WELCOME TO NEWVALE!It's two hundred years since entrepreneur, Thomas Fuller founded the town of Newvale and the Council are planning a big celebration that is being welcomed with a wave of apathy. Most of the townspeople are too busy getting on with their own lives to become excited about something as intangible as a birthday party.Flocking Bustards! Tells the tale of several disparate residents whose stories merge and intertwine. Events that begin as everyday and mundane d...

In a world where the future is uncertain, food and water will turn out to be a scarce commodity. Foraging will become, for some, a way of life, and it will be their only chance of survival when facing the great outdoors. Foraging is a skill that has become forgotten, and even though it was used by our ancestors on a daily basis, today, we mainly hear about it in movies or survival TV shows.I'm glad to see that this subject is still alive among the preppers and survivalist communities, and ...

Twenty tales from beyond the marginsBehind bars, beyond the stars, beneath the earth and wandering the feral mindscapes of our inner worlds...Outsiders brings you twenty short stories of apartness,isolation and difference, told through the filters of horror, comedy, surrealism and [email protected]

July 1854, Colleton District, South CarolinaA half-dozen years before Abe Lincoln’s inauguration, comes another collision between European immigrants and African abductees that does not end well.By 1854, the Tiffany family had enslaved over 300 Africans for more than a century on the 1,100-acre slave labor camp that they called the Tiffany Plantation. The Tiffanys were the largest rice producer in South Carolina’s Colleton District. While the toil of enslaved Africans earne...

Artificial intelligence (AI) in its various forms –– machine learning, chatbots, robots, agents, etc. –– is increasingly being seen as a core component of enterprise business workflow and information management systems. The current promise and hype around AI are being driven by software vendors, academic research projects, and startups. However, we posit that the greatest promise and potential for AI lies in the enterprise with its applications touching all organizational facets.Wi...

New Orleans native Mademoiselle Francesca Dumas is a kept woman. At age eighteen in the second year of the American Civil War, she is the concubine of a rich New Orleans banker, Joachim Buisson. Born a quadroon, Francesca leads a sheltered life of elegant jewels, gowns, lace, and lavish balls—until a bullet shatters her dream world.An assassin murders “her man” as Francesca stood beside him among a throng gathered atop a Mississippi River levee on April 25, 1862. Bowed by Joachim’s...

The San Francisco Review described Bob Rogers a rising author who takes readers back to life and times in the early years of the Civil War, blending a brilliant mix of historic persons with his fictional characters. Celebrating the sesquicentennial year of the famed Buffalo Soldiers, Bob Rogers delivers his most ambitious work yet–a novel that spans their first generation–from Charleston and Vicksburg to Appomattox and desert Apache battlefields.First came dark days that beset Isaa...

Will Wallace, Jr., like his father, meets adversity with courage. In his native North Carolina, Will is a 1943 baseball star. He fights against America’s apartheid in baseball by accepting an invitation to play on an all-white team. Soon, the Ku Klux Klan decides to teach Will and the community a lesson in the status quo and attacks Will’s home. In the ensuing battle, Will suffers catastrophic losses.The mother of his high school sweetheart, Dena, disapproves of their romance and d...

New Orleans native Mademoiselle Francesca Dumas is a kept woman. At age eighteen in the second year of the American Civil War, she is the concubine of a rich New Orleans banker, Joachim Buisson. Born a quadroon, Francesca leads a sheltered life of elegant jewels, gowns, lace, and lavish balls—until a bullet shatters her dream world.An assassin murders “her man” as Francesca stood beside him among a throng gathered atop a Mississippi River levee on April 25, 1862. Bowed by Joachim’s ...

Carl Gamble, a premier airline pilot, has penned a remarkable memoir, a powerful story about his journey from the cotton fields of Madison County, Alabama, to the captain’s seat flying jumbo jets between North America and Europe. While in grade school, Gamble was inspired by jet fighters flying over Madison from a near-by Air Force Base and his dream to become a pilot was born. Gamble’s hard and focused work overcame an inauspicious start studying aviation at Tennessee State University, a ...

Ordinary lovers, Dena Miller and Will Wallace, confront extraordinary obstacles in their romance. Classism in their native North Carolina threatens to end their nascent romance as it began. Then, larger and more ominous life-threatening challenges of white supremacy and World War II wreak havoc on the dreams of the young couple, forcing them apart.Dena’s mother, a teacher, and married to a local pastor, disapproves of their romance, and declares Will, a mere baseball player and lumb...

Now a Showtime limited series starring Ethan Hawke and Daveed DiggsWinner of the National Book Award for FictionFrom the bestselling author of The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, Deacon King Kong (an Oprah Book Club pick) and The Color of Water comes the story of a young boy born a slave who joins John Brown’s antislavery crusade—and who must pass as a girl to survive.Henry Shackleford is a ...