RUN–The Wilmot Collins Story: From Liberian Refugee to First Black Mayor in Montana
Daniel Blake Smith’s Run is a compelling political biography and refugee narrative about a life shaped by survival, family, public service, and the search for belonging. The book follows Wilmot Collins from the violence of Liberia’s civil war to his historic election as Helena, Montana’s first Black mayor. Smith opens with scenes of hunger, gunfire, and desperate escape, then carries that urgency into the long bureaucratic struggle that separated Collins from his wife, Maddie, and their young daughter. It’s an American immigrant biography with a remarkable trajectory, but its emotional center remains the bond between Wilmot and Maddie as they keep building a future through uncertainty.
The early chapters are the book’s most intense, placing Wilmot and Maddie inside a Liberia where ordinary routines have been overtaken by terror. Smith writes these passages with the momentum of narrative nonfiction, moving between historical context and intimate moments of fear, grief, humor, and devotion. Once the couple escapes, the story becomes an immigration history centered on waiting: waiting for paperwork, interviews, sponsors, approvals, and the chance to reunite. That slower stretch has its own tension because every administrative delay carries a human cost. Wilmot’s persistence gives these chapters warmth, while Maddie’s determination and practical intelligence make her much more than a supporting figure.
When the story reaches Montana, it expands into a thoughtful civic leadership biography. Wilmot takes whatever work he can find, joins the military, becomes active in his church, counsels young people, coaches soccer, advocates for human rights, and gradually becomes part of Helena’s public life. Smith doesn’t separate this community work from Collins’s later political success. He shows that the campaign was built through years of conversations, service, and personal trust. The book also addresses racism directly, including threats and vandalism against the Collins family, while paying equal attention to the neighbors and friends who stood beside them. That balance gives the account a conversational honesty and helps explain why voters eventually saw Collins as one of their own.
As a political biography, Run is especially engaging when it examines Collins’s idea of leadership as service. His mayoral years, policy priorities, public meetings, Senate campaign, and responses to national debates all grow naturally from the experiences that came before them. Smith’s admiration for Collins is clear, and the book sometimes states its lessons more directly than it needs to, but the wealth of family memories and community voices keeps the portrait grounded. Ultimately, this refugee success story is about how citizenship gets practiced in daily life. It presents Wilmot Collins as a gifted connector whose political achievements came from showing up, listening closely, and treating public office as another way to care for his community.
Pages: 168 | ASIN : B0GFPCY9R1:
The King of the Corn
The King of the Corn by Alexander Paterson Brown is a bright, rhyming children’s book about a lonely scarecrow built to frighten crows away from a farmer’s cornfield. The plan backfires in a charming way. A young crow named Carlington discovers that the scarecrow is not frightening at heart. He’s sad, trapped, and longing for company. Soon, the crows become his friends. They save him from danger and help him begin a new life on a hill by the sea. On the surface, this is a playful farm tale. Beneath that, it carries a warm message about friendship, freedom, and being valued for who you truly are.
I appreciated the emotional shift in the story. At first, the farmer creates the scarecrow as a tool. Nothing more. He wants something ugly enough to scare the crows away. The story soon challenges that idea. The scarecrow stands alone in the cornfield night after night, and that moment gives him a quiet sadness. It is simple, but effective. Children will understand it right away. Nobody wants to be left out.
Carlington Crow is the strongest part of the story for me. He begins as curious rather than heroic, which makes him enjoyable and believable. When he hears the scarecrow crying, he doesn’t flee. He listens. His first response is almost funny, since he essentially tells the scarecrow that being scary is his job. Then he changes. He brings hundreds of crows back after dinner, and the scarecrow suddenly has friends perched all around him. The scene feels goofy, busy, and surprisingly touching. The illustrations add a great deal as well. Bright colors, expressive faces, and lively backgrounds bring the story to life. Young readers will have plenty to notice on every page.
The writing has a playful rhythm that suits a read-aloud book. The rhymes are clear, and the sing-song flow keeps the story moving. The image of the crows carrying the scarecrow away piece by piece is unusual, yet it works within the imaginative world of the book. At first, it seems troubling. Then it becomes tender. The later scene on the hill by the shore offers a meaningful resolution. His stick becomes a cane. He receives an umbrella. He dances in the wind. These details make the ending feel earned rather than merely sweet.
I would recommend The King of the Corn for young readers who enjoy rhyming stories, funny animal characters, and bright farmyard adventures with heart. It would work especially well as a read-aloud for children who enjoy underdog tales. Parents and teachers could also use it to discuss kindness, loneliness, and the danger of judging others by appearances. I found it charming, oddball, and warm.
Pages: 38 | ASIN : B0FN6RMNWB
Knoll Mercy, Bounty Hunter: Book One; Beautiful Day
Jeffrey L. Barnhart’s Knoll Mercy, Bounty Hunter: Beautiful Day is a gritty, big-hearted Western set in Kansas in 1878. Knoll Mercy rides into Delano with a dead outlaw draped over his horse and a reputation that reaches town before he does. He’s dangerous, dryly funny, fiercely loyal, and burdened by more grief than he’ll admit. What begins as a familiar frontier arrival soon expands into a personal rescue mission involving corrupt agents, old enemies, buried family secrets, and a violent reckoning Knoll has spent years avoiding.
The book moves with the loose, lively energy of a story told around a campfire. Barnhart fills it with saloons, stagecoaches, gunfights, trackers, outlaws, lawmen, horses, and a wonderfully persistent mutt named Sammy. The large supporting cast gives the novel the feeling of an old-fashioned Western ensemble, with friendships, grudges, jokes, and shared history unfolding alongside the central pursuit. The action is direct and plentiful, but the quieter scenes give it weight, especially Knoll’s conversations with Charlie, Zelta, and Wendy.
At the center of the novel is a man trying to decide whether his past has already determined his future. Knoll can draw faster than almost anyone, read a trail others miss, and walk into danger without flinching, yet tenderness unsettles him more than violence does. His growing willingness to accept love, family, faith, and responsibility gives the story its emotional pull. The title becomes increasingly meaningful as Knoll begins to recognize that a beautiful day isn’t simply clear weather. It’s a moment when life offers him something worth protecting.
Beautiful Day delivers the pleasures readers come to a Western for, including hard riders, sharp dialogue, frontier justice, narrow escapes, and a final battle with real consequences. It also builds a larger world through unresolved loyalties and a closing revelation that clearly opens the trail for another Knoll Mercy adventure. Barnhart has created a rugged hero whose greatest strength may be his reluctant belief that even a bloodstained life can still turn toward mercy. Beautiful Day is a frontier reckoning with gun smoke in its lungs and a stubborn hope for grace in its heart.
Pages: 255 | ASIN: B0D47WNYVR
KOA: Dark Systems
Chris Bankus’s KOA: Dark Systems is a faith-centered science fiction adventure that blends superhuman abilities, covert military operations, alien diplomacy, and survival horror. The story follows Sky, Julian, Captain Nick, and the crew of the surveillance vessel as they investigate a Ravager fleet behaving in a way no one expects. What begins as a reconnaissance mission turns into a desperate struggle inside a star system where technology fails and an ancient biological threat is waiting. The novel is structured as a complete mission while also introducing the larger KOA universe, its alliances, divisions, history, and spiritual foundation.
Sky is the book’s most immediately engaging character. She’s young, extraordinarily powerful, funny, impulsive, and still disciplined enough to carry other people through a crisis. Her lightning abilities create some of the novel’s most energetic scenes, but her real strength is the way she keeps moving when fear, exhaustion, and loss begin to overwhelm the crew. Julian provides an effective counterbalance. He’s quieter, strategic, and constantly searching for patterns, which makes their partnership feel more substantial than a simple contrast between brains and power. Captain Nick also gives the central mission emotional weight, particularly as the crew’s losses transform the investigation into a fight for survival.
The book’s strongest section is the journey into the dead system. Bankus gradually shifts the atmosphere from adventurous curiosity to claustrophobic dread as the characters discover abandoned vessels, slaughtered Ravagers, failing equipment, and creatures that can turn darkness into a weapon. The action remains easy to picture, but the tension comes from the characters losing the systems they’ve learned to depend on. Faith becomes especially important here. It isn’t limited to background worldbuilding or ceremonial dialogue. For Sky and the others, it’s a practical source of courage, responsibility, and hope when their training can’t guarantee their safety. That combination gives the novel a distinct identity within its large-scale space-opera setting. The opening establishes this connection between exploration, gifted people, faith, and an expanding interstellar alliance from the start.
Readers of Brandon Sanderson’s The Reckoners series will recognize a similar enthusiasm for imaginative powers, specialized teams, tactical battles, and characters learning that control matters as much as raw strength. Bankus adds more military science fiction, interplanetary diplomacy, and openly Christian themes, making the result feel like a superhero story operating inside a broad space-opera universe. The novel moves quickly and often introduces its world through mission briefings, ability profiles, training scenes, and conversations between teammates. That direct approach keeps the story accessible even when the scale becomes enormous. KOA: Dark Systems ultimately works as both a tense survival mission and an invitation into a much larger saga, with Sky’s resilience giving its sprawling universe a lively, human center.
Pages: 169 | ASIN : B0H96N64H6
The Story Tumbled Into Place
Crescent City Requiem centers around an investigator and amateur blues musician who accepts an unusual assignment that requires him to locate a supposedly haunted recording. Where did the idea behind his novel come from?
The legend of Robert Johnson selling his soul at the Crossroads has an interesting background. Instead of trading his soul for fame, Johnson spent a year practicing guitar, often in a local graveyard for privacy. That gave me the initial idea. While in New Orleans, I took a “voodoo tour,” and the guide mentioned the Gates of Guinee – seven gates to the voodoo underworld. The rest of the story tumbled into place during a bout with insomnia.
Music is often portrayed as healing, but here it becomes something dangerous. What interested you about exploring its darker possibilities?
The light and dark side of most art is there…if you look. The best example I can give involves Robert Frost’s poem, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. You’ve likely read the poem, but reread it with this additional context – the poet was afraid of the dark. Same poem, completely different reading experience. Music can be healing. It can also be transgressive. With the blues? Almost always both.
How do personal relationships deepen the psychological horror in the novel?
The real stakes in most stories involves relationships. My novel examines the idea that sin echoes generationally. That means that human interaction is fraught with potential damage. That’s a horrifying idea, because the thing we need most (beyond air, food and water) is each other.
What’s next for you as a writer, and are there other corners of music history or folklore you’d like to explore?
Crescent City Requiem is the first book in a series. Some characters will carry on and some won’t. The setting will remain the same. Luckily for me, New Orleans is a gold mine of music, folklore, culture…and darkness.
So You Want To Be A Librarian
So You Want To Be A Librarian is an engaging and informative introduction to the world of librarianship. Written for children, the book challenges the outdated stereotype of librarians as stern people who only shelve books and tell visitors to be quiet. Instead, it shows librarians as teachers, researchers, problem-solvers, and champions of free access to information. Young readers learn that librarians work in many places, including schools, hospitals, archives, bookmobiles, children’s rooms, and digital information systems.
I loved the way the book explains the importance of libraries in everyday life. Librarians do more than help people find books; they listen carefully, answer questions, connect visitors with useful resources, and teach people how to recognize reliable information. The book’s focus on critical thinking and misinformation is especially valuable for children growing up in a digital world. It also presents the library as a living organization that must change and grow along with the community it serves.
The book is well organized and includes sections about the best, hardest, and most surprising parts of the job, as well as a typical day in the life of a librarian. Warm illustrations, fun facts, historical profiles, career questions, and a glossary make the information easy and enjoyable to explore. Readers are introduced to inspiring figures such as Pura Belpré, S. R. Ranganathan, and the Pack Horse Librarians, who carried books into remote areas of Kentucky. One minor weakness is that the book could explain more clearly that librarians are only some of the many important people who work in libraries.
So You Want To Be A Librarian is a fun, appealing, and educational book for elementary and middle-grade readers. It would be an excellent choice for classrooms, homeschool collections, family read-alouds, and children who enjoy career-exploration books such as the Who Was? series. Even readers who do not plan to become librarians will gain a greater appreciation for libraries as welcoming places of knowledge, comfort, connection, and community. Most importantly, the book encourages curiosity, kindness, critical thinking, and a lifelong love of reading and learning.
Pages: 40 | ASIN : B0H9PCQPGY
Real People, Messy, Joyful People
How Do You Live Without Love? follows a widowed pastor who, while trying to revive a divided and declining church, must confront his grief and learn that loving others doesn’t mean he can save them. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The trope of the protagonist entering a new job, new town, etc is well-worn. I had just abandoned another writing project (and grieved over its death) when I literally “brainstormed” what I wanted to write. I wanted to write about real people, messy, joyful people who fail on a regular basis, or whose victories are tempered in some way, yet they find the courage, stubbornness, and love to get out of bed the next day and do it all over again.
I literally chose a pastor because everywhere you go in this country – there’s a pastor.
How did you balance the novel’s humor and conversational dialogue with subjects such as suicide, racism, homophobia, and bereavement?
Truly, these are not subjects of humor! But life is funny, and sometimes you have to just laugh to keep from crying.
Wesley often helps people through practical acts of kindness rather than sermons. What did you want this contrast to communicate about faith and ministry?
Jesus said to feed the poor. He did not say to preach at them or love them until they no longer hunger.
Which supporting character surprised you most during the writing process, and how did that character’s role evolve?
There are currently 8 books in this series. Character development is ongoing. My initial response was “Matthew.” Early in Book 2, he amazed me with his insight and his uncompromising love. But Lucky (the true star of the series) is so much more than what is revealed in the first book. Though hints are there.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website
When a teenager dies by suicide and her mother’s humiliation explodes online, Rosa Lee becomes a magnet for cameras and contempt. Wesley, barely a pastor and twice a stranger to mercy, steps into the storm—counseling teens, calming old ladies, cutting the grass, answering crisis hotline calls—trying to make faith look like rescue instead of rhetoric.
As the church’s finances and patience run out, a vote looms: keep the earnest, flawed pastor or replace him with steadier hands. But when the outside world shows up with microphones and accusations. Wesley’s choices become literal life or death. Can a man who still blames himself for his family’s deaths save strangers—and in doing so, finally forgive himself? This is a story about grief, messy grace, and the small acts that sometimes hold a town together.
The Voice of Cuba
The Voice of Cuba by Amarilys Gacio Rassler is a collection of fiction, drama, poetry, and nonfiction centered on Cuba, political oppression, exile, faith, and the difficult work of building a life in a new country. Rather than treating Cuban history as something distant or abstract, Rassler brings it into family homes, prison cells, airports, classrooms, and makeshift rafts. The book moves across decades and points of view, but its emotional center stays consistent: ordinary people are trying to protect the people they love while forces larger than themselves reshape their lives.
The fiction contains some of the anthology’s most intense moments. “Seis Dedos, Six Toes” follows a young girl whose courage takes a shocking physical form, while “The Tree of Hope” portrays political prisoners struggling to preserve their dignity and faith under brutal conditions. “The Rafters” turns a family’s escape by sea into a painful story about sacrifice, and the play “From Worms to Butterflies” captures the confusion and heartbreak of a child leaving Cuba. Rassler often blends English and Spanish within the same conversation, so the language feels rooted in Cuban family life. Food, songs, religious expressions, nicknames, and familiar objects give the stories warmth even when the events become frightening.
The book reminded me of Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, especially in the way both writers connect political history to intimate family relationships. García’s novel is more layered and stylistically experimental, moving among generations whose feelings about Cuba often conflict. Rassler’s anthology is more direct and testimonial. Her characters tend to speak clearly about freedom, faith, and the damage caused by the Castro regime. That directness gives the book the feeling of oral history passed from parents and grandparents to younger generations. It’s less interested in creating distance between the reader and the subject than in making sure these experiences are remembered.
What stayed with me most was the anthology’s movement from terror and separation toward memory, love, and cultural continuity. The nonfiction pieces near the end, including the funny and affectionate courtship story “Romance in the U.S.A.” and the tender “The Shoe,” show that exile contains awkwardness, humor, romance, and ordinary family negotiations alongside grief. Rassler’s writing is at its strongest when a small object or gesture carries a much larger history: a shoe touched by a mother, a guava-filled cookie, a pearl necklace, a song, or a shared phrase in Spanish. The Voice of Cuba feels personal because it is personal. It gathers stories that might otherwise remain inside individual families and turns them into a record of endurance, faith, and Cuban-American identity.
Pages: 129
