Top 5 New Books from Texas Women Authors You’ll Love

I did quite a bit of reading this summer, and, as it turns out, five of the amazing new books released this year that I devoured were written by central Texas women authors. There’s something in the water (and trees and wildflowers and wine and coffee and tacos) here, guys.

Top 5 New Books from Texas Women Authors You’ll Love

English Lessons by Andrea Lucado

I read Andrea Lucado’s beautiful book about the year she spent wrestling with her San Antonio-born faith in Oxford, England over Memorial Day weekend on the Texas coast. I was immediately intoxicated by Andrea’s writing, identified with her central Texas church of Christ upbringing, and quickly fell in love with her vulnerability and hard-earned wisdom:

Beliefs, convictions, morals. They are ice cubes in our hands. If we hold them too tightly, if we bury them in our palms and wrap our fingers around them, they melt. We think we’re protecting them, but we’re not. We melt them with ignorance and refusal to see both sides of an argument. We melt them ourselves and can’t blame an unhappy circumstance or a friend who was a bad influence when we look down and our hands are dripping.

I held many ice cubes when I arrived in Oxford, and it took no time at all for them to melt away. Another country, another culture, new friends with unfamiliar beliefs and morals–they were warm breath blown on my precious truths and how-it-should-be’s. – Andrea Lucado

(Andrea now lives in Austin, and I can’t wait to meet her in person for coffee one day!)

Nothing to Prove by Jennie Allen

I attended Jennie Allen’s Nothing to Prove launch party immediately following this year’s IF Gathering back in February, but I didn’t get around to actually finishing this lovely book until I was vacationing with family near Estes Park, Colorado last month. Something about that crisp mountain air and rushing creek below seemed perfectly fitting for reading Jennie’s refreshing take on our Christian faith:

I’ve lived so thirsty because I thought I knew where the water was. I believed it was on the other side of that ever-moving thick black line of expectations that begged me to cross it, and to get there I’d have to muster up the necessary resources from within me. That is why I was so tired. I was trying to be bread and light and life and enough, and I couldn’t ever see to do it.

But what I thought was a great disappointment was actually the greatest mercy God has ever shown me. See, we rarely go to drink unless we are thirsty. To feel our thirst is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. To recognize our need for God is the beginning of our finding Him. – Jennie Allen

(Jennie’s family recently relocated from Austin, where she hosts the IF Gathering each year, to Dallas.)

Of Mess and Moxie by Jen Hatmaker

Following the success of her New York Times bestseller, For the Love, my Buda neighbor Jen Hatmaker’s brand-new book baby, released earlier this month, is also making waves on the bestseller list. Once again, Jen calls us to be brave and honest and love well (and also laugh a lot) as we follow Jesus, but this time around, she’s been through some hard stuff with the ones she holds dearest and her bravery has been transformed into outright moxie through faith and tenacity:

The point is, there is no formula for suffering. There is no one answer. There is no pat explanation. Scripture clearly identifies numerous root causes of suffering, some entirely incompatible with God’s character. Because He is so good at being God, He uses everything, He can heal anything, He wrestles glory from all things. Paradoxically, adversity can be so good for us, and He knows that. So regardless of why or how life delivers pain, God makes the absolute most of it. – Jen Hatmaker

(And, yes, I was on the launch team for both this book and For the Love, and, yes, it was life-changing, not because I got to party in Jen’s backyard not once but twice, but because of the cherished friendships I made with women all over the country and beyond in the process. Jen knows how to build a tribe, y’all.

P.S. If you flip to the back of Of Mess and Moxie, my name is listed in the acknowledgments. Eek!)

The Turquoise Table by Kristin Schell

Thanks to the amazing Jamie Ivey and her Happy Hour Book Club, I was introduced to Kristin Schell’s brilliant book about the simplicity of entertaining strangers and living as Front Yard People. I then got to meet Kristin in Jamie’s backyard (they both live in Austin) with my awesome friend Terri and have her sign our copies of her debut book. How cool is that?!

We both quickly jumped on #TheTurquoiseTable bandwagon (Terri got with the program a little faster than I did), thanks to a steal on picnic tables at our local McCoy’s Building Supply and the perfect “Nifty Turquoise” paint from Sherwin Williams. Now we’re doing a lot more life in our front yard and are hopeful that we will build new and strengthen existing relationships with the people in our neighborhood:

Of course, community was always there, ours for the taking. We simply needed a nudge, a new way to see through the busyness and distractions in life. A place to slow down, sit down, and be present. – Kristin Schell

At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider

An added bonus of attending our book launch reunion party at Jen’s in June was receiving an incredible swag bag filled with so many amazing things, including Austin native Tsh Oxenreider’s book about traveling around the world in nine months with her husband and three young children. Reading about her family’s very literal journey from country to country and continent to continent definitely inspired some hardcore wanderlust but also some appreciation for the comforts and permanence of home:

Traveling means touching, tasting, smelling the world. It means the chance to explore hamlets and boroughs that citizens the world over call home. Through travel, you can know, firsthand, the difference in taste between the bread in Sri Lanka and Turkey. You’ll add years to your life with more layers, thicker skin, and a softer heart because of it. Travel is a gift.

But travel doesn’t provide stability. And isn’t it in stability that we find home? – Tsh Oxenreider

(Tsh’s family currently lives in Georgetown, just north of Austin.)

{Side note: I also finished Jane of Austin by Hillary Manton Lodge (she’s not from Texas, but her delicious and charming novel is a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility set in Austin) in Colorado this summer, and I’m currently reading Church of the Small Things by San Antonio’s hilarious and wise Melanie Shankle, which releases October 3.}

Now, go grab some of these fabulous reads, friends!