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Miracles Beyond The Crowd
Miracles Beyond the Crowd is a heartfelt call to push past spiritual passivity and step into a faith that moves, reaches, climbs, and refuses to settle. Author Nico Smit weaves together vivid Gospel narratives with pastoral insight, showing how people who pursued Jesus with grit and hunger were the ones who encountered breakthrough. The book traces stories like the woman with the issue of blood, Bartimaeus, the paralytic lowered through the roof, and the Canaanite woman, and shows how each miracle came to someone who would not stay in the safety of the crowd. The message is simple and clear, yet full of fire. Faith walks. Faith presses in. Faith does not back down. Smit invites readers to become people who step toward Jesus even when blocked, ignored, or discouraged.
I was surprised by how personal the writing felt. The tone is warm and direct. It almost reads like a conversation with a pastor who refuses to let you drift into complacency. I felt challenged in ways that caught me off guard. Certain lines made me nod along, and others made me stop and stare because they hit something inside me. The stories are familiar, yet Smit retells them with a kind of urgency that made me feel the tension in each moment. When he describes the woman crawling through the crowd or the friends ripping open a roof to get to Jesus, I could almost feel the dust and desperation. The writing moves quickly and stays clear, and it stirred up old questions for me about what I have quietly stopped believing God for.
I also appreciated how honest the book is about resistance. Smit does not pretend that faith is polished or pretty. He talks about faith that crawls, shouts, stumbles, and keeps going anyway. I felt a kind of relief reading that. It made space for the days when hope feels thin, and the crowd feels loud. The tone is bold and I could feel it pushing me to examine the ways I settle for proximity to Jesus without actually pursuing Him. There were moments I felt encouraged, and others where I felt exposed in the best possible way. The writing carries a strong emotional pull. It made me want to stand up and believe again for things I had quietly filed away.
Miracles Beyond the Crowd is a passionate and stirring read. I would recommend it to anyone who feels stuck, weary, or spiritually dull, and especially to those who believe in Jesus but have lost the fire to chase after Him. It is a great fit for people who love practical faith stories, people who enjoy devotional style encouragement, and anyone longing for fresh hope.
Pages: 122 | ASIN : B0FX5ZH62M
Built On More Than Teen Romance
Forced Apart follows two teens bound by first love and fierce loyalty as they struggle to stay connected through upheaval, grief, and the painful process of growing up. What inspired the introspective, dual-perspective style that lets readers live inside Cali and Sky’s thoughts?
Cali and Sky have been the key figures in this series on two kids growing up in a suburb of a large American city. I wanted boys and girls who read the series to relate to Sky and Cali and to try to make some of their concerns (Sky’s and Cali’s) typical for American teens. So, logically it seemed fruitful to present the thoughts and emotions from the female and the male point of view.
Luckily, these two fictional teens have knowledgeable and invested parents as do many of their friends, and consequently some of the teen challenges, especially sexual developments, are addressed with insight by the parents. Those adult perspectives were more pronounced in the earlier books because young teens need more parental input. In the two books in the series when Cali and Sky are in ninth grade (Not Just Another Brick in the Wall and Facing Revenge), they are more on their own, depend more on consultation and advice from peers as, typical for teens, they break away from a desire for parental involvement.
In Forced Apart, there is the gradual growth on the part of the teens in forging a more adult-to-adult relationship with parents. Examples of this new relationship are evident in Forced Apart when Cali and Shelly Snipe form a supportive bond as they face adjusting to a new life separated from their personal relationships back in Ohio. Sky has a similar supportive and working relationship with his mom and his stepfather as he deals with living closely with Marcie Meadows.
How did you balance the emotional core of the story with the background elements of danger and past trauma, such as the kidnappings?
Sky and Cali would hope that kidnappings are a thing of the past, but what they learned from their traumatic experiences has made them resilient, crafty, and determined to help anyone else who’s path they might cross who is faced with injustice and criminal intent. Although they are now dealing with emotional despair over their separation, they continue to find ways to support and encourage each other. Their bond has been built on more than teen romance.
The friend group feels like a second family. How did you approach writing their loyalty and messy humor to keep the story from becoming too heavy?
The fact of teen suicide looms too large in today’s teen world. Kids who forego suicide as an answer to emotional isolation and humiliation are usually ones who have a network of supportive and knowledgeable friends. Sky and Cali give insight and support to their friends and in return receive the same. Humor helps grease the friendship wheels but there has been a growing unshakeable support when Sky and Cali desperately need it. Teens need to value friendship and to invest personally in building and maintaining friendships.
If you could add one more scene to further highlight the theme of “surviving change,” what moment would you explore?
I should have had a scene where Cali and Sky meet again, during their separation, and before the need to rescue Solina. Probably they would meet again at the stadium of their high school. They needed a face-to-face where they could vent their frustration over being apart but have a chance to express why they were experiencing such emotional loss. To express the ways that their friendship has been important and undeniably crucial in their successful transitioning from teen to adult. Maybe if there is one final book in the series, Sky and Cali may have that conversation when they graduate and go separate ways.
Author Links: Amazon | GoodReads
Cali’s mom must deal with a problematic relationship and one of Cali’s new classmates faces difficult choices because of her toxic and dysfunctional family. Skyler finds himself in a confusing supportive role to a troubled female classmate that puts him at odds with Cali. As in the past, Cali and Sky continue to grow and encounter adventures and dangers that they had not expected to face during their junior year in high school.
Shero Entrepreneurs
SHERO Entrepreneurs is a collection of powerful personal stories from women who built businesses out of grit, heartbreak, courage, and hope. The book brings together interviews, reflections, and affirmations that walk the reader through the heart and hustle of ten entrepreneurs who turned adversity into purpose. As I moved through each chapter, I saw the common thread that ties them together. Every woman rose from something heavy and shaped a new life with her own hands. The book blends guidance, real struggle, and bright flashes of triumph in a way that feels honest and warm.
Reading it stirred something in me. I found myself pulled into the raw moments, the kind that sit in your chest for a while. The writing felt direct and personal. I could almost hear the voices of the women as they shared the reasons they stepped out on their own, the nights they questioned themselves, and the quiet victories they earned in the dark. The stories of illness, financial loss, and reinvention felt especially moving. Monica Chagolla’s journey back to meaningful work after serious illness captured the fragile mix of doubt and determination. Carolina Missett’s story of grief becoming a place of creation made me pause. Veronica Bahn’s reflections on visibility, loss, and legacy felt layered with both pain and fire. The writing does not hide real emotion. It offers it openly, and that openness gave the book its strength.
I also found myself smiling through several chapters. There is a down-to-earth charm in the way these women talk about building something from almost nothing. Patti Stoltz starting with three hundred dollars when it felt like three hundred thousand, Angela Barney juggling daycare, real estate, and Tupperware to keep her family steady, and so many others building piece by piece while learning on the go. Their stories brought a mix of admiration and comfort. I kept thinking how refreshing it was to hear success discussed without perfection. The ideas in the book are simple in the best way. Work hard. Stay kind. Learn fast. Lift others. Trust yourself. These messages land because they come from lived experience, not theory.
By the final pages, I felt a genuine sense of connection to the women in this collection. The affirmations sprinkled throughout added a gentle rhythm that reminded me to check in with my own path. I walked away from the book feeling both grounded and energized. It left me with a fuller sense of what resilience looks like in real life.
SHERO Entrepreneurs is a book I would recommend to women who are starting something new, women who feel stuck, and women who need proof that ordinary beginnings can still lead to extraordinary places. It is also a meaningful read for anyone who wants to understand the emotional landscape of entrepreneurship.
Pages: 253 | ASIN : B0FTPZFGNZ
Have You Heard This One Before
Have You Heard This One Before is a lively mix of short stories. Each tale jumps into a different mood, scene, or style, and the collection opens by proudly admitting that nothing links these stories except the author himself. You move from haunted lighthouses and eerie déjà vu to strange pumpkins with suspicious personalities and even a falling piano that changes a gambler’s life. The stories swing between mystery, humor, horror, sentiment, and quiet reflection, and they do it with a kind of carefree confidence that feels refreshing in a world obsessed with strict genres.
Reading it, I kept finding myself surprised at how quickly the tone could shift. One moment, I was following a family heading toward an old lighthouse in The Loop, and the next, I was inside a gambler’s mind as he dodged two thugs moments before a piano drops out of the sky in Surprise. The writing has a steady clarity, and the ideas land fast. Sometimes the twists feel sharp enough to make me sit back for a second. Other times, I felt a simple warmth, like the narrator in Surprise looking back on a messy young life with equal parts regret and humor.
I enjoyed the way the book leans into its own freedom. The author admits right in the foreword that he wasn’t sure who would read a genre-free collection, which almost made me root for the book before I even hit page one. That honesty softened me. Then the stories did the rest. Some ideas feel whimsical. Others dig into darker corners. A few made me laugh out loud because of how strange and blunt they were. I liked the looseness of it all. I liked that every story seemed to shrug at the idea of rules. Even when a moment made me uncomfortable or confused, I felt like the book wanted me to just ride the wave and trust it.
If you like stories that pick you up, spin you around, and drop you somewhere unexpected, this book will treat you well. Readers who crave strict genres might feel lost, yet readers who enjoy surprises, playful ideas, and quick bursts of emotion will have a good time. I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys short stories that don’t mind being weird, heartfelt, eerie, or funny, sometimes all in the same breath.
Pages: 165 | ASIN : B0FXCKZB4W
Scams are the World’s Fastest-Growing Crime
Scams Are the World’s Fastest-Growing Crime is a straight-talking field guide to modern scams. Author Ken Ray walks through how scams evolved, why they work, and how they hit regular people in every channel of life, from phone and email to social media, crypto, fake stores, and in-person tricks. He starts with history and psychology, then gives a simple four-step model of every scam: setup, lure, attack, hook. After that, he moves into detailed profiles of common schemes, global impact, why victims stay silent, and how scammers pick their targets. He wraps it all up with danger scales, checklists, legal context, a glossary, and a very raw victim story, all tied to Scam Watchdogs’ mission to protect, educate, and expose.
What I liked most was the human focus. Ray keeps reminding me that scams are not about clever tech. They are about emotions and habits. He lays out trust, fear, greed, love, guilt, and overconfidence as levers that scammers pull, then shows how those levers show up in real situations like “grandparent” calls, romance cons, and fake tax threats. I felt angry reading the sections on shame and silence, and how victims stay quiet because they blame themselves or worry no one will listen. The chapters on the snowball effect and the global scale of the problem hit pretty hard too. They show how a tiny “test payment” can snowball into life-changing loss and how those losses add up across families, small businesses, and even trust in basic institutions. Reading that, I felt a mix of frustration and urgency, like this is not just sad stories; this is a public safety issue.
I liked how practical and plain the book feels. The tone is warm and professional but still sounds like a real person talking, not a legal brief. The early chapters give clear frameworks, then the scam profiles repeat the same structure each time with “setup, lure, attack, hook” and a danger rating. That rhythm made it easy for me to skim to what I needed. I also appreciated the checklists, the “Stay Safe” section, and the simple definitions at the back, since those are easy to share with less tech-savvy family members. The author’s note about using AI tools like ChatGPT as a helper, while taking responsibility for the facts, felt transparent and current, which I liked.
I came away feeling both rattled and oddly reassured. Rattled, because the examples show how easy it is for smart, cautious people to get pulled in, especially through investment and romance scams that mix money with emotion. Reassured, because the book keeps coming back to simple habits that anyone can build: pause, verify, talk to someone, report what happened. There is a steady compassion for victims that cuts through the usual blame, especially in the dedication and the closing message that every report turns a private loss into a public shield.
I would recommend this book to everyday readers who want to protect themselves and their families, especially people who do not live in the world of cybersecurity but still live on their phones and laptops all day. It is a strong choice for parents, caregivers, community leaders, and small business owners who need something they can hand to others without translation. People looking for a clear, empathetic starter guide and a reference you can dip into whenever a weird text or email pops up, it does the job very well.
Pages: 175 | ASIN : B0G35VCVP1
Tracking Ariana
Tracking Ariana opens with a quiet spring afternoon that turns into a nightmare. Ariana Wilkinson, a young Afghan immigrant and mother of two, is detained after an Eid celebration, swept up with other families by ICE despite carrying full legal documentation. Her husband Joe, a newly retired Air Force colonel returning from deployment, arrives home to find his wife and children missing, sparking a desperate search. Meanwhile, attorney Seth Bodner and private investigator Dan Burnett begin uncovering the political machinery and secrecy behind the detentions. The story moves quickly, shifting between Ariana’s terror, Joe’s rising panic, and the investigative puzzle unfolding around them.
I felt pulled in by the writing’s straightforward, almost unvarnished style. The chapters move fast, and the scenes stack tension one on top of the next. The emotional beats land without feeling forced. Ariana’s fear hit me hardest. Her instinctive scanning for danger. Her remorse at wearing a hijab. Her panic as ICE officers question her. These moments felt raw and personal, and they gave me a knot in my stomach. Joe’s chapters brought a different kind of emotional punch. His transition from joyful anticipation to helpless dread felt honest, especially when he struggles to calm his children or walks into an empty house that should have held a reunion.
I also liked how the story brings in bigger themes without sounding preachy. There’s anger simmering under the surface. There’s confusion, too, and the sense that the characters are caught in a machine much larger than themselves. Watching Seth and Dan pull together scraps of information while the government stonewalls them made me feel both frustrated and invested. The narrative balances personal drama with political suspense in a way that feels accessible. I found myself rooting for everyone to just catch a break. The pacing keeps rising, and even the quieter scenes carry tension because the stakes never let up.
By the end of what I read, I felt fully locked into the characters’ emotional worlds, and that’s what made the story work for me. If you enjoy thrillers rooted in family, justice, and real-world tension, this book is a strong pick. It’s especially good for readers who like fast pacing, clear writing, and stories that weave personal stakes with political complications.
Pages: 272 | ASIN: B0FYZNJ81B
Drinking from the Stream
Drinking from the Stream follows two young men on the run from themselves. Jake, a Nebraska kid turned Louisiana roughneck, flees the guilt of a killing on an oil rig. Karl, a disillusioned American student at Oxford, escapes the wreckage of the sixties and a painful relationship. Their paths cross, and they drift through Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania in the early seventies, bumping into coups, massacres and love affairs as they go. The book stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes region of Africa and on to Chile, and it ties private coming-of-age stories to state violence and postcolonial chaos.
I felt like the writing landed with real weight. The prose has muscle and rhythm, and it keeps a steady pace through long stretches of travel and talk. Scenes on the road, in trucks, on ferries, and in cheap guesthouses felt vivid to me. Dialogues carry a lot of the load. Characters argue about politics, race, faith, and guilt, and the conversations feel relaxed on the surface but tense underneath. I could sense the author’s years in Africa in the way a village lane or a border crossing appears in a few sharp strokes. The flip side is density. Historical detail piles up. I stayed invested in Jake and Karl, and in Beatrice, Bridget and the others, because the book lets them be flawed, funny and sometimes selfish, not just mouthpieces for a lesson.
The novel looks at racism and antisemitism inside Jake’s own story, then places him in countries where mass killing happens out in the open and on a terrifying scale. It plays with the dream of revolution and tears it apart. Young Westerners arrive full of ideals, then watch soldiers and militias burn those ideals along with villages. The book keeps asking who gets to walk away and who does not. Jake carries private guilt from the rig into places where guilt comes in rivers. Karl drags his Vietnam-era anger into a world where America is almost irrelevant. I felt anger, shame, and sadness while I read, and also a stubborn hope, because the story keeps circling back to friendship, loyalty, and small acts of courage. The novel does not pretend to solve anything. It simply puts you close to the fire and forces you to look.
I would recommend Drinking from the Stream to readers who enjoy historical fiction with grit, to people curious about East Africa in the early seventies, and to anyone who likes character-driven travel stories with real moral stakes. The book asks for patience and a strong stomach. It pays that back with a rich sense of place, big emotions, and a set of memorable characters.
Pages: 377 | ASIN : B0DXLQTN5M
LITERARY TITAN 