Every key offers a possibility. The trouble is knowing what you’re letting in.
ASTROLOGY READINGS by CATALINA
The Magical Run of the College Team That Lost Its School
Date Published: 11-17-2026
Publisher: Mission Point Press
Excerpt
The rise and ultimate fall of Birmingham-Southern College, a small
liberal arts school on a hilltop in Birmingham, has a history that mirrors the
fortunes and struggles of the United States since the mid-nineteenth century.
In 1859, Alabama Southern University opened its doors in Greensboro but nearly
closed them two years later when most of its all-male student body left to
fight in the Civil War. By 1866, the student body had dwindled to
twenty-eight. The school quickly rebounded, however, and in 1889, the
graduating class numbered 289 students, including the first woman graduate.
In 1898, another Methodist school, Birmingham College, was established less than a hundred miles away. The new college was perched on a hill near the western edge of the rapidly growing city of Birmingham. After the Civil War, the two cities were a study in contrasts. While Greensboro was still largely dependent on cotton, Birmingham had made the smart move to steel, and its booming economy led to its nickname: “The Magic City.” By 1918, it was clear that two Methodist colleges this close together would be unsustainable. The answer: merge the two and call the new school Birmingham-Southern College.
The merger solved an immediate problem, and BSC thrived—for a while—but faced a devastating enrollment drop during World War I. The college hung on during the Great Depression but lost most of its male students and faculty during World War II. Two decades later, the Civil Rights Era brought new challenges. BSC became an early supporter of the movement, enrolling its first Black students in 1965, and continued to embrace diversity as a core part of its mission.
About the Author
Brian Nelson is a lifelong baseball fan, former player, and dedicated coach whose love for the game spans generations. A pitcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara in the 1980s, he later coached his three sons and their teammates through Little League, high school, and college. Drawing inspiration from a deeply literary family—especially his grandfather and mother—Nelson brings an analyst's brain, a storyteller’s heart, and impressive baseball knowledge to his writing. After a multi-decade career in finance, he has returned to his earliest passion to tell this story. This is his first book.
https://mybook.to/NotDoneYetMagicalRun
Date Published: September 7, 202
Freddy is a spirited rescue dog with a big personality and an even bigger heart. Though he can be stubborn, bossy, and sometimes a bit of a troublemaker, his playful nature and determination shine through—even as he faces serious medical challenges, including multiple surgeries.
Through three foster homes and nearly three years of waiting, Freddy’s journey is filled with ups and downs, laughter and tears, and the unwavering hope of belonging. His story offers a meaningful look at the realities of fostering, the patience it requires, and the profound impact of love and care.
This inspiring and emotional story reminds readers that every animal deserves a chance—and that sometimes the most challenging journeys lead to the most rewarding endings.
About the Author
Christina J. Donato is an author with a background in creative writing, political science, and sociology. Raised on Long Island, New York, she later relocated to New England, where she built a career as a mainframe programmer.
Now based in Rhode Island, she shares her home with her husband and their dog, Nera.
Ms. Donato enjoys word puzzles, black-and-white movies, anything Beatles-related, being active in her church, practicing the frame drum, and hosting doggy playdates with Nera.
Her love of animals and deep appreciation for poetry and storytelling come together in her writing, where she highlights meaningful, real-life experiences with warmth and authenticity.
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A Collection Inspired by True Stories of the Jewish Immigrant Experience
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
While fictionalized, these narratives were inspired by interviews with Americans who shared memories of their immigrant ancestors. Their stories unfold against the backdrop of sweeping historical events, such as the Great Depression, World War II, the Holocaust, and the founding of the State of Israel.
Poignant and powerful, Almost There illuminates a pivotal chapter in American history and speaks to the timeless search for belonging, identity, and home.
About the Author
literary publications Mikrokosmos and The Long Story. In 2018, her story “The Award” won second place in the San Diego Public Library’s short story contest.
A granddaughter of Jewish immigrants who came to America from eastern Europe in the early twentieth century, Jean was fascinated by her mother’s stories of growing up as a second-generation immigrant in Tennessee’s tobacco country. The Jewish immigrant experience continued to intrigue her and became the catalyst for her writing.
Jean is a native Californian and long-time resident of Coronado, a suburb of San Diego, where she lives with her husband Bill.
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Literary Fiction, Family Fiction
Date Published: October 13, 2026
Michael also struggles with a mother suffering from dementia, who insists he is the grown-up version of a brother who died in infancy. When the Kafkaesque Bureau of Preschool Special Education threatens to make their son repeat kindergarten, the family must confront how they are living and decide which therapies—everything from Mel Finkelstein’s sensory reintegration sessions to pediatric neurologist visits—are worth the emotional toll.
“Everyone should read this miracle of a book. Carol LaHines is a fearless writer. With brutal honesty, laugh-aloud-humor, faultless dialogue, understanding, and ultimately with great empathy and compassion, she portrays all our misguided efforts to control our bodies, our children, and our lives.” —Sheila Kohler, author of award-winning novels including Bluebird, Cracks, and Becoming Jane Eyre
About the Author
Carol LaHines’ debut novel, Someday Everything Will All Make Sense, was a finalist for the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel and an American Fiction Award. Her second novel, The Vixen Amber Halloway (Regal House 2024) was a gold medal winner in the Foreword Indies awards, a finalist for an American Fiction Award and the Pencraft Award, and a Shelf Unbound notable indie, and was featured on NPR and C-SPAN. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals including Fence, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Denver Quarterly, Cimarron Review, The Literary Review, The Laurel Review, North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, The South Carolina Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Sycamore Review, Permafrost, redivider, Literary Orphans, and Literal Latte. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of the Lamar York Prize for Fiction. Her short stories and novellas have also been finalists for the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction from Sarabande Books, the David Nathan Meyerson fiction prize, the New Letters short story award, and the Disquiet Literary Prize, among others.
Ms. LaHines’ eldest son Dylan was born with Pierre-Robin sequence. His condition, which can lead to breathing obstruction and is potentially fatal, went undiagnosed and was compounded by other egregious medical errors, as a result of which Dylan was medically challenged and severely disabled, at least as defined by society. Having navigated these labyrinthine, Kafka-esque corridors herself, she was moved to write this book as a testament to him and all the other families like hers who have coped with an indifferent medical bureaucracy. Miracle Grow is also laced with the satire, acerbic commentary, absurdist subplots, and the tragic-comic sensibility Ms. LaHines is known for.
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Mystery / Thriller
Date Published: 10-10-2026
Publisher: First Legacy Publishing
The community comes first – no matter what.
For ten years, the Utopia Tower experiment has been a resounding success. Conceived by a tech billionaire, the state-of-the-art apartment complex offers a life-changing opportunity: rent-free living for residents who adhere to the "Five Pillars of Harmony" and maintain the building's pristine reputation. It is a tight-knit community where neighbors look out for one another, ensuring that nothing endangers their sanctuary and their right to continue living there.
Antonio, a young lawyer, moves into the tower to care for his grandmother, eager to join this idyllic social experiment. But the veneer of perfection cracks when two young men—both considered bad apples and threats to the community's serenity—die in unusual circumstances within a single month. Despite warnings to leave well enough alone, Antonio suspects a connection and digs deeper. He discovers that, in a building designed for total harmony, asking the wrong questions can make you the next problem to be handled. Is there a killer hiding among the residents? Is the billionaire founder protecting his investment? Or is the truth far more terrifying?
In an environment where preservation of the collective is the prime directive, how far will the community go to protect itself?
Perfect for fans of Black Mirror, Blake Crouch, and high-concept tech mysteries.
Kevin G. Chapman is an attorney specializing in labor and employment law and an independent author. His seven -book (so far) Mike Stoneman Thriller series, includes Lethal Voyage, Winner of the 2012 Kindle Book Award, and Fatal Infraction, the #1 Police Procedural of the year (CLUE Blue Ribbon Award). Kevin's stand-alone mystery/suspense/romance, Dead Winner was the winner of the CLUE Blue Ribbon for best suspense/thriller, and Kevin's most recent stand-alone mystery, The Other Murder, was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 CLUE Award (best over-all mystery/suspense/thriller). Kevin has also written a serious political drama, A Legacy of One (2016). Kevin is a resident of Central New Jersey and is a graduate of Columbia College and Boston University School of Law. Readers can contact Kevin via his website at www.KevinGChapman.com.
Instagram: @KGChapman
Poetry
Date Published: August 24, 2026
All joy wants eternity … wants deep, deep eternity. With this declaration of primordial lust, the patron saint of post-modernity exalts his mania for joy, alongside the unquenchable thirst of the will to power, and, with it, the futile quest for the super-human. The cultural force of this dictum, which has become a commonplace among the literati, still drives the onslaught of thought and behavior, even, and perhaps foremost, among those who remain ignorant of its explicit pronouncement. A prophet is always heard most widely and wrongly, not through his own voice, but through the discordant voices of his wayward disciples. Amid the endless cacophony of copycats, who vainly mimic the grand style of their master, you’re tempted to forget the desperate loneliness of the solitary individual, a hermit in his many hideaways and masks, who, above all else, sought to transmute his solitude into a macho justification for human tenderness.
Late at night, when she is fast asleep, you crawl into bed; and in the midst of the dark, quiet night, you hear rhythmic spasms in her breathing as she dreams. Thoughtlessly, carelessly, inevitably, your mind empties itself so that there is only the sound of her breathing – paradoxically steady and spasmodic. In your own late-night, overwrought, careworn mania, you manage to convince yourself that what you really hear at this moment is the sound of eternity singing. Physiologically, you might interpret this as a mental phantom concocted out of the stresses and strains of a tiring day. But this illusion produces a reality that the mind cannot deny without destroying a part of itself. Loving your mind too much to bear losing even its most illusory fragments, you cannot help but think that these moments are gateways to eternity, that they are not merely the pleasant afterimages you dream up to forget a day of painstaking and tedious work but that they are indeed what you have lived through the day to reach, to grasp and caress, if only for a fleeting instant. Such moments (and not the jobs you do) are the serious work of your life.
This book, the third and final one in the eternity trilogy, continues to recount the conspiracy of nowhere and now here that unfolded in "The History of Eternity" and "Passages to Eternity." Read this book, if you will, and follow the adventures of this paradox as it reveals itself in the lives of 36 historical individuals, including Musil, Bloy, Peguy, George Eliot, Kripke, Blake, Nishida Kitaro, Cather, Nagarjuna, Fitzgerald, Bruno, Paz, John Duns Scotus, Mallarmé, Burke, Achebe, Murdoch, Epictetus, St. John of the Cross, Turing, Lispector, Goya, Pirandello, Blanchot, Tennyson, Messiaen, Cantor, O’Connor, Nin, Lowell, Racine, Vidal, Niebuhr, Twain, Derrida, C.S. Lewis and many others.
James Winder spent the lion’s share of his career as a mid-level manager and intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency (NSA), where he retired in 2013 after 30 years of service. At NSA, Mr. Winder’s most noteworthy assignment was in 1991-1992, when he served as Assistant Director of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). During that time, he co-authored a report for President George H.W. Bush on intelligence lessons learned during the first Gulf War and provided extensive research and documentation on a wide range of other matters of great interest to the PFIAB board members. In a special commendation, then Acting PFIAB Chairman, Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, cited Mr. Winder for his “expert advice to the President of the United States” and for his “extremely incisive and timely contributions on some very complex issues.”
During three decades at NSA, Mr. Winder produced three classified, book-length studies, most notably including a comprehensive report on an important subject, which won NSA’s annual Cryptologic Literature Award. He also wrote a wide variety of other in-depth reports on Soviet intelligence, terrorism, and technical threats to U.S. telecommunications.
Mr. Winder is the author of The History of Eternity, a series of philosophic meditations in poetic form, which is, according to Mr. Winder, the cryptic story of his life and the lives of many others. There is – in the history of philosophy or literature – no other work that is akin to it in nature and scope.
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The key turns. Something changes. And not everyone gets out. Forgotten recordings threaten to expose secrets buried for decades. Guests at...