Wichita Falls, Texas, was home to a hundred thousand people in the last months of 1984. That winter was harsh, as the normally arid Texas plains gave way to ominous dark clouds that delivered freezing sleet and rain. But a much darker force was looming, and soon the quiet town was besieged by a faceless evil--and its young women were dying because of it.In the next seventeen months five women were found brutally beaten and murdered, their young lives cut short and their bodies left haphazardly where they fell. In the years that followed, grieving families fruitlessly sought answers. A haunted district attorney chased every lead only to meet one dead end after another. And the killer's identity remained unknown to the ravaged townspeople.Then, fourteen years after the killing started, an investigator who had been assigned the cold case brought to it a renewed dedication, and came upon a chance discovery. Searching through the yellowed case files, he caught a minor detail that suggested one more suspect. Faryion Wardrip was an unhappily married family man who drowned his anger in substance abuse and violent fantasies. But for five unfortunate families, the drugs sometimes took over and the fantasies became realities. Investigator John Little followed his instincts and tirelessly ruled out every possibility until he was left with but one Faryion Wardrip was the serial killer who had eluded his office for so long. How he tracked down Wardrip and used the legal system to beat the killer at his own game of deception is a remarkable story of justice served.

Book by Stowers, Carlton

A true story of love, jealousy, and murder. True story of the murder in 1983 of Rozanne Gailiunas. Was the killer her husband, Dr. Peter Gailiunas? Her lover, Larry Aylor? Her lover's wife, Joy Aylor? Or was it someone totally unexpected? March 2002 printing of St. Martin's Paperback edition.

An acclaimed true-crime author takes on his toughest project of all-- writing about a murderer who happens to be his son.When a hideous murder makes the headlines, a barrage of questions usually appears in its Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented? What kind of family was the criminal from? Are his parents in some way to blame? Any crime writer worth his salt would attempt to answer these questions-- but how do you address such questions when the killer is your own son?As a single father raising two sons, Carlton Stowers did his best to instill in his boys a healthy sense of right and wrong. But with Anson, his oldest, it would prove to be an ongoing uphill battle. At a young age, Anson began to angrily shun authority, and soon became involved with a number of illicit activities, including drugs, forgery, and theft. After each jail stay, Anson would vow to get clean and start anew. It became a revolving door for both father and son, until Anson, t

Undercover officer George Raffield's job was to pose as a student in the small town of Midlothian, Texas and infiltrate the high school drug ring. When Raffield's cover became suspect, word spread through a small circle of friends that the young officer would pay with his life. No one stopped it. On a rainy fall evening in 1987, Raffield was lured to an isolated field. Three bullets were fired-one unloaded into his skull. The baby-faced killer, Greg Knighten, stole eighteen dollars from Raffield's wallet, divided it among his two young accomplices, and calmly said, "it's done."With chilling detail, Carlton Stowers illuminates a dark corner of America's heartland and the children who hide there. What he found was an alienated subculture of drug abuse, the occult, and an unfathomable teenage rage that exploded at point blank range on a shocking night of lost innocence...

An hour's drive south of Dallas, in the tiny community of Penelope (population 211), Carlton Stowers found the perfect vantage point from which to view a small town as it came together around their six-man high-school football team. Here, where shopping for groceries is a forty-five-minute round-trip drive and there is no stoplight on Main Street, he followed the hapless Penelope Wolverines in their quest to win their second game in four years since reviving their football program after a thirty-seven-year hiatus. But even as the team struggled, the entire town still came out to show its support every Friday night. Why? Because as one Texas writer recently said, "Texas high school football is a six-point favorite over Sunday-go-to-meetin' in most small towns." A wide-open game in which teams sprint up and down the field and where the combined score can typically exceed one hundred points, six-man football was invented in Nebraska in 1934. At its peak in 1953, 30,000 teams across the country and in Canada competed in the sport. Though there are fewer teams now, it is still played in states as far flung as Texas, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado, and Kansas, among others. A poignant story of a small town, and its unwavering support-through thick and a lot of thin-of the winless Wolverines, Where Dreams Die Hard is a warm and revealing slice of life in the American heartland and of a culture fast disappearing.

FAMILY MATTERSThad Taylor is no one’s idea of a fine man. Usually drunk and shiftless, he’s disapproved of by most—especially his father. But when his father doesn’t return from a trip across the Kansas plains, Thad is the only one who can search for him. And he’s far from ready for the ordeal.Because his father is already dead. He has fallen victim to the bloody Benders—a demented family who lures travelers into their cabin way station only to rob and brutally murder them.Now, for his father’s memory, Thad must hunt the Benders down and deliver them either to the law—or to the grave.

A farmer is pulled into the world of outlaws when his estranged brother turns up dead in this new Ralph Compton Western.Brothers Clay and Cal Breckenridge, sons of a hardscrabble East Texas farmer, never did see eye to eye. Clay, the eldest, returned home after the Civil War to help his father run the family farm; Cal deserted his military post and disappeared into a new life with a new name. Everyone knew who was the good son and who was the bad.Clay had almost forgotten his wayward brother until the morning a limping horse approaches the farm with young Cal Breckenridge’s body slumped in the saddle, shot in the back.Vowing to avenge Cal’s death, Clay sets off on a perilous journey across the West to find the man responsible and bring him to justice—and take down an outlaw enterprise in the process.

Engrossed by the short lives of innocent victims, Stowers uses The Girl in the Grave … and Other True Crime Stories to tell the tales of devastated parents dealing with evil forces and unanswered questions that invaded their once normal lives, and the effect on the law enforcement officers duty-bound to involve themselves in such evil and troubling situations, investigating and seeking resolve and justice.

A ruthless rancher crosses the wrong man in the USA Today bestselling series...Haunted by memories of the Civil War, Coy Jennings just wants to find work as a ranch hand and to begin saving for a small farm where he could finally enjoy peace and quiet. Arriving in the Texas settlement of Phantom Hill, Coy soon befriends a damaged but likable stable hand by the name of Ira Dalton and hopes for a future with a lovely widowed mother and her eight-year-old daughter. In order to make the Hill a decent place to settle down, Coy must wage a new kind of war and take a stand against ruthless ranch owner Lester Sinclair, his sadistic sons, and the murderous band of cattle rustlers who work for them. And after the Sinclairs turn on innocent Ira, Coy is driven to seek justice for his trusted friend...cost what it may.

In this breathless new installment in bestselling author Ralph Compton's the Gunfighter series, an ex-con fights to free his hometown from the clutches of a greedy land baron.When twenty-five-year-old Lewis Taylor is released from the Texas State Prison, he receives little attention as he walks into the midday sunlight, free after serving five years for a crime he didn’t commit. His only interest is in getting back to his hometown of Gila Bend, Texas, a quiet farming community about which he has only warm, idyllic memories. During his long years in prison, he survived by thinking fondly of the home he'd known since boyhood—and of one special girl, Darla Winslow.What he finds instead is a town dramatically changed. Once a happy and carefree place to live, it is now populated by people who are angry and afraid. One man, Captain Archer Ringewald, has taken control of the town, and now he's turning the townspeople, even Darla, against Taylor. Can one ex-con single-handedly save an entire town?

Death in a Texas Desert is a fast-paced collection of 17 compelling true crime stories from the pages of the award-winning The Dallas Observer. From the "Phantom Killer" that haunted Texarkana in teh mid-1940s to the day of terror in 1991 when a crazed man began spraying bullets into Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, author Carlton Stowers recoutns the infamy and infamous from the crime files of Texas.

Were it not so carefully documented, the remarkable football career of former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach would seem more fiction than truth. From his All-Star days as an Ohio schoolboy to All-American and Heisman Trophy-winning heights at the U.S. Naval Academy and from a four-year military stint to a decade spent leading America's Team to Super Bowl successes, the Pro Football Hall of Fame standout served as the gold standard for Sunday afternoon greatness.

In this compelling new installment of bestselling author Ralph Compton's Gunfighter series, Marshal Ben Dalton travels to Fort Worth to prove an old friend innocent of murder.It's been ten years since the worst day of Ben Dalton's life. After four grinding years of war, the Confederate veteran returned to his hometown of Aberdeen, Texas, to find that Mandy, the girl he loved, had run off with his best friend, John Rawlings. Dalton recovered from the loss and spent the next decade settling down to life as the town's marshal. That quiet life is shattered with the arrival of one stunning telegram. Mandy begs her old friend to come to Fort Worth, where her lawyer husband has been arrested for murder. Without a second's hesitation, Dalton heads to the big city, where he will discover that the forces who want Rawlings convicted won't hesitate to commit a second murder to silence a visiting lawman.

In this compelling new installment of bestselling author Ralph Compton's Sundown Riders series, a man seeks revenge for the death of his wife and sons while caring for his traumatized daughter.Carl Novak returned to the Texas hill country after fighting in the Civil War, but unlike most of his neighbors, Carl didn't fight for the Confederacy. He was a Union soldier. Carl tries to resume his life as a farmer with his wife and three children. One day, when returning from an overnight trip to buy a calf, he finds his home burned to the ground and, even worse, his wife and sons murdered. His young daughter escaped the slaughter by hiding in the fields. She is so traumatized that she refuses to speak. Carl has one a group of strangers has just left town. One man had a tattoo of a scorpion on his hand and one man was missing two fingers. Carl is determined to track them and exact his revenge.

239 pages - fully color illustrated - fold out illustration - all the players and history of 25 years.

A collection of true stories set in Texas by author Carlton Stowers, with foreword by Elroy Bode. The pieces, each just three or four pages long, cover a wide range of topics, all related to Texas -- from the invention of the hamburger to the world's smallest skyscraper, from a hometown Carnegie Library to the first Hilton hotel, from the best chicken-fried steak to barbecue as a religious experience, from perfect days with grandchildren to quiet walks observing nature. Stowers, an award-winning author and journalist, has written more than forty books, most of them set in Texas.

Book by Stowers, Carlton

In the middle of the Great Depression, nine brothers from a small town in the Texas Hill Country played a baseball game they would never forget—the All-Brothers Baseball Championship in Wichita, Kansas. The Deike Brothers from Hye, Texas, would take on the Stanczak Brothers from the Chicago suburb of Waukegan, Illinois, in a game staged as a promotion by a coffee company.Veteran Texas author Carlton Stowers relates the little-known true story of Texas' greatest all-brothers baseball team, a story that includes former President Lyndon Baines Johnson, who sometimes filled in before the ninth Deike brother was big enough to play. LBJ claimed to have mailed his first letter at the post office in Hye and later swore in a Postmaster General there.But only the brothers were allowed on the field when the Deikes squared off against the Stanczaks. No ringers were allowed, and the brothers had to bring their birth certificates to confirm their identities.The game itself would be secondary to the thrill of traveling outside Texas for the first time—a week-long trip each way in two Model A Fords; of watching the great Satchel Paige pitch in a semi- pro tournament; and of having real uniforms for the first time. "I think we all grew about a foot taller," recalled Victor Deike, "the first time we put them on.""The story of the amazing Deike Brothers baseball team," writes Bob St. John, "recalls those pleasant, youthful memories of weekend afternoon games played on makeshift fields."

Bbiography of the noted shot putter. 186 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Tafnews Press (ISBN 0911520309).

Slight signs of wear!

During his lengthy writing career, Carlton Stowers has had his highs and lows, all the while learning more and more about his chosen craft. In STORYTELLER, he chronicles the pitfalls and prat falls, suggests how best to pitch a book or article to editors, and shares the do's and don'ts of research and interviewing. While spinning a humorous story or two along the way, the author touches on the entire spectrum of writing for a living, producing what iconic university journalism professor David McHam calls "the best book on writing I've ever read."

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Book by Stowers, Carlton