“Texas is big and wide and means a lot of different things to a lot of different people,” says Texas Book Festival literary director Steph Opitz. “So does its literature.” To help us brush up on our Lone Star lit, we asked Opitz to share a few of her favorite Texas-set tomes.

“Jeff Guinn’s Buffalo Trail is a masterful Western adventure.”

“Attica Locke’s Pleasantville is a thriller about a successful African American lawyer in Houston.”

“Lisa Sandlin’s The Do-Right is a Beaumont noir following a female ex-convict trying to right wrongs.”

“Mary Helen Specht’s Migratory Animals follows Austinites becoming adults in a city they’re not sure they recognize.”