Books - BJ Taylor

Books By BJ Taylor

Las Mujeres

Life in the new Republic of Mexico in 1814: Don Miguel Gavilan, newly appointed Solicitor General, struggles with inferiority while trying to deliver justice for two murder victims—a poisoned mistress of an esteemed aristocrat and, days later, her pimp. He also advocates for middle-class healthcare workers facing rising prejudice.

Teetering on the brink of failure, Don Miguel relies on Las Mujeres—Doña Isabel Ignacio, a Moroccan physician relegated to midwifery; his formidable grandmother, the Dowager Marquesa Gavilan; his cousin, Doña Leticia; and a cadre of house fairies and newly minted Aztec deities who assist modern Mexican mortals. With their help, murders are solved, workers soothed, and magical allies transform into purveyors of valor, hope, and justice.

Narrated by Don Miguel himself, this historic literary novel captures Mexico at a pivotal moment: from colony to Republic, from mystical Aztec-Catholic blends to secular modernity, from pulque to tequila, and from rigid hierarchy to vibrant, multicultural society—a genre-blurring, adventurous, magical, and queer delight, full of lust, charm, and historical Mexican realism with a chaser of tequila and lime.

Voices of the Borderland

Voices of the Borderland is a collection of fiction short stories grounded in La Frontera, an economically and culturally significant area along the southern Texas border which does not deserve to be demonized, fenced, and brutalized by politically ignorant authorities of both political parties.

The short stories are as rich and diverse as people, places, and wildlife on the border along the Rio Grande.

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The Cave

The Cave, a novel of the three-thousand-year-old cave and home to the Texas Lipan Apache tribe, shelters its last inhabitant and only shaman, and unexpectantly becomes a sanctuary for U.S. Marshal Alex Ranslow who experiences severe heat stroke while wandering the west Texas desert.

Together the two shaman investigate a grave robbing scheme that is systematically taking ancient Native America grave goods and mummies for black market sales. The crimes, in violation of the 1990 NAGPRA, Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, test the statute’s viability against bigoted Texas ranchers and black-market profiteers.

True, the Lipan Apache shaman, and Alex encounter a well-organized caravan of Mexican and Mexican American women, the acompañantes, also wandering the far west Texas desert for a completely different purpose, dispensing needed medication to poor women in rural Texas and where the acompañantes also share their home-made jewelry with their patients.