Mark A Nobles

The city of River Oaks, Texas, has always been defined by its people. With only 1.9 square miles of land, built up to over 90 percent, the city has little room for geographical expansion. Yet the city has thrived because of the resilient, pioneer spirit of the citizens who call River Oaks home. From the early pioneer settlers who first farmed and settled the wild prairie to the modern-day citizens who work, play, and raise their families in the city, the people who call River Oaks home have exemplified a blue-collar, industrious, rebellious spirit that rebukes the more humdrum "bedroom community" label hung upon it by others. Many of the original families still have descendants living in the city whose streets bear their name. River Oaks boasts an International Motor Sports Hall of Fame member, several Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame members, an International Hot Rod Association Hall of Fame member, and an Olympian.Darren Houk, an entrepreneur, has served as mayor and on the city council of River Oaks. Mark A. Nobles is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. The two have endeavored to tell the history of River Oaks through photographs from archives and personal collections as well as interviews with longtime residents and historians. This book is more than the story of a city, it is the story of the people who built and continue to give a thriving heartbeat to the city of River Oaks.

From Hell’s Half Acre to Quality Grove, We’re for Smoke tells the wild and woolly story of turn-of-the-century Fort Worth, a cow town on the cusp of becoming a modern industrial city.Told through a series of characters who made the papers for tangles with the law, ranging from high and low society, black and white, male and female, perpetrator and victim, We’re for Smoke reveals a society scrabbling to emerge from the chaotic growing pains of the frontier West.Readers and fans of The Son by Philipp Meyer, Boardwalk Empire by Nelson Johnson, and Larry McMurtry’s Horseman Pass By would enjoy We’re for Smoke.

Metaphor in a Hat Volume 1 is an eclectic collection of stories from the life and imagination of Fort Worth writer, Mark A. Nobles. From a first kiss to a father's deathbed, these stories are about coming of age and coming to grips and focus on a writer's life both real and imaginary.

Forbidden Horrors is a Southern Gothic/Fantasy set during the golden age of local television that utilizes poverty row horror and exploitation films from the 30's, 40's and 50's as life lessons for the characters in a sleepy little Texas town."When the night falls... when the shadows become deep and black... the silent pall of evil settles on the earth. Who dares to search... who dares to see what walks in the night? If you dare...welcome to NIGHTMARE." Thus began the frightful Kronos's weekly midnight ramble inviting the brave and foolhardy for a stroll through the vaults of long forgotten and forbidden horrors classics. An introduction young Nick Root knows by heart. When Nick decides to run away from home he runs to the place he knows and loves best, the television studios of KFJZ where Nightmare is filmed. But on this night, the horror is especially gruesome and unknown, even to Kronos, for tonight the dreadfulness begins with a visit from the bowdlerizer Willimena Breen, a sharp tongued, iron fisted enforcer of the Motion Picture Production Code. The date is July 13th, a Friday, 1962 and the time is midnight and Nightmare is about to air live to less than 50,000 people in a mid sized city in America's heartland. Kronos's only purpose is to show 1934's Maniac, give the viewers a good, campy scare and go home. However, the tag line for the film, "He menaced women with his weird desires " is enough to send Breen into a fit of self-righteous rage. Storming onto the live set Breen shrieks objections directly quoted from the MPPC. Kronos and the entire Nightmare crew stop down, frozen by the commands of the termagant. Only one can save them and let the film be screened. Edgar Ulmer, stalwart independent film maker, film historian and lone voice of reason.