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A Mythical Creature Is Real
The Night Rider follows a curious boy whose friendship with a feared and hunted outcast forces both of them to question the legends, prejudices, and loyalties that shape their world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
That is a really great question. I’ve been working on this series for so long I almost don’t remember. In grade school I was always the kid in the library who would be reading all the books about fairy tales and Greek myths that I could find. I would literally have stacks of books on my desk that I had either read or was going to read, and I remember my teacher being really impressed with that. I was really into the fantasy genre even as a kid, especially Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. I do remember reading Great Expectations back then, and being particularly fond of the scene where Pip meets the escaped prisoner, Abel Magwitch, for the first time. There are several elements in that relationship that parallel the relationship between Marren and Yuriah. I think that was a huge inspiration for me.
How did you develop the friendship between Marren and Yuriah, and did you always know it would become the emotional center of the story?​
I did. What’s funny is that it was just a natural progression to where I wanted to take the story. It basically wrote itself. This whole series started when I was in my early twenties or maybe even in my late teens. The first book I wrote, which I never finished, was what will now be the fifth book in the Kingdomfall series called The Crown and the Maiden. That book started with Marren and Yuriah having already known each other for years, and I realized I needed more backstory. What I didn’t know is that I would have four novels worth of backstory before I could ever return to The Crown and the Maiden. Yuriah arriving in Angosia along with the burning ship just seemed like the best place to start the series. It was fun telling the story of how Marren and Yuriah first met.
Marren grows up hearing legends about elowan and other supposedly mythical beings. What interested you about exploring the gap between folklore and the reality behind those stories?​
I’ve always been fascinated by the way stories and legends can change over time. A real person, event, or culture can become something almost unrecognizable after being passed down through generations. Details get exaggerated, facts become distorted, and eventually people can begin to dismiss the original story as nothing more than myth.
That idea interested me with the elowan. Marren grows up hearing these stories and believing they belong to the realm of legend, only to discover that the reality is far more complicated. I liked the idea of turning that familiar fantasy trope on its head—not simply having a character discover that a mythical creature is real, but exploring what happens when the truth behind the legend is very different from what people have been told.
I also liked the idea that the legends might not tell the whole story. People tend to be afraid of things they don’t understand, and sometimes those fears become part of the stories we pass down. So as Marren learns more about the elowan, he has to start questioning some of the things he’s always believed.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book I’m working on is The Seventh Mark, which is the third book in the Kingdomfall series. It continues Marren and Yuriah’s story as they try to deal with the curse that has followed Marren. They must figure out how they’re going to stop whatever is coming for him even though it seems impossible. There’s a lot more to the curse than they realize, so that’s going to take them in some interesting directions.
The second book in the series, Warrior-Born, is already finished, and it will be released alongside The Night Rider on October 1st. So readers won’t have to wait to continue the story after the first book. The Seventh Mark is currently planned for release around the middle of 2027, and I’m really looking forward to getting that one out there.
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Marren, an adventurous ten-year-old boy, is thrust into a world of violence and danger when he befriends a mysterious stranger the locals have ominously dubbed “The Night Rider.” Marren soon discovers that his new friend, Yuriah, is not only a lethal swordsman, but also an elowan–a mythical race of people who are both feared and despised all over the world.
When the king of Angosia decrees a bounty on The Night Rider’s head, Yuriah becomes the most hunted man in the kingdom. Marren helps his new friend outwit the many threats that emerge, yet they are not what fills him with dread…
There is someone else hunting Yuriah, a dangerous enemy intent on vengeance, who will never stop chasing Yuriah until one of them is dead. As this enemy draws closer, he leaves a bloody trail of devastation and terror, until soon the people of Angosia can no longer deny something dark and evil and absolutely deadly has invaded their land.
And as an inevitable reckoning draws nigh, Marren realizes he and Yuriah are the only ones who can stop it.
The shoes are forever opening doors for Henry.
Inside Henry Cato follows a Kansas boy who escapes an abusive, religious upbringing to pursue freedom through storytelling, San Francisco idealism, and New York’s art scene, while his older self reflects on the costs of becoming who he truly is. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
When I was a child, my stepfather was part of a tightly closeted gay community in smalltown Kansas. Of course I didn’t understand that at the time; I just thought he and his friends were wildly creative. They were way more fun than my parents’ other friends. My stepfather made up holidays and was forever “costuming.” He had a pair of gold lamé slippers that he wore with brightly colored robes. Henry’s fascination with shoes almost certainly tracks to those slippers. I have always been fascinated by masking and theatrics, and the repressive nature of that time period – not to mention the provincial nature of the place – meant that my stepfather’s expressive impulses were a challenge to entrenched cultural norms. I think that has just stayed with me, and it manifested fully through Henry.
Eventually, the closet became too small for my stepfather. He had to break out of it – and his marriage to my mother, which was a closet for both of them, really. Like Henry, he went to California.
I was too young to make the trek that Henry did, to San Francisco, in 1967. But I dreamed about my own escape from what I saw as an increasingly suffocating world in my little town, and eventually I made my way to New York. It took a while, but I got there, and my first job was with an art magazine. So there are lots of autobiographical breadcrumbs in this story. I think I’m still trying to figure out who I truly am, but Henry has helped me a lot on this journey.
How did the idea of telling Henry’s story through the lens of his older self develop?
It was important to me that a level of understanding and self-awareness be present, to provide context for a complicated and ambiguous life story. The younger Henry wouldn’t have been able to do that. I could have written it as a close third-person narrative, and I did play with that a little bit in some of the early drafts. But telling the story from Henry’s perspective seemed important. The third-person POV lacked an emotional depth I was looking for. Much of Henry’s journey is intensely interior, and when I reflected on my own life journey, I understood instinctively that my younger self could not have imagined the paths I was about to take, or why. That girl – that young woman – was still forming, as was Henry. So in the end, the more grounded, reflective older man was the best choice.
Henry’s early thefts, modeling career, and eventual work as a shoemaker each involve shoes differently. What did you want those stages to reveal about power and ownership?
The shoes are forever opening doors for Henry.
The thefts were merely a catalyst. As Henry says himself in the book, they started as a revenge strategy. But it isn’t long before he sees them as a way out – even if initially, that “way out” is only in his mind. That’s one kind of doorway. But it didn’t fully satisfy Henry because he didn’t have enough life experience to see beyond the impulse; at this point, the experience of thievery, and then secretly harboring his love of shoes, owns him. He doesn’t direct it. That starts to change once he leaves home.
I never thought of the work that Henry did in posing for Cherub and Del as “modeling.” He was a subject, and it was always about making art. He was never a conventional fashion model. That felt too obvious, and also, an unlikely path in a place like San Francisco in 1967-68. And Henry would have lacked the confidence to be a commercial model. He needed these older men to guide him and instill that confidence in himself. It gave him an outlet to bring his own shoes out of the closet – literally and figuratively. Art was the vehicle for that, and it helped Henry bring his passion for shoes into better focus. As I was writing these scenes, I was often thinking, “What would Joel Peter Witkin do?” The work – as exploitative as it turned out to be – elevated Henry’s fascination above a pervy sort of obsession into something beautiful. Into art. That was another kind of doorway for Henry – one that gave him permission to openly love and wear the shoes, and the seeds of confidence to believe there was more to this shoe thing than playing dress-up – costuming, like my stepfather did.
But Henry didn’t own that experience – Del and Cherub did. He had to escape (again) to uncover the place where he could be the architect of these experiences, and what the shoes represented for him. And that ultimately, organically, leads to the shoemaking business.
What do you hope readers who have never experienced Henry’s particular struggles will take away from the novel?Â
As a society, we continue to struggle with what it means to be our “authentic selves.” I believe this is especially true in our current political climate, where we seem so polarized over social norms and customs. We’re trying to seamlessly and comfortably fit others into categories and assign labels that make sense to us. Because let’s face it – for most people, acceptance comes through adherence to stereotypes and behaviors that are accepted by other members of the tribe we belong to. That’s just how human beings are wired. But what happens when individuals don’t fit that easily? When someone’s authenticity can’t be neatly categorized? This is the case for Henry. He doesn’t align to a label; he’s not fixed in place. He’s mutable, unconventional, and because of that, he will seem unknowable to many. Is that a reason to dislike him? Mistrust him or feel threatened by him? As we see in the book, for some, the answer is yes. But as readers, we have the luxury of seeing inside Henry, and we know that he is a bruised and damaged human who has survived and found strength in that survival. I believe that sort of struggle is a universal one; especially when the one struggling feels like an outsider, without any support system.
The other takeaway I hope for readers, is the notion that family doesn’t have to equate with a bloodline. So many of us have had challenges and conflict within our immediate families. It’s okay to build another one. Family is what you make it.
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“In her gripping debut novel, Katharine English takes us on a staggering journey over several decades of America through the poignant eyes and (often shattered) heart of Henry Cato. Inviting the reader to literally walk in Henry’s shoes, English cinematically captures the five senses in which looking, touching, feeling, smelling, and tasting might never be the same.” -Susan Kouguell, Senior Contributing Editor Script Magazine, SUNY Purchase Lecturer
All Henry Cato wants is to belong. But he was born to a woman who saw the world as a series of stains to be scrubbed clean – and Henry as the deepest stain of all. In a root cellar deep below the Kansas topsoil, he does penance for being different, nurturing a secret obsession with shoes he was never meant to wear.
In 1967, with nothing but a sharp eye for detail, a talent for thievery, and a desperate need for belonging, Henry flees to San Francisco. There, Del, a charismatic Texas oil heir, exploits Henry’s taboo fascination and catapults him to cult stardom. For the first time, Henry feels seen – but the persona that promises liberation becomes a gilded cage.
When he escapes to the gritty, industrial playground of New York City’s Meatpacking District, Henry must navigate predators, fame, and reinvention – and reconcile the boy who still feels like a forgery with the person he is becoming. Or risk losing himself entirely.
Reminiscent of Douglas Stuart, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, Inside Henry Cato is a bold, compassionate exploration of identity, sexuality, and the tactile language of shoes – the story of a survivor learning to stand in the light of an ambiguous world.
DONORS
A.B. Ruiz’s Donors is a science fiction thriller built around an irresistible idea: what happens when medicine gets so good at extending human life that the technology meant to save us begins forcing us to redefine what a human being actually is? In Ruiz’s future, replacement organs, gene therapies, body modifications, and dramatically longer lifespans are simply part of everyday life. At the center of it all is Pacific West Labs and its Donor program, which grows biological hosts capable of providing compatible organs on demand. It’s a fascinating world because the technology isn’t treated like window dressing. Ruiz follows its effects into relationships, business, politics, medicine, entertainment, class, and even the way people think about aging and death. That makes the setting feel authentic, and it gives the larger ethical questions real weight.
The heart of the story is Dr. Joseph Murray, the brilliant, socially awkward scientist responsible for pushing the Donor program into new territory. Joseph is particularly engaging because he approaches nearly everything as a problem that can be studied, measured, and solved. His certainty that Donors are biological tools rather than people gives the novel a strong starting point, especially as his research begins producing results that make that belief harder to maintain. Around him, Ruiz assembles a memorable group of characters with sharply different motives: the polished and calculating Steve Carvey, the guarded and highly capable Mia, the likable Adam, Joseph’s longtime colleagues Henry and Devon, and the increasingly dangerous General Strauss. Their competing loyalties turn a scientific breakthrough into something much larger, with corporate survival, military ambition, personal freedom, and human identity all tangled together.
I think one of the book’s smartest choices is its alternating “NOW” and “THEN” structure. Early on, the two timelines raise separate mysteries, but Ruiz keeps feeding the reader connections until names, experiments, relationships, and seemingly isolated events begin clicking into place. The result is a story that keeps changing the meaning of what came before. The Donors themselves evolve alongside the plot, moving from an abstract ethical question to something immediate and deeply personal. Ruiz also knows when to let the bigger ideas share space with action and humor. Lab disasters, covert operations, corporate maneuvering, shootouts, betrayals, and escapes keep the thriller moving, while Joseph’s literal-minded social awkwardness and the easy banter among the characters give the story some welcome humanity. By the time the different threads converge, the central question is no longer simply whether science can create life. It’s who gets to decide what that life belongs to.
What I liked most about Donors is the way its scientific premise becomes a story about identity and ownership of the self. A person may inherit DNA, memories, expectations, a job, a purpose, or even someone else’s ambitions, but Ruiz keeps bringing the story back to the choices made after that inheritance. The closing movement gives the novel’s earlier questions new emotional meaning, especially Joseph’s lifelong sense that he’s somehow separate from everyone around him. At the same time, the ending preserves the book’s wit and momentum, landing on friendship, belonging, and the possibility of choosing a life for yourself. Donors has the ideas of speculative science fiction, the machinery of a conspiracy thriller, and a surprisingly personal question beating underneath both: when everything about a human being can be engineered, what part of us is truly our own? Donors turns the science of creating life into something far more compelling: a gripping fight for the right to own the life you’ve been given.
Pages: 426 | ASIN: B0H5FGJRFZ
Serve Others Live Without Fear
Lance J. LoRusso’s Serve Others. Live Without Fear is a practical, experience-driven exploration of courage, service, perspective, and purposeful living. Drawing heavily on LoRusso’s career as a law enforcement officer, attorney, trainer, and advocate for public safety professionals, the book develops its central philosophy through seven chapters that move from the meaning of service to the nature of fear, the importance of perspective, the recognition of opportunity, and finally the challenge of living deliberately. Rather than treating courage as an exceptional quality reserved for soldiers, police officers, firefighters, or celebrated heroes, LoRusso presents it as a capacity ordinary people can exercise in everyday decisions. Service operates as the book’s moral center. It may take the form of a dramatic act performed in dangerous circumstances, but it can just as easily consist of helping a stranger, encouraging another person, doing one’s job with care, or placing someone else’s needs ahead of immediate self-interest.
The book is at its strongest when LoRusso connects large ideas to specific stories. His accounts range from military valor and public safety work to courtroom preparation, competitive shooting, travel frustrations, family memories, business decisions, and encounters with strangers. These stories give the book the feel of a conversation with someone drawing lessons from a long professional and personal life. One of the clearest expressions of his philosophy comes from a frustrating day at the airport, where a brief effort to show kindness to an employee improves his own outlook as well as hers. From that experience he distills a simple principle: “To avoid focusing on your own troubles, help someone else.” That idea captures an important feature of LoRusso’s approach. Service is presented not simply as sacrifice but as a source of perspective, emotional steadiness, connection, and personal growth. The recurring examples from policing, military service, emergency response, and ordinary life reinforce his argument that meaningful service begins with a willingness to act.
Fear provides the book’s other major theme, and LoRusso defines living without fear as learning to keep fear from controlling decisions. Throughout the book, fear is treated as a natural human response that can be acknowledged, managed, and even converted into motivation. This distinction allows LoRusso to connect courage with preparation and action. His T.I.T.O. principle, “This Is The Opportunity,” extends that thinking by encouraging readers to approach the task immediately before them as an opportunity to perform well instead of waiting for ideal circumstances. Related lessons about perspective, forgiveness, anger, negative influences, past failures, and personal goals broaden the discussion beyond physical danger. LoRusso repeatedly asks readers to examine the stories they tell themselves, the people whose opinions they allow to shape their decisions, and the distance between their stated goals and their daily choices. Exercises near the end make the message concrete by asking readers to identify personal and professional goals, name the obstacles standing between them and those goals, and determine how many of those barriers originate in fear.
Serve Others. Live Without Fear is a personal philosophy expressed through memoir, motivational writing, professional experience, historical examples, faith, and practical reflection. LoRusso’s voice is direct, energetic, occasionally humorous, and unmistakably shaped by decades spent around law enforcement and other forms of public service. The many quotations, anecdotes, maxims, and stories create a book designed as much for reflection as for continuous reading, with individual passages that can stand on their own as reminders or prompts. Beneath that variety is a consistent argument: a fulfilling life is built by directing attention outward toward service while refusing to surrender important decisions to fear. The closing chapters bring those ideas together through questions of time, mortality, goals, legacy, and the use of adversity. The result is a book concerned with action in the present, asking readers to make deliberate use of their abilities, relationships, opportunities, and limited time by contributing to the lives of others while pursuing their own lives with conviction.
Pages: 109 | ASIN: B0HCK81ZDD
Before the Revolution: The Untold Story of 100 Years of Friendship Between The United States and Cuba
Before the Revolution reads like an excavation of a relationship that has largely vanished from public memory. Mario Cartaya looks at Cuba and the United States not primarily as political adversaries, but as neighbors whose lives were once intertwined in ways that reached far beyond government. His story moves through war, diplomacy, commerce, banking, tourism, science, baseball, music, television, architecture, and everyday family life. The cumulative effect is revealing. A diplomatic relationship becomes something you can actually picture: Americans vacationing in Havana, Cuban players sharing ballfields with Americans, scientists exchanging research, businesses crossing the Florida Straits, and families absorbing pieces of each other’s culture. Cartaya’s stated purpose is to recover an era he believes should be understood on its own terms, and the book’s considerable range gives that argument weight.
One of the book’s most distinctive qualities is Cartaya’s instinct to look at history through the things people built and left behind. He’s an architect by profession, and you can feel that perspective throughout the book. The Cuban Capitol, embassies, banks, hotels, factories, hospitals, stadiums, the old Hershey community, and even Havana’s surviving American automobiles become more than illustrations. They’re part of his evidence. He treats a building almost like a document, asking who financed it, who designed it, what purpose it served, and what its later transformation says about Cuba’s political history. That approach works particularly well in his account of the Hershey sugar town, where railroads, schools, homes, electrical plants, mills, and family memories combine into a surprisingly intimate portrait of economic cooperation. By repeatedly returning to these physical remnants, Cartaya gives the book the feeling of a guided walk through a country whose earlier history is still visible if you know where to look.
The liveliest sections come when the grand historical argument gives way to people pursuing things they love. The baseball chapter, for example, traces generations of Cuban and American players moving between leagues and countries, including Black American players who found opportunities in Cuba before Major League Baseball was integrated. Cartaya then brings the story home with his own memory of attending the Cuban Sugar Kings’ dramatic 1959 championship game with his father. The chapters on science and popular culture work in much the same way. Carlos Finlay and Walter Reed’s yellow fever research, Cuban and American hurricane researchers, Desi Arnaz, Afro-Cuban jazz, mambo, cha-cha-chá, Hollywood, Hemingway, and television all become examples of ideas moving back and forth across ninety miles of water. Read from this perspective, the book is really about exchange: how neighboring cultures alter each other, often so thoroughly that later generations forget where one influence ends and the other begins.
What stays with you at the end is Cartaya’s sense that history also lives inside families. His father, his childhood, the blue-and-white Ford, baseball games, business relationships, the town where his mother’s family lived, and the eventual departure from Cuba keep resurfacing beneath the larger national story. By the conclusion, the subject has shifted almost imperceptibly from relations between two governments to the movement of people, memory, skills, and identity from Cuba into the United States. Cartaya describes Cuban professionals rebuilding their lives in American cities and sees the exile community as another chapter in the long relationship he’d spent the book documenting. That makes Before the Revolution especially rewarding for readers drawn to Cuban and Cuban American history, architectural and cultural history, baseball history, or books that connect geopolitical events to the texture of ordinary life. Cartaya turns a century of U.S.-Cuban history into something you can see, hear, walk through, and remember.
Pages: 240 | ASIN: B0H5T48MQM
Beanie’s Web
Beanie’s Web, written by Larry Ebert and illustrated by Jenny Ma, is a gentle children’s book about friendship, trust, and looking beyond first impressions. The story begins when Beanie, a peaceful country spider, asks Frieda, a city fly, to be his friend. Frieda is immediately suspicious because everything she knows about spiders tells her she should keep her distance. Beanie doesn’t argue with her fear so much as patiently show her who he is. He explains that he’s a vegetarian, frees insects that become caught in his web, and uses the morning dewdrops from that web to care for his garden. That simple setup gives young readers an easy way to think about how trust can grow through someone’s actions.
One of the nicest parts of the book is how Beanie’s character comes through in small, concrete moments. He waters his garden, invites Frieda along, shares the fruits and vegetables he’s picked, and includes her in the peaceful little community around him. Frieda’s change of heart feels connected to what she actually sees and experiences. By the time she tells Beanie that she’ll be his friend, the moment feels earned because she’s watched him live up to everything he said about himself. The book’s message about kindness is clear, but it comes through the characters’ interactions.
Jenny Ma’s watercolor-style illustrations give the story much of its personality. The pages are filled with soft greens, blues, pinks, and oranges, and there’s almost always something happening beyond the main conversation. Birds sit in the trees, ducks and frogs gather around the water, and rabbits, raccoons, turtles, and other animals move through Beanie’s world. The illustration of the dew-covered web on page 18 is especially fitting because it turns something Frieda fears into something delicate and beautiful. Later, the garden scenes become crowded with vegetables, flowers, buckets, and friendly animals, which helps make Beanie’s home feel busy and welcoming. The pictures invite children to linger on each spread and notice details that the short text doesn’t spell out.
The ending brings the book’s themes together in a warm, cheerful way. Frieda decides that Beanie really is the peaceful spider he claimed to be, and the final pages connect their new friendship with qualities such as honesty, kindness, loyalty, compassion, and unselfishness. An epilogue explains that Frieda’s name is associated with peace and joy, which fits the home and friendships she has found, and the book closes with coloring and activity pages built around the phrase “Peace + Kindness = Joy.” Beanie’s Web is a sweet, visually playful picture book that gives children a friendly way to talk about prejudice, trust, generosity, and the way a person’s actions can change what we think we know about them.
Available November 15th, 2026
Positive Outlook and Courage
Sophie Moon and the Honeybees follows a curious young girl through four seasons of beekeeping with her grandfather as lessons from the hive help her navigate friendship, loss, courage, consequences, and change. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration for the story was based on my own experience as a beekeeper. I have been keeping bees since 2016, and each season brings its own challenges. Spring is very busy; the natural world is waking up after a long, cold winter. A perfect time to start something new. Just like Sophie did in deciding to make a friend and be brave enough to speak up and give a presentation at school. This is the season when the bees start building up their hive to the peak of Summer. This season is hot; the hives are filled with honey and life. Sophie is the happiest with her new best friend Catalina and her success at school. Then, Fall arrives, bringing a big change in the natural world and Sophie’s life. She loses her friend, gets punished by her Grandpa, but she also gains confidence in her own abilities. Because of all the things she achieved in Spring, Summer, and Fall, Sophie goes through a soft arc of character development that gets much stronger in book two. Also, during winter, my beehives are very quiet. The bees stay inside, keeping warm, trying to outlast the winter months. This is the time of reflection and hard truths. Sometimes, some hives don’t make it through the cold months. Sophie spends time outside in the cold snow and realises that her Grandpa will always be her friend and a stout supporter. This means a lot for a shy, sweet girl who was afraid to speak up during class last spring. So, I guess it felt right to use the changing of the four seasons in a year to follow Sophie’s development. I think even we adults often measure achievements in terms of months when we look back at changes in our lives.
Sophie often connects what she learns about bees to friendship, belonging, and loss. How did you develop those parallels between the hive and her personal life?
When Sophie first heard about her Grandpa’s new hobby of beekeeping, she was afraid. She asked, “The stinging kind?” She is so right that starting something new in life may cause a lot of emotional pain, stress, and fear. A lot of people are afraid of bees. I don’t like to get stung, but I do every year, many times. It hurts. Rejections hurt; not knowing how to do something can be stressful; receiving negative feedback can be discouraging, and so watching Grandpa work with the bees, and him allowing the fact that “Yes, they can sting,” lets Sophie know that it is okay to be hurt sometimes. Children have to experience difficulties in a safe way to become confident and face hardships with a positive outlook and courage. This lesson perhaps comes out too strong in book two, but I think that is how children are. They watch the world, their parents, teachers, grandparents, and take away the best with proper guidance.
Grandpa teaches Sophie largely through questions, demonstrations, and natural consequences. Was there a particular person or relationship that inspired his character?
His character is inspired by my own beliefs and experiences. He is based on a mixture of people I have known and know. But once, I received a negative review regarding Grandpa’s character. It said that he was very flat, colourless, with no character arc at all. I wish I could have debated that opinion. I think Grandpa is what every child needs. He is a loving, steadfast, strong, patient, and unchanging family member. His house never changes; he is always present; he bakes cakes, tries new things, and encourages through unconditional love. He is a wall that Sophie can lean on. No child has ever grown up happily around unreliable adults. His unchanging state is what gives Sophie room to grow and become a confident girl.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
I have just published the second book in the Sophie Moon series, and right now I am working on two books. One is a spin-off for Sophie Moon, and the other is based in the Arctic, steeped in the Aurora lights, with creatures fighting for survival.
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Finding Bravery in a hive.
A young girl overcomes her fears with the help of her grandfather and his honeybees.
It is spring time and nine years old Sophie Moon is excited about spending time with her grandfather in his log cabin.
He has a surprise for her. A package of honeybees is waiting to be installed in a new hive. Although it isn’t the puppy Sophie hoped for; she is curious about the world of beekeeping.
During the passing seasons, the honeybees become the answer to many of her troubles and fears.
“‘Why don’t we suit up and whisper to the bees. They’ll hear you and mayhap give you advice,’ Grandpa said smiling.”
Supported by her loving grandfather and seeking solace by visiting the beehives in each season, Sophie’s fears and relationships rise and fall throughout the school year.
A charming and educational story about personal growth tied closely to the life of honeybees away from the digital world.
Repair-and-Recovery
Economic Problems in a Nonlinear World examines the economy as a complex adaptive system shaped by interconnected forces, inequality, and questions of resilience and justice. Why was this an important book for you to write?
Conventional equilibrium-based neoliberal economics has failed to promote freedom and human flourishing. Traditional economic analysis cannot explain income and wealth inequality, institutional capture, declining social mobility, and the extraordinary concentration of market power. Complexity economics is a relatively new school of thought (see J. Doyne Farmer and The Santa Fe Institute) that uses nonlinear dynamics to provide an analytical method to explain how these pernicious social problems, and a path to recovery that promotes broad-based prosperity and genuine freedom.
Who did you envision as your primary audience?
Professional economists, policymakers, and scholars.
How did you decide the order in which to introduce concepts and applications?
First, explain why equilibrium is a linear myth. Secondly, explain the concept of nonlinearity. Thirdly, explain complexity economics in the context of our highly interconnected economy and world. Fourthly, apply complexity and systems thinking to important social problems in a democratic market economy. Lastly, provide a repair-and-recovery intellectual framework for promoting a human-centric agenda for greater human flourishing, agency, and democratic freedom.
What do you hope economists, policymakers, and general readers take away from your work?
We created these problems. Therefore, we are not doomed to a static, sub-optimal lived experience. Strengthening the middle class, promoting unions, raising inheritance taxes, and making life’s essentials available (healthcare, education, reduced labor precarity, and social mobility) will reduce political polarization and social divisions for the betterment of us all.
Author Links: GoodReads | Website | Amazon
