Set in southwestern New Mexico, "Thin Men of Haddam" deals with the problems of Hispanics trying to make their way in an Anglo world. Orphaned as a child and reared by an Anglo family, Raphael Mendez lives in a nether world, neither de la raza nor Anglo. Having dropped out of graduate school after a squabble with his fellowship sponsors, he is foreman of the ranch of his childhood. Paired against Mendez in this striking first novel is his cousin, Manuelo --practically literature, broke, and the father of six starving children, and unable to find work. When Manuelo's desperation pushes him to the other side of the law, Mendez must choose sides. The novel is impressive for its crisp, clear depiction of local life in the area known as "Little Texas" and for its intense portrayal of the desperation of some Hispanics at the time.

Back to a time when life was a bit simpler. When kids were free to discover their own adventure and themselves, which may change history.

When nineteen-year-old aviatrix Katie Burke crash lands her biplane on the only street in No Name, New Mexico, her arrival changes her life and the lives of everyone around her. As Katie and her craft need repair, locals take her in and help her, including a schoolteacher who longs for Katie’s friendship, an interracial couple who own the town’s diner, a handsome young mechanic who lives in a teepee, and a shell-shocked veteran of World War I. As her story unfolds, Katie’s mysteries deepen—revealing shocking secrets, a scandalous past, and a future in true peril. Girl Flees Circus takes flight the moment Katie crashes to earth, promising a journey into the lives of a glamorous, redheaded stranger and the people she will change forever.

Nineteen-year-old Jason is lost. The rush of graduation parties has subsided, the ubiquitous discussion of college departures dimmed to a dull roar. His former classmates have made elaborate plans, but the only date on Jason’s calendar is a court appearance next Monday. Jason, who dropped out of high school just two months shy of graduation, finds himself stuck in the well-worn grooves of his hometown. But when his over-achieving girlfriend Lisa departs for UT Austin to study medicine, Jason finds Mesquite a place he can hardly recognize. Jason’s family can offer him little direction. After his mother Sue’s unexpected death a few years back, his father Burl, fifteen years sober, slipped into old drinking habits. Jason watched the once clockwork-perfect routine of his family life descend into chaos. When Burl marries Lily, a high-strung, high-powered attorney, she brings a daughter into the house: Emily, eleven years old and a self-described know-it-all whose very existence is enough to irritate Jason. Three days before Jason must appear in court, he receives a “Dear John” letter from Lisa. Heartbroken and determined to convince Lisa of his worth, Jason decides to hitchhike to Lisa’s dorm in Austin—but Emily, desperate to return to her father, a UT professor, overhears Jason’s plans and demands to accompany him. When Burl and Lily return home to find their children missing, Lily puts out an Amber Alert for Emily, accusing Jason of abducting her daughter. The frantic search effort that ensues threatens to destroy the tentative household that Burl and Lily have just begun to establish. Smith’s gift for creating three-dimensional characters, abundantly demonstrated in his previous TCU Press titles including Understanding Women and Purple Hearts, lends this coming-of-age tale an unexpected quality of honesty and sophisticated narrative rarely seen in contemporary young adult fiction. Mary Powell, author of the TCU Press books Auslander and Galveston Rose, describes Smith’s prose as “rich and sophisticated, yet accessible, and the dialogue is right on.” Steplings doesn’t romanticize the misadventures of its protagonists. Though Jason and Emily grapple with universal teen issues—Emily searches for acceptance in her new middle school, while Jason balks when confronted with new adult responsibilities—their troubles feel like uncharted territory when expressed through pitch-perfect narrative voices. “Watching Jason self-destruct,” according to Powell, “is akin to watching someone in a horror film go down into the basement.” The authentic quality of Smith’s prose extends to the Texas setting; readers will recognize their neighbors in the characters that populate Mesquite and Austin. Kate Lehrer observed that Smith also “draws subtle distinctions among social classes.” Smith invokes tension between Jason’s no-frills lifestyle and Lisa’s country-club upbringing, and paints a widening gulf between Burl’s small-town mannerisms and Lily’s cosmopolitan tastes. Powell called Steplings “a friendly, hopeful, humorous, and thoughtful book about growing up.” Growing up, however, doesn’t belong exclusively to the young, and Steplings is a story that can’t be shelved neatly in the young adult category. Both teen and adult readers will see themselves in this multifaceted narrative of self-discovery.

Losing Face is a compilation of 11 stories. Funny, sad, creepy to intriguing.Losing FaceWhat would happen if you were in a bad accident, your face was burned beyond recognition, and the doctors put a new face on for you? What would happen if your memory was gone too? Now you are indirectly connected to a suicide or is it a homicide, mistaken identity and just when your life starts falling back into place all hell breaks loose.Bug KillerWhat is a good deal? You may never really know.: Greg thought he just struck gold as he headed home with his prize. He originally went to Loews to buy some 'Lawn & Garden Insect Killer' and found that a ten-pound bag was a little more than twelve dollars and he figured that he needed fifty pounds. He didn't have the sixty plus dollars to spend, but he saw a pickup truck parked on the side of the road across the street from where he was.along with 9 more stories

In Hunter's Trap, Smith's fifth novel, he creates a brooding tale of psychological suspense set on the film noir landscape of James M. Cain and Jim Thompson. On the night of the vernal equniox 1930, Wilbur Smythe (a.k.a. Will Hunter) embarks on a plan to avenge the deaths of his wife and his employer, a wealthy Kiowa, both murdered by a banker greedy for the Kiowa's oil money. A twentieth-century "western" blended with elements of Greek tragedy, Hunter's Trap explores the textures of place and time, collision of cultures, and the thin margin between good and evil in members of the human family. Hunter's Trap is a literary page turner that repays its readers from the first page to the last.