Texas Monthly and Penguin Random House Launch Texas Monthly Press, a New Book-Publishing Venture
Texas Monthly and Penguin Random House have joined forces to relaunch Texas Monthly Press as the book-publishing imprint of the celebrated, award-winning media company that has defined Texas for millions of readers for 53 years. The new venture will publish books across genres and formats that capture the spirit and stories of Texas, combining Texas Monthly’s rich storytelling legacy and intimate knowledge of the state with Penguin Random House’s publishing excellence and national reach.
Texas Monthly Press will publish a defining body of work, both fiction and nonfiction, that reflects the singular mythos of Texas—its people, culture, and history; its heroes and villains; its titanic figures in politics, business, sports, and the arts; its tragedies, intrigues, and aspirations. From the state’s small towns to its global ambitions, Texas Monthly Press will tell the stories and capture the voices of one of the most distinctive and endlessly fascinating places on earth.
“Texas Monthly Press is another way for Texas Monthly to bring to readers both near and far the stories of this incomparable and always surprising place,” says Ross McCammon, Texas Monthly’s editor in chief. “I couldn’t be more excited about the books we’ll publish and the audiences we’ll reach.”
Texas Monthly Press’s projects will be guided by an experienced editorial team, including Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and former longtime Esquire and Random House editor Mark Warren, a native Texan, who will serve as editorial director of Texas Monthly Press.
Working closely with Warren will be members of Texas Monthly’s existing editorial and business teams, as well as new staffers joining Texas Monthly from San Antonio–based Trinity University Press, which announced last year that it will cease operations by the end of 2026.
The relaunch of Texas Monthly Press will build significantly on the house’s initial publishing run, from the late 1970s through the early 1990s, and comes as the magazine has received significant recognition for its journalism—winning a National Magazine Award for general excellence and having one of its editors earn a Pulitzer Prize for feature writing just this spring. Like the flagship magazine, Texas Monthly Press will range widely and dive deeply into the narrative landscape of Texas, publishing works that will endure for generations to come—books rooted in Texas that will resonate far beyond its borders.
“As a native Texan and lifelong reader of Texas Monthly, I was thrilled to learn of the magazine’s plans to relaunch Texas Monthly Press. The opportunity to help bring this iconic imprint back to life felt deeply personal,” says Amanda D’Acierno, president of Penguin Random House Audio Global, which is managing the collaboration. “We’re excited to pair Texas Monthly’s singular storytelling and perspective with the reach, expertise, and resources of Penguin Random House to introduce these extraordinary books to readers across the country.”
“Texas Monthly is a business built on great stories, so books make sense at the DNA level for us,” says Texas Monthly’s chief executive officer, Scott Brown. “The copublishing venture between Texas Monthly and Penguin Random House will be defined by editorial excellence, built-in audience, and unbeatable publishing-industry strength.”
Texas Monthly Press plans to release its inaugural slate of books starting in fall 2027. Forthcoming titles include:
The Texas Monthly Barbecue Book
By Daniel Vaughn, Paula Forbes, and the editors of Texas Monthly
If Vaughn’s legendary Prophets of Smoked Meat was a love letter to pitmasters, this book is a spiritual guide and useful companion for barbecue enthusiasts, the folks who travel hundreds of miles and stand in line in the early morning for slices of brisket and links of sausage. This is everything we know about barbecue—the techniques, the pitmasters, the soul, the culture.
True to the Union
By Stephen Harrigan
Stephen Harrigan’s sequel to his New York Times bestseller The Gates of the Alamo will be a novel every bit as epic and intimate as his previous masterpiece. Spanning a tumultuous, violent period between the 1840s and the Civil War, True to the Union is at heart a love story between Terrell Mott, one of the principal characters of The Gates of the Alamo, and Hannah Schönleber, a young German emigrant who has come to Texas after a harrowing and heartbreaking passage from her homeland. Together, Terrell and Hannah will be swept up in the fight over slavery, which will tear their world apart and force them to make wrenching choices about each other, their family, and their ideals. Their story will culminate in a high-risk attempt to flee Texas as they are pursued by Confederate partisans, one of whom is Terrell’s best friend.
The Bowie Knife That Killed Dracula
By William Broyles and Stephen Harrigan
At the end of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the infamous count is killed by a Texan named Quincey Morris, whose iconic weapon is a bowie knife. William Broyles and Stephen Harrigan have seized upon this literary fragment to create a sweeping, endlessly surprising saga that will take readers from the pyramids of Tenochtitlán to the battered walls of the Alamo, the court of Queen Victoria, and, finally, the deep and spectral forests of Transylvania. Along the way, they will encounter an undead Aztec vampire; historical figures like Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley; and Erzsebet, the ruthless and ambitious “bride” of Dracula who casts her erotic spell over Quincey and then becomes his unlikely ally in the dramatic final battle with Dracula.
The third book in the Which Way Tree trilogy
By Elizabeth Crook
The saga of Benjamin Shreve—a character who captivated readers in his previous appearances in Elizabeth Crook’s novels The Which Way Tree and The Madstone—comes to its powerful conclusion. Benjamin is now an old man, a rancher on the Texas-Mexico border looking back on his life and the mysteries that still haunt him. Told in the same singular, unforgettable voice that reviewers have compared to the writings of Mark Twain and Charles Portis, this new novel will bring Benjamin’s lifelong quest to find out what happened to his half sister, Samantha—the panther-scarred girl of The Which Way Tree—to fruition at last.
Where the River Took Us
By Aaron Parsley
“The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River.,” Aaron Parsley’s harrowing, heartrending story about his family’s fight for survival during the 2025 Central Texas flooding, earned him the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. With extensive reporting, research, and reflection, Parsley’s book explores the ways events and decisions from our respective pasts determine both how we experience tragedy as it unfolds and how we move through the world forever changed because of it. This is a personal story and a broader narrative that captures fundamental facets of the human experience and serves as a guide for living through disaster, hardship, and grief—and how to survive survival itself.
For more information about Texas Monthly Press, visit: press.texasmonthly.com.