50 Forgotten Cardinals: The short story of 50 lesser known and sometimes forgotten St. Louis Cardinals
Will Saulsbery’s 50 Forgotten Cardinals is a lively and deeply researched tour through St. Louis Cardinals history, built around 50 players whose contributions have been overshadowed by the franchise’s more celebrated stars. Saulsbery organizes the book largely by era, beginning with nineteenth-century figures such as Ice Box Chamberlain and Bob Caruthers and moving through championship teams, the difficult 1950s, later decades, and more familiar recent players such as Ryan Ludwick, Pat Neshek, and Aledmys Díaz. His selection criteria are intentionally personal and flexible, allowing statistical standouts, memorable characters, childhood favorites, and players with irresistible names to share the same pages. That approach gives the book the character of a knowledgeable fan opening an unusually deep baseball scrapbook. Saulsbery captures his purpose early when he describes his research as uncovering “So many great players, so many amazing names, and so much fun.”
I think the book’s strongest feature is the way Saulsbery combines statistics with compact, memorable stories. Each profile begins with basic biographical information and a Cardinals stat line, but the numbers usually serve as an entry point into something more revealing. Readers encounter Chamberlain pitching with both arms, Austin McHenry’s tragically shortened career, Tom Alston’s place as the first Black player to wear a Cardinals uniform, Max Lanier’s jump to the Mexican League, and Tom Henke finishing his career in St. Louis because playing for the Cardinals had been a personal dream. The result is a broader history of baseball itself, touching on war, segregation, labor disputes, changing salaries, medical limitations, evolving player usage, and the enormous differences between eras. Even when the careers are brief, Saulsbery finds a reason each player belongs in the larger Cardinals story.
Saulsbery’s voice gives the book much of its identity. He writes as an informed fan, moving easily between Baseball-Reference statistics, historical research, jokes, comparisons to modern players, personal recollections, and enthusiastic judgments. That conversational style makes unusual numbers especially accessible. A nineteenth-century workload becomes understandable when measured against modern innings totals, while forgotten seasons are compared with performances by players such as Bob Gibson, Stan Musial, or Albert Pujols. The humor is frequent, but the book also knows when a player’s story calls for restraint. The sections on McHenry and Alston, for example, carry genuine weight, while profiles of figures such as Bugs Raymond, Ripper Collins, Gerónimo Peña, and Ozzie Canseco embrace baseball’s capacity for eccentricity. The many photographs and vintage baseball-card images reinforce the book’s archival, keepsake quality.
By the end, 50 Forgotten Cardinals has become more than a collection of statistical curiosities. Its cumulative effect is to show how a franchise’s history is built not only by Hall of Famers but also by excellent players on unsuccessful clubs, short-term stars, relievers who caught fire for a season, role players, pioneers, and men whose careers were interrupted by circumstances beyond baseball. Saulsbery finishes the main list by calling them “Fifty St. Louis Cardinals we should all remember,” then extends the fun with his all-forgotten lineup, pitching staff, and all-name team. That closing material suits the book perfectly. 50 Forgotten Cardinals is an affectionate and statistics-rich work of baseball history that treats remembering as part of being a fan, and it gives dozens of overlooked Cardinals a fresh place in the franchise’s long story. This is the ideal read for anyone who enjoys baseball history, statistical deep dives, and colorful player stories.
Pages: 139 | ASIN : B0GXJNMKN3
Ghost of Kotoama
J. Von Swan’s Ghost of Kotoama is a bruising science-fiction adventure built from political intrigue, mythic traditions, covert operations, and spectacular violence. Baldur, the genetically altered warrior known as the Wolf of Vanaheim, begins the novel guarding diplomats and ends up chasing a killer who looks impossibly like the woman whose death still governs his life. That mystery pulls him across prisons, palaces, hidden cities, and planetary battlefields while old enemies maneuver entire civilizations toward war. The scope is huge, but the story stays readable because every new crisis arrives through Baldur’s personal loyalties. Galactic politics matter because someone he loves will pay when he chooses badly.
Baldur is the book’s most compelling creation: funny, frightening, loyal, selfish, tender, and capable of appalling brutality. He’s constantly deciding which lives count, then living with the damage that arithmetic causes. His crew gives that struggle real emotional weight. Drat’s irreverence, Nastasya’s gentleness, Torvi and Eryu’s sibling shorthand, and Kyra’s weaponized charm create the warmth that keeps the novel’s darker material from becoming oppressive. Their banter feels lived-in, especially when jokes surface in the middle of disasters. The relationships also expose different versions of Baldur. He’s a commander, brother, lover, legend, and liability, sometimes within the same conversation.
The world has a vivid collision of aesthetics. Norse titles, funeral pyres, and warrior codes meet Kotoaman swordcraft, underground resistance culture, neural control systems, and silent android armies. Swan stages each location with sensory confidence, from the elegant menace of Alesian diplomacy to an underwater prison surrounded by tentacled sharks. The action is graphic and frequent, with set pieces that keep finding strange new pressure points, yet the most interesting violence is moral. Alliances are made with zealots, civilians become weapons, and liberation carries the temptation to seize the machinery of tyranny. The book’s sharpest question is how quickly a person fighting control can learn to enjoy controlling others.
There’s a pulpy fearlessness to the storytelling. Romance, espionage, horror, battlefield spectacle, dark comedy, and dynastic politics all compete for space, giving the novel an energetic, unpredictable personality. Its rapid escalations occasionally leave little room to absorb one loss before the next crisis arrives, though that velocity also reflects Baldur’s habit of outrunning grief through action. By the closing pages, the title has gathered several meanings: Syn’s memory, Jingu’s resemblance to her, the buried history of Kotoama, and every dead companion still directing Baldur’s choices. The ending resolves the immediate revolution while opening a wider conflict with real momentum. Ghost of Kotoama is a blood-soaked space opera with a wounded heart, where every victory leaves a scar, and every ghost still has a vote. I recommend Ghost of Kotoama to readers who enjoy expansive, fast-paced science fiction blending horror, brutal action, dark humor, and mythic worldbuilding.
Pages: 380 | ASIN : B0H2QVYWB7
Disconnected
Vivian Herkes’s Disconnected brings together speculative stories, surreal sketches, poems, and philosophical reflections about people trying to find a place in the world. Time, identity, loneliness, belief, technology, and political power recur throughout the book, giving its varied pieces a common center. Images of mist, clouds, masks, mirrors, and driftwood turn disconnection into something almost physical. The result feels like a tour through one restless imagination, with ideas and characters resurfacing in unexpected forms.
The short fiction contains the collection’s most developed ideas. “The Old Skoolgie” imagines a future collective consciousness that offers companionship at the cost of individuality, while “The Ghettold” follows a young man into a city where elderly people have been segregated and abandoned. “Faceless” is especially important because it connects Charlie Braeburn to the mysterious Mr. Preston from an earlier story, revealing how a desire to understand everyone can erode a person’s own identity. Herkes often builds these stories like fables, using grotesque twists, dark jokes, and literalized metaphors to examine isolation and institutional cruelty.
The poems give the book a more intimate feel. Pieces such as “For My Friend with Depression,” “Ghost,” and “Uncertainty” speak openly about affection, grief, insecurity, and the fear of losing oneself. Others, including “The Notion of I, in the Nation of We” and “Hell Is a Circus,” turn toward class, nationalism, violence, and political manipulation. The language is energetic and deliberately repetitive, with rhymes and recurring images creating the sensation of thoughts circling inside an anxious mind. Herkes’s hand-drawn illustrations complement that personal, homemade quality, while the self-satirizing “A Critical Review” shows an author willing to place his own doubts inside the collection.
The collection can be blunt, funny, tender, and disturbing, sometimes within the same piece. That emotional volatility suits a book concerned with minds that won’t remain comfortably settled. I’d recommend it most to readers who enjoy experimental small-press writing, speculative social satire, surreal fables, and poetry that values candor over polish. It’ll also speak to anyone interested in how loneliness shapes identity, or how the longing to belong can make individuals vulnerable to lovers, communities, ideologies, and technologies promising connection.
Pages: 101 | ASIN : B0HCT9VZNN
My (2D Shape) Family
My 2D Shape Family, by Lisa M. Weckbacher, turns an introductory geometry lesson into a friendly family gathering. Circle serves as the narrator, welcoming readers and introducing relatives that range from Oval and Triangle to less familiar figures such as Heptagon, Nonagon, and Decagon. The family idea gives this children’s book a warm structure while reinforcing its central message: shapes can share important qualities and still look quite different from one another.
The book builds understanding through familiar objects, thoughtful comparisons, and plenty of direct questions. Children identify shapes in a button, pizza slice, checkerboard, soccer ball, and honeycomb before meeting the corresponding character. They’re also invited to trace Circle, measure width, count sides, and consider why some shapes look different when turned or tilted. These prompts make the picture book especially well suited to reading aloud, since an adult can pause for predictions, counting, and conversation.
Katrina Snyder’s illustrations give each shape its own lively personality. The characters have expressive faces, thin arms and legs, and little visual details that help distinguish them without distracting from their geometry. Bright colors, generous white space, and clearly drawn everyday objects keep the pages easy to follow. The illustrations are particularly effective when shapes are rotated, stretched, or placed beside similar family members, allowing readers to see the differences the text is describing.
There’s an impressive amount of material here, from the meaning of two-dimensional to length, width, curves, sides, points, and orientation. Even the nine-sided and ten-sided shapes receive memorable introductions, giving children vocabulary they may not encounter in many early shape books. The closing reference pages gather the whole family in one place, making it easy to review what readers have learned. With its chatty narrator and hands-on questions, My 2D Shape Family offers a playful, substantial introduction to recognizing and comparing geometric shapes.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0H9VR4LBM
The Demon’s Spawn
Christine Triner’s The Demon’s Spawn is a sprawling supernatural horror novel built around an irresistible idea: twin sisters separated at birth remain psychically connected, even as one is drawn toward goodness and the other becomes an instrument of demonic violence. The story begins amid the terror of seventeenth-century Salem, where the demon Baleth sets a generational plan in motion, then follows that evil into the modern lives of Eliza and Eloise. One grows up surrounded by affection in England, while the other is raised in neglect near Salem. Their eventual collision gives the novel its emotional center and its gathering sense of dread.
Triner tells the story through short, rapidly shifting chapters that move among the sisters, their families, Baleth, and the people caught in their path. That structure makes the book highly readable despite its substantial length. The parallel lives of Eliza and Eloise create a steady rhythm of contrast, and their mysterious connection pulls the reader forward long before either young woman understands it. Baleth’s presence adds another layer of suspense because the reader can see the larger design taking shape while the characters are still struggling to name what’s happening to them.
This is graphic, full-blooded horror, and Triner commits to its brutality. The violence is visceral, the demonic menace is openly malevolent, and Eloise’s growing appetite for revenge makes her both frightening and strangely compelling. Beneath the bloodshed, though, the book is interested in the forces that shape a person: family, abandonment, privilege, resentment, and choice. Eloise’s cruelty is never softened, but her damaged childhood gives the story a human ache. Eliza’s warmth and Tilly’s fierce loyalty provide the counterweight, making the novel as much about devotion and loss as corruption.
As the action travels from Salem to England, the supernatural horror and crime-thriller elements lock together in a tense final act. The ending closes the sisters’ story with real consequences while opening the door to something even more dangerous, giving this first volume a satisfying shape and the trilogy a potent future. Triner has created a dark family saga in which evil travels through blood, trauma echoes across generations, and love must fight for every inch of ground. Christine Triner turns the bond between twins into a live wire stretched between love and damnation.
Pages: 449 | ASIN : B0H5TMNTZG
My Owner Personal Conflict
The Last Poet on Wall Street follows a gifted young poet who trades his idealistic dreams for the wealth and glamour of 1980s Wall Street, forcing him to confront the costs of ambition, status, love, and growing up. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
My own personal conflict between ambitions to be a writer and pursuing a career on Wall Street.
What drew you to the contrast between the worlds of poetry and finance?
I have inhabited both worlds. My love of poetry developed in high school, where I won the Creative Writing Cup, and I later took poetry writing and literature classes at UVA. Coming from a family of businessmen, I was also drawn to finance, earning an MBA from Wharton. While at Wharton, I entered a poetry contest held by the Academy of American Poets, where James Dickey was a judge.
After Wharton, I landed a job on Wall Street while simultaneously enrolling in Columbia University’s MFA program in Creative Writing (Poetry). I was only there for a semester, but it was long enough to get me fired from my finance job—perhaps making me the last poet on Wall Street!
The conflict James experiences between poetry and money is something I lived. I still wonder if I was trying to have my cake and eat it too. Maybe I should have taken the plunge to be a writer right after college; that question haunts me to this day.
How did you balance James’s selfishness and flaws with his more perceptive and tender qualities?
The most memorable fiction characters require complexity. James’s mother had a profound influence on him, pushing his intellectual pursuits and instilling a sense of being special, which sometimes manifested as arrogance. However, her love also engendered his tender qualities, seen in his interactions with Lark’s AIDS-afflicted cousin and his love for Sarah, who understood his complex personality. The James who wrote her that poem is the one she loved.
Conversely, James’s mercenary side arose from witnessing his father’s failures as a farmer, leading to sports betting and later commodities trading. Success in New York brought out his worst traits—transforming him from a reserved, sensitive lover of high ideals into an arrogant, greedy, and overly ambitious person. That side of him had to be destroyed for him to become a better person. My hope is that readers relish his comeuppance while seeing enough good in him to hope for his redemption.
If you could ask readers one question after they finish The Last Poet on Wall Street, what would it be?
I would ask readers if they saw enough good in James by the end of the novel to say, “Amen.” If addressing the readers not as readers but as persons, I would ask if what they love is the same as what they desire. Imho, when those two things differ, then suffering results. Sooner or later, you learn who you are. The sooner you learn that, the less tragedy in your life.
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The two start a hedge fund and get rich quick. James seeks to take advantage of all that Manhattan has to offer, partying and club-hopping with a crowd of social climbers, financiers, artistes, fashionistas, and euro-trash aristocrats, 80’s beautiful people. But lover-of-poetry that he is, James can’t forget Sarah. She, his fading literary aspirations, and a graffiti artist named Michel Baptiste will haunt him as he scales Manhattan’s canyons of avarice.
Michael Goodwin brings to living color the rollicking and flamboyant 1980s Manhattan. And what better place and time to explore themes of greed, love, and a young man’s search for himself?
Vanished Twin
Vanished Twin, the second book in the Detective Alex Archer series, is a crime thriller centered on Tampa detective Alex Archer and a serial killer dubbed Satan on the Hillsborough River. The killer’s ritual blends Catholic imagery, Satanism, freezing, and dismemberment, giving the investigation a grotesque signature that’s hard to forget. Hoffman reveals the apparent murderer early, so the suspense comes from watching Archer and his team assemble the evidence while the full meaning of the title remains hidden. The eventual explanation adds a second layer involving childhood abuse, family trauma, and a deeply distorted idea of sibling loyalty.
Archer gives the book most of its personality. He’s sarcastic, stubborn, emotionally bruised, and frequently funny, even when the humor gets crude. His exchanges with Vazquez, Reyes, Sarconie, and Sergeant Karr make the detectives feel like colleagues who’ve spent years learning exactly how to annoy one another. Those lighter scenes also counter the novel’s extreme violence, though the transitions between comedy and horror can be abrupt. Archer’s relationship with Giana brings welcome emotional weight, especially as his drinking, memories of 9/11, and instinct to push away anyone who loves him begin to catch up with him.
The novel shares some DNA with Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon. Both stories combine a police procedural with an intimate look at a killer whose identity has fractured under severe trauma. Like Harris, Hoffman is interested in the mechanics of an investigation, the psychology behind ritualized violence, and the personal cost paid by the investigator. Hoffman’s approach is more direct and talkative, with characters frequently explaining medical conditions, forensic procedures, police technology, and occult symbolism in considerable detail. That information gives the story a researched quality, although some scenes read more like briefings than natural conversations.
Vanished Twin is about damaged people trying to divide themselves into acceptable and unacceptable halves. The religious imagery, covered mirrors, contrasting red and white rooms, and multiple sibling revelations all reinforce that idea. Its strongest moments arrive when the case and Archer’s private life reflect each other: the killer hides behind invented identities, while Archer hides his grief behind alcohol and jokes. The closing scene wisely leaves Archer’s emotional struggle unresolved, ending the investigation while showing that his more personal reckoning has only begun.
Pages: 260
