Voodoo Storm


Book Description

Voodoo Storm is a thriller set in New Orleans during the time of Hurricane Katrina. In Voodoo Storm, a cult of Devil worshipers hides among the Crescent City’s harmless voodoo practitioners and commit crimes in the name of the Devil. Unfortunate individuals succumb to devastating diseases unknown to modern medicine and little girls go missing. Dr. Mary Lou Campbell, a pretty but pugnacious psychologist with the New Orleans Police Department, and her new young partner Frankie Panacea, follow a torturous path fraught with danger in their effort to solve the crimes and apprehend the heartless perpetrators, who feel enabled by their dark beliefs. Though the end appears in sight, Hurricane Katrina provides a new twist. Levees are breached with the help of human hands and the city floods. As bodies are counted, all clues point to a strange, fat clown. In the terrifying conclusion, our heroine, a woman all too familiar with adversity and death, is confronted by a horror that even she could not have imagined. Voodoo Storm, like the author’s previous two novels, is characterized by tragic characters, colorful dialogue and edgy writing. The novel often flirts with the supernatural and leaves the reader to wonder what resides beyond the darker side of human consciousness.




Voodoo and Afro-Caribbean Paganism


Book Description

Few religions are as misunderstood as Afro-Caribbean traditions like Voodoo, Yoruba, Candomble, Shango, Santeria, and Obeah. Even the most wide-ranging books about Paganism rarely include a discussion of the African earth religions.




Another Throat


Book Description

The early twenty-first century has seen a sharp rise in Black US poets employing the mask of persona, often including and interrogating archival materials as they do so. While some have observed this rise and noted its connection to historical figures, Ryan Sharp explores it more deeply, as a project-based historical and poetic practice. Sharp examines its sustained use of historical persona and capacity for conjuring Black speakers as a countermeasure against the archival silencing and misrepresentation of Black voices and histories—a tactic he theorizes as poetic fabulation—through the poetry of Elizabeth Alexander, Cornelius Eady, Adrian Matejka, Patricia Smith, Natasha Trethewey, and Frank X Walker. This poetic practice is not only about looking back but about critically and creatively (re)imagining the past to expand the possibilities for Black presents and futures. Through his argument, Sharp demonstrates how the unique aesthetic and rhetorical license afforded to poetry, along with the interiority of persona, empowers such historically minded projects to be concurrently invested in the curation of Black narratives and identities.




The Tornado's Daughter


Book Description

Discover a remarkable journey of triumph in The Tornado's Daughter, a gripping nonfiction memoir. This poignant tale unravels the tumultuous family history of Charlotte Gwalt, interwoven with political assassinations, violence, betrayal, and the harrowing horrors of human trafficking. Against all odds, Charlotte rises above these adversities, defying the darkness that threatens to consume her. At its heart, this book is a testament to the unyielding resilience of the human spirit--a true story that showcases how even amid the darkest moments, one can forge a path to happiness and inner peace.




Warplane


Book Description

The A-10 is the Air Force's unlikely success story, an airplane designed to support the Army, and one that ground troops came to venerate. Originally conceived with the express purpose of destroying Soviet tanks, the Air Force only developed it to keep funding away from the Army’s response to the mission, the AH-56 Cheyenne helicopter. Inspired by the biography of a tank-busting German pilot in World War II, the engineering and design of the A-10 fell to Pierre Sprey, a precocious civilian who'd enrolled at Yale when he was just 15-years-old, and now, barely 30, wasexiled to a Pentagon backwater with little, if any, supervision. The end result was one of the finest military aircraft ever built, a plane essentially constructed around a 19.5-foot, 4,000-pound cannon that fired 30mm depleted uranium bullets at a blistering rate. Looking like it was built from discarded airplane parts, it was probably the ugliest combat aircraft ever built, thus the “Warthog” appellation. But it was also an incredibly reliable ground attack aircraft, beloved by ground troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. Despite repeated attempts to replace it with stealth aircraft and drones,over 280 A-10s remain in service today, serviced by dedicated and imaginative engineers and maintainers, and defended by a fervent cohort of advocates descended from the Military Reform movement. This is the story of intra-service rivalries, Pentagon obsessions with speed and stealth over tactical simplicity, and an aircraft that shows no sign of obsolescence as it nears fifty years in service.




Soleiluna


Book Description

Our story starts, when ancient hearts, reincarnate to tell the tale, and as they unveil, the mystery, that links together all of history, the secret knowledge that once was forbidden, becomes unable to stay hidden, but when the deception of the past begins to bubble, the darkness conjures a conniving trouble, however karma spins the wheel in the name of the light, to set the world right, and when the most powerful souls of the divine, are alive once again to shine, like the prophecies told, a wonderful adventure is set to unfold, as Luna meets Soleil, when she crosses under the archway, through the magical portal their past lives created, and so their reunion was predestined and fated, because life is like a poem that never ends, and when they team up with their old friends, they open so much more, than just the ancient teleportation door, as the farther they travel, the more begins to unravel, and is unfurled, in this mythical fairytale world, because with the powers of their mind, they are able to find, the treasures their past lives left behind, and the truths that lie in the legends lost to time, as they sing the everlasting rhyme, and take the stage, to vanquish the evil and kick off the golden age!




The Call of the Savage


Book Description

Far from the world of his white parents, the sixteen-year-old youth, Jan, was raised in a cage under the watchful eye of half-crazed Dr. Bracken. Guided by his foster mother, Chicma the Chimpanzee, Jan was destined to execute the doctor's fanatical plot for revenge against Jan's real mother. A monster with the mind of an ape and the body of a man, that was his part in Bracken's twisted scheme. But just on the eve of the intended onslaught, Jan and Chicma escaped to the jungle and emerged near the Lost Empire of Mu. There, Jan must do battle with the gigantic puma, the grotesque thunder bird, and the god-monster Sebek. With all his fighting skill, there remained only one challenge to Jan: trace his origins and locate his man-parents.




Super Black


Book Description

Super Black places the appearance of black superheroes alongside broad and sweeping cultural trends in American politics and pop culture, which reveals how black superheroes are not disposable pop products, but rather a fascinating racial phenomenon through which futuristic expressions and fantastic visions of black racial identity and symbolic political meaning are presented. Adilifu Nama sees the value—and finds new avenues for exploring racial identity—in black superheroes who are often dismissed as sidekicks, imitators of established white heroes, or are accused of having no role outside of blaxploitation film contexts. Nama examines seminal black comic book superheroes such as Black Panther, Black Lightning, Storm, Luke Cage, Blade, the Falcon, Nubia, and others, some of whom also appear on the small and large screens, as well as how the imaginary black superhero has come to life in the image of President Barack Obama. Super Black explores how black superheroes are a powerful source of racial meaning, narrative, and imagination in American society that express a myriad of racial assumptions, political perspectives, and fantastic (re)imaginings of black identity. The book also demonstrates how these figures overtly represent or implicitly signify social discourse and accepted wisdom concerning notions of racial reciprocity, equality, forgiveness, and ultimately, racial justice.




Disaster Free Survivor Strikes Back: Storms of Love & Loss


Book Description

Disasters happen! These are the stories of love and loss. Many victims died in disasters. These are the stories of how survivors lived to strike back. Survivors were trapped, but then set free when they were rescued!




Holding Out and Hanging on


Book Description

Words cannot adequately convey the human dimension of the devastation wreaked on New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Thomas Neff's photographs can. As a volunteer in the city in the early days after the flood, this Baton Rouge photographer witnessed firsthand the confusion and suffering that was New Orleans--as well as the persistence and strength of those who stuck it out. Neff subsequently spent forty-five days interviewing and photographing the city's holdouts, and his record is a heartbreaking but compelling look at the true impact of the disaster. At a time when New Orleans residents felt isolated and abandoned, Neff provided the ear that many needed. The friendship he extended enabled him to capture remarkable images and to write sensitive commentaries that approach his subjects from a uniquely personal perspective. Here are Antoinette K-Doe assessing the future of her ruined Mother-in-Law Loun≥ Juan Parke, who ferried scores of people to safety in his silver canoe; Ashton O'Dwyer defending his property from looters; Ride Hamilton pausing in his work as a freelance medic. These portraits and dozens more tell the story of the storm through many voices--and collectively they tell a story of their own. Other books have documented the wrath of Katrina, but none has captured the human dimension as powerfully as Holding Out and Hanging On. Through these intimate, intense images, readers will meet people from all walks of life who are exhausted by grief and shock but who are determined to hold on to their culture and their city. Neff's gripping black-and-white images and equally poignant narratives show individuals who are reorganizing their lives, trying to maintain their individuality, and even enriching their souls as they help one another. These are the stories that New Orleans citizens told each other--a view of the disaster not captured by the news cameras--and photographs that show the city as it knows itself. Together, Neff's portraits and stories form a sensitive documentary of survival and stand as a testament to the extraordinary individuals who endured one of the most calamitous disasters of our time.