Stories of Survival, Second Chances, and Love in the Corridors of Power

Some writers discover storytelling early. Others carry the dream quietly for years, waiting for the right season of life to finally place their words on the page.

For Kimberly Croft, that dream began during her childhood in Geneva, Ohio. Her love of reading was sparked by the Nancy Drew mysteries and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s beloved stories. She began writing poetry at an early age, but somewhere beneath those first creative efforts was a larger ambition: Kimberly wanted to write a novel.

It was not until she left the workforce to raise her daughters that she began pursuing that dream seriously. Her two daughters became her greatest motivation to continue writing.

That support helped Kimberly transform a lifelong love of stories into novels filled with passion, danger, ambition, complicated relationships, and characters fighting to overcome the circumstances that once defined them.

Although her books move between small coastal towns, luxurious estates, courtrooms, and the politically charged world of Washington, D.C., the emotional heart of Kimberly’s work remains remarkably consistent. Her characters often begin their journeys carrying difficult histories. They may be surrounded by wealth, glamour, and power, but beneath the surface they are confronting abuse, addiction, family dysfunction, betrayal, or the painful consequences of choices made long ago.

Most importantly, they are searching for the courage to create a different future.

Today, we are introducing three of Kimberly Croft’s novels: Unbroken, Secrets on the Potomac, and Dear Prudence.

Unbroken

Scarlett has spent her life dreaming of escape.

Raised in the small fishing town of Cutler, Maine, she longs to leave behind poverty, a troubled home, and the dead-end job that has come to represent everything she fears her life may become. When Hugh Cruz enters the restaurant where she works, he appears to offer everything she has ever wanted.

He is handsome, sophisticated, enormously wealthy—and interested in her.

Scarlett is swept into a life she could barely have imagined: private planes, designer clothing, lavish homes, household staff, and a romance that seems almost too perfect to be real. For a young woman who has spent much of her life struggling simply to survive, Hugh’s world feels like the fairy tale she has been waiting for.

But fairy tales can conceal terrible truths.

The attention that once felt intoxicating slowly becomes control. The man who promised Scarlett a beautiful new life begins stripping away her freedom, confidence, and sense of self. What looked like rescue becomes another kind of prison—and Scarlett must decide whether she can reclaim the woman she was before it is too late.

Kimberly wrote Unbroken for women who may feel frightened, trapped, or convinced there is no way out. At its heart, this is not only a story about domestic abuse. It is a story about survival, courage, and a woman’s determination to take her life back.

Scarlett’s journey carries a message Kimberly wanted readers to remember: there is always a way out.

Read Unbroken

For readers who appreciate emotionally intense fiction about survival, resilience, and the difficult journey back to oneself, Unbroken offers a story that is painful, powerful, and ultimately rooted in hope.

Discover Scarlett’s story and follow her fight to become truly unbroken.

[Purchase Unbroken here.]

Secrets on the Potomac

Sebastian Reed has been preparing for the presidency for most of his life.

Born into a powerful political family, Sebastian has inherited not only wealth and influence but also the burden of expectation. His mother is a former governor. His late father served in the Senate and once pursued the White House himself. From childhood, Sebastian has been taught that public service—and political power—are his destiny.

Now, with his first presidential fundraiser underway, that destiny finally appears within reach.

Sebastian has the pedigree, confidence, ambition, and carefully managed public image required to become a serious contender. He also has Annalise Martinez, an accomplished attorney who seems like the ideal partner for a man seeking the highest office in the country.

But behind the polished campaign lies a family filled with secrets.

Sebastian’s younger brother, Garrison, has spent years struggling with addiction. Their mother has repeatedly protected him from the consequences of his behavior, while Sebastian has been left trying to contain the damage. And when Daria—a woman connected to both brothers and to Sebastian’s past—returns to Washington, carefully buried feelings begin rising to the surface.

As the campaign gathers momentum, Sebastian finds himself caught between the future he has always wanted and the past he has never fully escaped. Old love, divided loyalties, addiction, family expectations, and political calculation collide as every personal decision threatens to become a public scandal.

Secrets on the Potomac explores the world behind political ambition: the compromises, relationships, rivalries, and private vulnerabilities hidden beneath the speeches and carefully staged appearances. It is a story of power and passion—but also of the secrets people protect when the truth could cost them everything.

Read Secrets on the Potomac

For readers who enjoy political drama mixed with romance, family conflict, forbidden history, and the high stakes of a presidential campaign, Secrets on the Potomac opens the doors to a world where private desire and public ambition are never easily separated.

Step behind the campaign curtain and discover the secrets flowing through Washington.

[Purchase Secrets on the Potomac here.]

Dear Prudence

Prudence Romaine knows what it means to reinvent yourself.

Named after two Beatles songs by a mother whose life was consumed by addiction, Prudence grew up surrounded by instability and poverty. But she refuses to remain defined by her childhood. With the help of her grandmother, she builds a new life through education, determination, and hard work.

By the time readers meet her, Prudence has earned a degree in criminal justice, entered law school, secured a position at a prestigious Washington law firm, and successfully managed the campaign of Alex Conrad, Virginia’s charismatic new senator.

Alex is confident, commanding, and nearly impossible for Prudence to resist.

He is also older, involved with another woman, and no longer merely the man she admires from a distance. Their lives have intersected before, and the connection between them is filled with history, attraction, gratitude, and emotions neither can easily ignore.

On the night of Alex’s election victory, Prudence decides she is finished hiding how she feels. But a late-night accident changes the course of their relationship and pulls her deeper into Alex’s personal and political world.

As Alex’s ambitions grow, so do the pressures surrounding them. Love must compete with public scrutiny, career demands, old relationships, political opponents, family history, and the relentless expectations placed upon a man rising through Washington.

Yet Prudence is more than the woman standing beside an influential politician. She is intelligent, ambitious, funny, outspoken, and determined to build a meaningful career of her own. The frightened girl from the other side of the tracks has become a woman capable of navigating courtrooms, campaigns, and the complicated realities of loving someone whose life belongs partly to the public.

Dear Prudence combines romance and political drama with the story of a woman who has worked hard to leave her past behind—even as that past continues to influence the choices she makes.

Read Dear Prudence

For readers drawn to passionate romance, ambitious women, Washington politics, and characters determined to overcome troubled beginnings, Dear Prudence delivers love, humor, conflict, and plenty of political intrigue.

Meet Prudence Romaine and follow her from a painful childhood into the demanding world of love, law, and national politics.

[Purchase Dear Prudence here.]

Women Who Refuse to Remain Powerless

The settings of Kimberly Croft’s novels may be filled with wealth, prestige, designer clothing, political influence, and larger-than-life romance, but her stories are not simply about glamorous lives.

They are about what happens behind the appearance of perfection.

Scarlett discovers that wealth cannot protect her from cruelty. Daria and Sebastian confront the danger of allowing ambition and appearances to dictate their personal lives. Prudence must learn how to love someone powerful without surrendering the identity and future she fought so hard to build.

Each woman has known instability. Each has been shaped by circumstances she did not choose. And each must decide whether her past will determine who she becomes.

Through these stories, Kimberly writes about women who are vulnerable without being weak, wounded without being defeated, and capable of rebuilding their lives even after those lives have been shaken apart.

Her characters fall in love. They make mistakes. They chase dreams, ignore warnings, revisit old wounds, and sometimes lose themselves inside the lives they believe they are supposed to want.

But they also fight their way back.

Perhaps that is what connects Kimberly Croft’s novels most strongly: the belief that no matter where a person begins—or how far they have fallen—their story is not necessarily over.

Sometimes, the most important chapter begins when a woman finally decides to write the rest of her life for herself.

Discover More From Kimberly Croft

Whether you prefer an emotional story of survival, a romance unfolding amid presidential ambition, or a determined heroine finding her place in the worlds of law and politics, Kimberly Croft offers passionate stories filled with flawed characters, difficult choices, and hard-won second chances.

Explore all three novels and discover which journey speaks to you first.

Read Unbroken
A powerful story of abuse, survival, and reclaiming one’s life.
[Purchase Unbroken.]

Read Secrets on the Potomac
A provocative blend of presidential politics, family secrets, addiction, ambition, and forbidden love.
[Purchase Secrets on the Potomac.]

Read Dear Prudence
A passionate political romance about a woman determined to rise beyond the circumstances of her childhood.
[Purchase Dear Prudence.]

Some moments change everything.

Not because we planned them. Not because we were ready. But because life asked us to take one more step anyway.

We’re proud to announce the release of Pivotal Moments: Stories of Surviving, Surrendering, and Saying Yes Anyway by Patricia Peck.

Through deeply personal stories of heartbreak, healing, faith, and unexpected courage, Patricia invites readers into the moments that forever altered the course of her life. With honesty and grace, she explores what it means to survive life’s hardest seasons, surrender when control is no longer possible, and discover that saying “yes” to the unknown can become the beginning of something extraordinary.

This is more than a memoir. It’s an invitation to recognize the pivotal moments in our own lives and to find hope, resilience, and purpose on the other side.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your hardest chapter could become the start of a better story, Pivotal Moments is a book you’ll want to read.

Now available from Genius Books.

Order your copy here

The book centers on stories of surviving, surrendering, and embracing life’s unexpected turning points, offering readers encouragement to face their own defining moments with courage and hope.

When my son Jude was about five years old, he had already spent months hearing me announce, “I’m going to meditate.” Then he would watch me disappear behind a closed door, sometimes for ten minutes and sometimes for much longer.

One day, his curiosity finally got the better of him.

“Mom, what is meditate?”

I paused, trying to think of a way to explain meditation to a five-year-old. At the time, Jude was deeply invested in superheroes, so I answered in language I knew he would understand.

“Meditation is Mommy’s superpower.”

That got his attention.

I explained that meditation helped me use my breath to calm down when I was angry, relax when I felt overwhelmed or scared, and find a little comfort when I was sad.

He considered that for a moment, said, “Oh,” and went on with his day.

A few weeks later, I was preparing for my afternoon meditation when he appeared beside me.

“Mom, can I meditate too?”

I will be honest: I was having a difficult day, and I had been looking forward to being alone.

But how do you say no to a request like that?

You don’t.

I invited him into my room.

I had occasionally thought I might introduce meditation to him one day. I simply had not expected that day to arrive when he was five, and I had no carefully planned lesson ready.

So I did what parents often do.

I made it up as I went along.

He sat cross-legged on the floor across from me. Before we began, I told him we were going to sit quietly and pay attention to our breathing. I also told him he could stop whenever he wanted. If he felt finished after three breaths, he could leave after three breaths.

I wanted meditation to feel like an invitation, not another thing an adult was making him do.

I rested my arms on my knees with my palms facing upward and invited him to place his small hands in mine. We kept our eyes open.

“Take a deep breath in,” I said. “Hold it for just a second. Now let it out as though you’re blowing out birthday candles.”

He smiled and giggled, then quickly grew serious again.

“Now let your breath return to normal. Notice the air coming in through your nose.”

I gave him a moment.

“Can you feel it?”

He nodded.

“See whether you can feel the breath moving down into your belly.”

He nodded again.

“Now follow it back out.”

He sat very still, concentrating deeply.

“Do you feel it?”

Another nod.

“That’s meditation.”

He looked surprised.

“But that’s so easy!”

I laughed.

“Yes,” I told him. “It really can be.”

We sat together for a few more breaths. I was not doing much meditating myself. I was watching him and noticing how seriously he followed the movement of his breath.

After a short while, I asked whether he wanted to continue, learn something new, or finish for the day.

He was finished.

He got up, quietly left the room, and I continued my own practice.

That first meditation lasted only a few minutes, but it was enough. Over the next several weeks, he occasionally asked to join me again. Sometimes he stayed for only a few breaths. Other times, he sat beside me until I finished.

Eventually, he announced that he was ready to learn something new.

I did not think a five-year-old needed a long explanation about observing thoughts, releasing them, and returning attention to the breath. Instead, I turned meditation into a listening game.

I invited him to close his eyes and notice as many sounds as he could: sounds outside the house, sounds in another room, sounds nearby, and even the sound of his own breathing.

We competed to see who could hear the most.

He won.

His ears were much sharper than mine, and he loved the game.

I did not follow a formal program or a carefully ordered curriculum. I simply responded to his curiosity and tried to keep the practices brief, playful, and understandable.

His interest came and went, as children’s interests often do. Sometimes he joined me frequently. Other times, months passed without him asking. Eventually, sitting silently beside Mom lost some of its novelty.

I assumed meditation had quietly faded into the background of his childhood.

Then he and his best friend had a fight.

Jude was furious and crying with large, full-body sobs. I gently gathered his hands, brought them toward his heart, and held them in mine.

“Let’s breathe,” I said.

Together, we breathed in through our noses and released the air with long sighs through our mouths.

Again and again, we breathed.

Slowly, his sobs eased. His breathing became steadier. His body began to settle. Once the intensity had passed, we continued with softer, more natural breaths until he felt calm enough to talk.

That was one of the first times I saw the practice move beyond our quiet moments together and become something he could use when his emotions felt too large for his body.

Some time later, a close friend of my husband’s died suddenly. Jude had loved him and took the loss hard. Around the same time, he began having nightmares.

One night, I walked past his bedroom and heard him crying and breathing heavily. My first instinct was to rush in, hold him, and make everything better.

Then I noticed something that stopped me in the doorway.

He was sitting with his eyes closed and one hand over his heart. Even through the sobs, I could tell he was deliberately following his breath.

He was using what I had taught him.

I stood there silently for a moment as he slowly brought his breathing under control.

Then I went to him.

The breathing did not erase his grief. It did not make the nightmare disappear or remove his need for comfort.

But it gave him something to reach for inside himself.

It helped him feel his body, slow his breathing, and begin returning to a sense of safety until I could be beside him.

Until that moment, I had not understood how much he had absorbed from those early practices. I had not realized I was giving him something he might one day use when I was not in the room.

Jude is nine now, and he has not formally meditated with me for quite some time. Sitting silently beside Mom is no longer quite as exciting as it was when he was five.

But the practice did not disappear.

When he is grieving, angry, scared, frustrated, or overwhelmed, I can still say, “Let’s breathe,” and he knows exactly what I mean.

He has also come home from school and told me that he became upset during a disagreement but paused and took a few breaths the way I taught him.

To me, that matters far more than whether he develops a regular meditation practice at nine years old.

The goal was never to turn him into a tiny meditator who sat quietly beside me every day.

It was to give him a tool he could carry with him.

As parents, grandparents, teachers, and caregivers, we spend so much time trying to prepare children for life. We teach them to look both ways before crossing the street. We teach them how to ask for help, what to do in an emergency, and how to care for their bodies.

But many of us were never taught what to do when anger surges through us, when grief sits heavily in our chest, or when fear makes it difficult to think.

We learned those lessons while living them—if we learned them at all.

Teaching Jude also made me think about my older son, who struggled for years with intense anger and violent outbursts. At the time, I knew nothing about meditation or nervous-system regulation. I did not understand breathing practices, how to help a child settle an overwhelmed body, or the value of introducing simple tools before emotions became unmanageable.

I wish I had.

I do not believe meditation would have solved everything. Some children need far more support than a breathing exercise can provide, and offering meditation should never become a way of minimizing serious emotional or behavioral needs.

But I do wonder whether having even one small way to pause, settle his body, or feel less overtaken by anger might have helped.

We cannot prevent every argument, nightmare, loss, disappointment, or terrible day at school. We cannot always make the hurt disappear. And we will not always be beside our children at the exact moment life feels too big. What we can do is help them build a small bridge back to themselves.

One breath.

Then another.

A hand resting over the heart.

A moment spent listening to the sounds in the room.

A reminder that feelings can be powerful without being permanent and that they do not have to act from the very center of the storm.

Some children may use these tools only occasionally. Others may need them often. Either way, learning to pause, breathe, and reconnect with the body can become a meaningful part of a child’s emotional toolbox.

Perhaps Jude will return to meditation more regularly one day. Perhaps he will ask me to teach him something new. Maybe he will eventually create a practice that looks nothing like mine.

For now, I am simply grateful that he knows how to pause.

His breath will always be with him.

And sometimes, years after a small child first asks, “Mom, what is meditate?” we may find ourselves standing quietly in a doorway, realizing they have already begun learning how to find their own way home.

A Note for the Grown-Ups

Although my book, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, was written for adults rather than children, it explores many of the same simple practices I first shared with Jude: breath, sound, movement, and other nonvisual ways of finding calm.

If you have ever felt that meditation was not for you because you cannot visualize, cannot quiet your mind, or simply do not know where to begin, this book was written with you in mind.

The tools we teach children often begin with the ones we are learning to use ourselves.

Learn more about Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed here.

The Manson family murders are among the most notorious crimes in United States history and are known around the world. Media coverage of the slaughters has spawned an industrial complex morphing into its own separate genre for nearly sixty years.

On July 22, 2026, yet another Manson film was produced and distributed globally by Hulu, Disney+ and Smuggler Entertainment. It’s created quite a buzz on the internet, legacy news, and was showcased on a six-story electronic billboard on Sunset Boulevard. It reads: MY GRANDFATHER CHARLES MANSON...Discover a New Side to His Dark Side.

For some this might be interesting, even titillating. But for our family, this is yet another reminder that our personal family tragedy is treated as cotton candy entertainment for the masses. Jay Sebring, a revolutionary Hollywood figure until his untimely demise at the hands of the Manson family, is our flesh and blood. My uncle to be precise.

Our family has attended dozens of parole hearings for over two decades to speak for Jay and all the victims who remain silent in their graves… and in unified support of all the victims’ families in an ongoing fight for justice.

Sometime in the early months of 2024 I was contacted by filmmaker Alexandra “Allie” Orton requesting an interview for a documentary she was producing related to Charles Manson. Alexandra was respectful and I politely declined the interview expressing the realities that Manson-centric narratives perpetually exploit the victims, are painful to victims’ families, and create pernicious cultural repercussions.

Ms. Orton informed me her project was different in that the documentary involves an entirely unique story and that the victims would be treated with unprecedented regard. I reminded Alexandra that any story involving the Manson murders, with its focus on the killers and their crimes, is sensational and exploitative in its very nature.

“Until the victims are revealed in their true human dimension, all Manson narratives are parasitical cash grabs,” I said. I went on to inform her that the victims, our flesh and blood, are treated as insignificant props in the mass peddling of their own slaughters.

We discussed a few other things and eventually Ms. Orton shared that her project involved a young woman who recently learned Manson was her grandfather through a DNA test. She added it would follow her journey discovering and processing this new information.

Again, I reiterated the project seemed Manson-centric and that the victims will ultimately be disregarded (“… whether you believe so or not”). We politely signed off and I agreed that she could contact me in the future if she liked.

On August 8, 2024, I delivered a victim impact statement (on behalf of Gary Hinman’s family as a family representative) at Manson killer Bruce Davis’s parole hearing. Less than two days before the hearing the Hinman family was informed “media attendance” was approved. I assumed this would be a reporter.

I recall at the beginning of the hearing there was some confusion as to who the media representative was and precisely what her capacity was since the media person originally granted approval was a man named Eric Cook with Smuggler Entertainment. With prodding from the commissioners, it appeared that Sophia Arguelles was swapped in for Eric Cook. No further information was provided. The commissioners paused the hearing to determine if the switch from Mr. Cook to Ms. Arguelles was appropriate.

This was an unusual occurrence that I had never experienced in any other hearing before. I jotted down their names and production company on my prepared impact statement, along with additional notes throughout the hearing as I always do.

When the parole hearing was reconvened, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation determined Sophia Arguelles of Smuggler Entertainment may observe. The hearing resumed and continued as planned.

The next morning I began to wonder if Sophia and Smuggler were involved with Alexandra Orton’s documentary.

I emailed her and she responded with the following:

Hi Anthony,

Yes, Sophia is the filmmaker I mentioned to you, who recently discovered that Manson is her grandfather. Eric is a producer who helped her request access to yesterday’s parole hearing, and Smuggler is the production company involved. (I’d have to refresh myself on what info I sent to you and what I sent to Kay, but they’re a production company with a documentary wing, and their producers have made the Lionel Messi docs for Apple Plus, the Oscar doc Free Solo, etc.) Sophia wanted to attend yesterday’s hearing so that she could listen to the victims’ impact statements that you and others gave. It’s my understanding she just listened to the hearing as an observer. She was the only person granted access, so I did not hear any of the content myself. I haven’t had a chance to speak with her in depth since the hearing, but she spoke to me briefly yesterday and she shared how moved she was by all of your statements. She actually asked me to drop you a note to thank you for your words. She said she was very impressed by your statement, and she hopes you are well. Sophia mentioned that she came away from yesterday with a much deeper appreciation for the toll the parole hearings must take on all of you.

Allie

I spoke with members of Gary Hinman’s family and, naturally, we were disturbed and upset. We then expressed these concerns to the CDCR. I then requested a transcript of the entire Davis hearing. Upon its arrival I noticed the transcript was labeled “Corrected” and that there was no transcription regarding the interaction involving the Cook/Arguelles confusion. This struck me odd as our families go through a rigorous vetting process and strict fifteen-day deadline to request attendance.

I didn’t give it much additional thought until last week when I viewed the trailer for MY GRANDFATHER CHARLES MANSON. The concerns I originally expressed to the film’s co-director Alexandra Orton regarding exploitation, sensationalism, and victim disregard appear to be prophetic. I say “appear” since I have not seen the documentary, nor do I plan to. But the predictable cash grab, self-promotion, and insatiable bottom-feeding frenzy remain entrenched in the Manson murder industrial complex although the narratives bud and fuse upon demand- “Hollywood Babylon... DA Hero Complex... Helter Skelter... Manson’s Not Such A Bad Guy, He’s Just Misunderstood... CIA Deep state... Conspiracy........”

Now with MY GRANDFATHER CHARLES MANSON, the twist is “nature vs. nurture” and “transgenerational trauma.” Thus the adage, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

Well, here are a few facts to name a few:

• Being stabbed with a butcher knife and carving fork over two dozen times while your wife is stabbed to death in the next room over forty-five times

• Butchering a full-term pregnant woman while her unborn child slowly suffocates for 20 minutes in her womb

• Slicing an innocent man’s face in half with a machete

• Shooting a man in the abdomen in hopes of killing him

• Cowardly tying up a loving couple on peaceful Sunday night and knowing they will butchered like lambs to the slaughter

• Killing an innocent man with four other cowards using blunt objects and knives like a pack of jackals.

TALK ABOUT TRANS-GENERATIONAL TRAUMA.

But there’s money to be had! And spotlights to bask in!

Before the release of the documentary, Sophia Arguelles changed her last name to MADDOX, which is Charles Manson’s last name on his birth certificate. The name change is quite baffling, especially since Sophia describes being “devastated” and “sobbing” after learning Charles Manson was her grandfather. She reiterated the devastation and sobbing fits during her promotional tour. Suspension of disbelief is in order here. Again, “Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.”

So, Sophia Arguelles Maddox, Alexandra Orton, Smuggler (apt) Entertainment (apt again), Hulu, and Disney+ all want their piece of the Manson pie. Laughing all the way to the bank. And not just figuratively, but literally.

The other night a friend sent me a clip from a Manson podcast (The Spahn Ranch Channel 2011 on YouTube) in which the host revealed that Sophia Arguelles and her father Daniel attended an event called “Family Jams Day 6” on August 12, 2023. It’s an annual event in which Manson groupies, supporters, and apologists get together for the sole purpose to party on the “anniversary” of the killings. There’s food, beer, even live music. Now, I guess it’s “Don’t let the facts – or even killing sprees – get in the way of a good time.”

There’s pictures and videos memorializing the celebration. Daniel Arguelles is up on stage singing with the band while Sophia is smiling and laughing with the fans. Evidently there were even autographs dispensed.

Hey Sophia, Allie, Smuggler, Hulu, Disney+… is it too late to put that footage in your film?

And while the profiteers plunder their spoils, I ask, “At what cost? And to whom?”

Shame.

For those of us who loved... who love... who are haunted... who fight for our flesh and blood... who fight for justice – this is what matters most: Gary Hinman, Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Sharon Tate, her unborn child, Rosemary LaBianca, Leno Labianca, and Donald Shea.

They for us, remain always, the facts…

Anthony DiMaria is a director and the co-author of Jay Sebring: Cutting to the Truth

Some crimes become part of a place.

They settle into local memory, passed down through families, whispered about in old barns, and tied forever to a stretch of land where something terrible once happened. Over time, fact and legend begin to blur—but the questions remain.

The Saxtown murders are one of those cases.

More than a century later, the story still carries the same unsettling weight: a family lost, a community changed, and a mystery that never found its answer.

THE AX IN THE SAX

The Stelzriede family immigrated to Southern Illinois, like many others, from Germany. They settled in a small rural track of land known as Saxtown, about five miles south of what is now Millstadt, Illinois, which remains steeped in German heritage today.

On March 20, 1874, Benjamin Schneider needed to pick up some potato seeds that he had purchased from the Stelzriede family. At 5 p.m., he ventured to his neighbor’s small log cabin home, a one story home facing east, set back from the road. The family farm was a large one, indicating the Stelzreides were better off than most. Schneider noticed the Stelzriede land was quiet. Nobody was bustling around doing the family chores. The horses and cattle had not been watered or fed. Schneider knocked on the front door. There was no answer. He looked in the windows. Nothing. Schneider went back to the front door and walked inside. What he found was the aftermath of a crime so gruesome, it would eventually captivate the entire nation.

70 year old Carl Stelzriede was lying in a large pool of blood, throat cut from ear to ear, his body nearly decapitated. In the next room was his 35 year-old son Frederich, who the family called “Fritz.” His skull was crushed and his throat slashed. His fingers had been cut off, and were next to his body. Next to him was his 28-year-old wife Anna and their children, three-year-old Karl, and eight-month-old Anna. All had been bludgeoned to death, believed to be by an ax.

Word of the Saxtown murders blared on the front page of the New York Times. The nearby Belleville Advocate joined the chorus. “An investigation revealed a scene that would make the stoutest heart quail,” the paper screamed.

There was one survivor to the carnage of Saxtown, the family dog, Monk. He was found lying on the floor, quietly keeping watch over the bodies. Monk was said to be vicious toward strangers, so police believed the murderer was someone who was friends with the family.

Two men would be charged with the murders. Both were found not guilty. Eight more suspects would eventually be arrested. All ended up being released. The entire tiny town was under suspicion.

The barn that hosted the horses and cattle on that gruesome night still stands tall, with hatchet marks still visible in the wood. In 1986, Randy Eckert, who lives nearby, bought the land and built a small house on the cabin site. Eckert, who was raised in Millstadt, was always intrigued by the legend of Saxtown.

“I always wanted to buy that farm,” Eckert said. “In fact, I decided to live in the house for a couple of years.”

That did not last long. Every year around the anniversary of the killings, Eckert said he and his wife noticed strange things happening. That was enough for Eckert, who moved out and has since decided to rent the home out. For some reason, the renters don’t stay long. Eckert said he’s probably had a dozen people move out. Many of them reported strange occurrences, always around the anniversary of the killings.

The Saxtown murders are one of the haunting Midwestern cases explored in Bob Cyphers’s 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed: Murder and Mayhem in the Midwest.

Drawing on decades of journalistic experience, Cyphers revisits murders, disappearances, and mysteries that continue to trouble families and communities long after the headlines have faded. With meticulous research and compassion for the victims, he looks beyond the evidence to the human lives forever altered by each crime.

Discover the forgotten cases, unanswered questions, and chilling stories that refuse to remain buried.

Order 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed from Genius Books

From the college classroom to the golden era of detective fiction

For many readers, the golden age of mystery begins with names like Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and other celebrated writers of the 1920s and 1930s.

But long before Hercule Poirot gathered suspects in a drawing room, another remarkable era of detective fiction was already underway.

It began with Sherlock Holmes.

In The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finder’s List, author Michael Cohen takes readers beyond Baker Street and into the world of detectives, rogues, scientists, journalists, occult investigators, and crime-solving women who followed in Holmes’s influential footsteps.

Before turning his attention to personal essays and mystery fiction, Michael spent much of his working life in the classroom.

From Tucson to the Literary Life

Michael grew up in Tucson and attended the University of Arizona. His career later took him to New Orleans and western Kentucky, where he taught college English.

After retiring from teaching, he began publishing personal essays. His collections include A Place to Read, published in 2014, and And Other Essays, published in 2020.

He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, and in the Tucson Mountains.

Exploring Mystery Fiction

The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries is Michael’s second book on mystery fiction.

His first, Murder Most Fair: The Appeal of Mystery Fiction, was published in 2000. His newest book turns to a particularly rich period in mystery history: the years between the publication of the first Sherlock Holmes short story in 1891 and the end of World War I.

This was an era in which detective fiction flourished in magazines and newspapers. Writers saw the extraordinary success of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and began creating investigators of their own.

Some imitated Holmes.

Some exaggerated one of his most recognizable qualities.

Others created detectives who were deliberately unlike him.

The result was a wide variety of characters and approaches to crime fiction, many of which are far less familiar to modern readers.

Beyond Baker Street

Michael’s book begins by examining the qualities that helped make Sherlock Holmes such a literary phenomenon.

Holmes was not simply intelligent. His methods, personality, dramatic deductions, relationship with Watson, and ability to impose order on complicated situations all contributed to his appeal.

Michael is also interested in what happened after Holmes became a success.

What did other writers do with the detective-story conventions Conan Doyle had popularized?

Some created ordinary investigators and removed many of Holmes’s eccentricities. Others took a single Holmesian trait—his skill with disguise, his knowledge of crime, his discretion, or his contempt for the police—and pushed it in a more exaggerated direction.

Some writers responded by creating bumbling detectives who seemed to be Holmes’s opposite.

Others distinguished their characters from Holmes in a more immediate way: they made the detective a woman.

The Women Who Solved Crime

One of the book’s chapters introduces readers to the many female detectives and crime solvers who appeared during this period.

Among them are agency detectives, amateur investigators, journalists, policewomen, and young women who uncover secrets while the people around them underestimate their abilities.

Characters such as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene, Lois Cayley, Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, Judith Lee, Madelyn Mack, and Violet Strange show the range of women investigators appearing in mystery fiction well before many of the genre’s later, better-known female sleuths.

Their stories also offer insight into the way early mystery fiction engaged with questions of gender, work, class, and social expectations.

Scientists, Rogues, and Occult Investigators

The detectives in Michael’s book are not limited to private investigators and police officers.

Some are doctors or scientists who use early forms of forensic investigation. Others are specialists whose knowledge of jewelry, railways, journalism, medicine, or another field helps them notice what an ordinary investigator might miss.

There are also blind detectives, armchair detectives, righteous backwoodsmen, elegant rogues, criminal masterminds, and investigators who confront—or sometimes expose—the supernatural.

The occult detectives featured in the book investigate ghosts, psychic phenomena, haunted houses, and strange events that appear to resist ordinary explanation.

At the other end of the moral spectrum are the rogues: criminals who sometimes pose as detectives, prey upon other wrongdoers, or occupy a more complicated place between villain and hero.

Together, these characters reveal how varied and inventive early detective fiction could be.

A Golden Era of Short-Story Mystery

The decades following Holmes’s rise were shaped in part by changes in publishing.

Magazines increasingly favored short stories over serialized novels, creating new opportunities for writers to develop recurring characters. Detective fiction was especially well suited to the form: each new issue could offer readers another crime, another set of clues, and another solution.

This period lasted for roughly twenty-five years, until World War I brought changes to publishing and to the mystery genre itself. Magazine fiction declined, longer forms became more dominant, and a new era of detective fiction began to emerge.

Many of the writers and characters from the earlier period became less familiar to general readers.

Michael’s book helps guide readers back to them.

Rather than attempting to catalogue every detective story from the era, he focuses on notable examples and provides information that can help readers locate many of the works he discusses. A number of these stories are now in the public domain and available through online archives or modern reprints.

For Readers Who Thought They Knew the Mystery Genre

Sherlock Holmes may stand at the center of this story, but The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries makes clear that he was never standing there alone.

Around him was an entire world of fictional investigators: women and men, professionals and amateurs, scientists and mystics, heroes and rogues.

Some rivaled Holmes.

Some imitated him.

Some reacted against him.

And some helped take detective fiction in entirely new directions.

For readers who love Sherlock Holmes, literary history, classic mysteries, or the discovery of lesser-known characters, Michael Cohen’s book offers a broad and engaging look at an important era in crime fiction.

Discover The Golden Era of Sherlock Holmes and His Contemporaries: A Mystery Guide and Finder’s List by Michael Cohen, available from Genius Book Publishing.

We are thrilled to share that five Genius Books titles received honors in the 2026 Public Safety Writers Association Writing Competition!

From gripping fiction and frontier justice to real-life undercover operations and the science of detecting deception, these books showcase the talent, dedication, and range of the authors we are proud to publish.

Please join us in celebrating this year’s winners—and several Genius Books authors whose work has been recognized by the competition in previous years.

2026 Award Winners

Jim Christ

Right There in Black and White

Bronze Medallion — Thriller

When Kendi Liston discovers a woman’s body near his apartment building, he faces an impossible choice: walk away or report what he has found and risk becoming a suspect himself.

His decision draws him into an investigation shaped by prejudice, conflicting assumptions, and escalating danger. As officers Regan and Crowe approach the case from very different perspectives, evidence and witness accounts begin challenging everyone’s ideas about guilt, innocence, and identity.

Right There in Black and White is a suspenseful and emotionally layered exploration of truth, perception, and the consequences of doing what is right in a world where nothing is as simple as it first appears.

Purchase Right There in Black and White

Jim Christ

Ways to Be Wicked

Silver Medallion — Suspense

Seventeen-year-old Usaré García slips away from her high school dance and is later found murdered across campus.

School administrator Enrique Tavish becomes determined to uncover what happened, but his search for answers pulls him into a dangerous world of street gangs, family threats, racial tensions, deception, and secrets of his own.

As Tavish’s unofficial investigation moves beyond the limits of police protocol, his pursuit of justice places both him and his family directly in the path of those willing to do anything to keep the truth hidden.

Purchase Ways to Be Wicked

Michael A. Black

Retribution Trail

Bronze Medallion — Suspense

A violent prison break sends three desperate fugitives racing across the Indian Territory, led by a former Confederate colonel carrying dangerous ambitions and old grudges.

Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves and the Lighthorse lawmen follow a growing trail of violence involving stolen gold, unrest, and a scheme that threatens far more than a single frontier settlement.

Set against a landscape where alliances shift quickly and justice is rarely straightforward, Retribution Trail follows Reeves into a conflict shaped by vengeance, loyalty, and the relentless pursuit of what is right.

Purchase Retribution Trail

Uncover the Truth

Silver Medallion — Non-fiction

Have you ever listened to someone speak and sensed that something was not quite right?

Drawing from more than thirty years in law enforcement, Mike Ruggiero teaches readers how changes in posture, eye contact, language, and behavior can offer valuable clues about whether someone is being truthful, withholding information, or attempting to deceive.

Using examples from major investigations and well-known public cases, Uncover the Truth makes the principles of detecting deception understandable and useful for law-enforcement professionals and anyone interested in human behavior.

Purchase Uncover the Truth

William Soldato

The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy: Not Exactly a Prequel

Bronze Medallion — Non-fiction

Billy the Liquor Guy spent twelve years working undercover for New York’s Petroleum, Alcohol, and Tobacco Bureau—a career filled with dangerous operations, criminal takedowns, internal investigations, betrayal, political maneuvering, and lasting psychological consequences.

The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy reveals the story behind Soldato’s earlier book, Under Too Long. It explores who Billy was at the beginning of his undercover career and how years of stress, deception, danger, and institutional distrust changed him.

This candid account offers readers a look at the complicated reality of undercover work, far removed from the romanticized version often portrayed in movies and television.

Purchase The Making of Billy the Liquor Guy

Celebrating Our Previous Winners

The 2026 honorees join a growing list of Genius Books authors whose work has been recognized by the Public Safety Writers Association.

2025

FBI Files: The Profiler
Gold Medallion — Unpublished Non-fiction

Purchase FBI Files: The Profiler

2024

Dead End: Inside the Hunt for the I-70 Serial Killer
Second Place — Published Non-fiction

Purchase Dead End

Alexandra Kitty

Murder in a Sundown Town
Third Place — Published Non-fiction

Purchase Murder in a Sundown Town

Tony Reid

12/26/75
Honorable Mention — Published Non-fiction

Purchase 12/26/75

Jim Christ

Right There in Black and White
Third Place — Unpublished Fiction

Purchase Right There in Black and White

2023

William Soldato

Under Too Long
The Marilyn Meredith Award for Excellence in Writing — Non-fiction
First Place — Published Non-fiction

Purchase Under Too Long

The Crater Lake Murders
First Place — Unpublished Non-fiction

Purchase The Crater Lake Murders

David Dean

The Wisdom of Serpents
First Place — Published Anthology

Purchase The Wisdom of Serpents

2022

LaDonna Humphrey

The Girl I Never Knew
Second Place — Published Non-fiction

Purchase The Girl I Never Knew

Richard “Buz” Williams

Police Pranks, Jokes, and Other Stories Not Suitable for Children
Third Place — Published Non-fiction

Purchase Police Pranks, Jokes, and Other Stories Not Suitable for Children

Kill Your Characters
First Place — Unpublished Non-fiction

Purchase Kill Your Characters

David Dean

Tomorrow’s Dead
Second Place — Unpublished Anthology

Purchase Tomorrow’s Dead

Congratulations to all of these remarkable authors!

We are proud to see their work recognized and grateful for the knowledge, imagination, research, and lived experience they bring to their books. We hope you will join us in celebrating their achievements—and perhaps discover your next great read along the way.

View the complete Public Safety Writers Association winner announcement here.

They are not drawn to the safest road or the most comfortable future. They move toward the places where they believe they are needed, even when others struggle to understand the choice.

Michele Dinwiddie was one of those people.

Her compassion led her into a life very different from the one others had imagined for her—and into a story that would leave her family grieving, investigators searching, and a city confronting questions that extended far beyond a single crime.

“SHE WAS THE BEST OF US”

Michele Dinwiddie decided to volunteer with an agency called Volunteers in Service for America, or VISTA. It was a newly launched government organization, a domestic version of the Peace Corps. VISTA focused on volunteers fighting poverty in some of the nation’s poorest communities.

Michele was assigned to St. Louis, where urban decay and violent crime was growing by the day. Her parents did their best to talk her out of it. Grad school was waiting, they lobbied, a very good job would surely follow, VISTA did not pay anything besides bare expenses, and she was heading into an unknown and possibly very dangerous environment. Surely, she was capable of much more.

Michele would have none of it. VISTA provided her with $200 a month for living expenses. It was not much, but Michele did not care. She found used furniture. She refused financial help from her parents and friends. Her sister Pam remembered hearing Michele’s voice when she called home.

“She was so very proud of what she was doing,” Pam recalled. “She was making a real difference in people’s lives. People who really needed her help. She was thrilled.”

It was a brutally cold March, 1975 day. The temperature dipped to 17 degrees, with the wind whipping off the Mississippi River. When Michele did not report to work that morning, a worried co-worker went looking for her, and headed to her apartment at 3933 North 21st street, Apartment A, second floor. Inside was her body, dressed only with socks. Her throat was slashed and she had been stabbed twice in the chest and once in the abdomen. There was no forced entry, and nothing of significance was missing.

Soon, police had a suspect. An eighth grade boy named Danny Williams, who eventually admitted that he was there the night Michele was killed, but denied that he was the killer. Charges never came. But this story does not end here. Sadly, it only begins. As the years unfolded, Williams would come to be the prime suspect in numerous other St. Louis area murders.

Read Michele’s full story and discover the other unforgettable cases in 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed, available now from Genius Books.

After my husband died, I lived on autopilot for a long time.

I went through the motions of life; work, errands, routines without really being there. I was surviving more than living.

One afternoon, during my lunch break, I was walking to the bank. The crosswalk light turned green. I stepped off the curb, ready to cross.

And then I heard it.

A very loud, very clear:

“STOP.”

Startled, I froze.

A car flew through the intersection, followed immediately by a police car. Had I taken one more step, I would not be here writing this.

Shaken, I looked around to thank whoever had just saved my life.

But I was alone.

Completely alone.

At the time, I tried to explain it away. Maybe I imagined it. Maybe the police officer yelled something through a loudspeaker. Maybe there was some logical explanation I simply could not piece together.

But looking back, I know that isn’t what happened.

It all happened too fast. The officer could not have warned me in time. There was no one standing nearby. No obvious source for the voice.

But something stopped me.

For me, I have come to understand that moment as divine intervention. A moment when it simply was not my time, and something unseen stepped in.

That experience is only one of many moments of grace that have shaped my life. Some were dramatic. Others were quiet. Some arrived as warnings, dreams, signs, synchronicities, or encounters that could have been easy to dismiss.

And for a long time, I did dismiss them.

I shrugged them off. Minimized them. Tried to rationalize them away.

Now, I’m looking closer.

I’m currently working on an upcoming book called When the Light Breaks Through, a collection of real-life stories of grace, guidance, protection, signs, synchronicities, visitations, near-death experiences, and moments that seem to defy ordinary explanation.

Some of the stories are mine.

Many are being shared with me by others.

The heart of this book is simple: to gather true stories that remind us we are not as alone as we sometimes feel.

These stories do not have to be big, flashy, or impossible to explain. Some of the most powerful moments are the quiet ones. The whisper. The dream. The stranger who appears at exactly the right time. The sudden knowing. The sign that arrives when you most need it. The moment something shifts, and you know in your bones that there is more happening than coincidence.

Your story might include:

🌟 A sudden voice, warning, or inner knowing
🌟 A dream or visitation that brought comfort or clarity
🌟 A stranger who appeared at exactly the right moment
🌟 A sign from a loved one beyond the veil
🌟 A rescue or intervention that defied logic
🌟 A near-death experience or out-of-body moment
🌟 A medical event where survival itself felt miraculous
🌟 A synchronicity too meaningful to dismiss
🌟 A quiet moment of grace that changed how you see life

Some people call these experiences divine intervention.

Others call them synchronicity, guidance, protection, spirit, grace, or love reaching through.

I have come to think of them as moments when the light breaks through.

Several stories have already been entrusted to me, and I hold that trust with deep gratitude. My hope is that this book becomes a gathering place for these real moments — the ones many of us carry quietly, sometimes for years, wondering what to do with them or whether anyone else would understand.

If you have experienced something like this, or know someone who has, I would be honored to hear your story and possibly include it in When the Light Breaks Through.

You are welcome to message me on Substack or email me directly at:

mouseandmeditation@gmail.com

If this invitation brings someone to mind, please pass it along.

Because even now, even here, the light still breaks through.

Content note: This post and the book it discusses address childhood sexual abuse, trauma, addiction, and suicide.

For decades, Paul Levey carried a truth that was never his burden—or his shame—to hold.

At twelve years old, Paul was introduced to Gerald Ridsdale, a Catholic priest whom his family had been taught to trust. That trust was deliberately exploited. Paul was groomed, abused, and eventually sent to live with Ridsdale in the presbytery, where the abuse continued.

But The Boy in the Presbytery is not the story of the man who harmed him.

It is Paul’s story.

Written by journalist Monique Patterson, the book follows Paul’s life through the years of silence that followed, the devastating effects of trauma, and his long fight to speak openly about what was done to him. It also examines the institutional decisions that allowed Ridsdale to remain in positions of trust even after church leaders had received complaints and warnings about his behavior.

When Paul finally spoke, telling the truth brought consequences of its own. At one point, a change in Victorian law meant that survivors could not be publicly identified—even when they wanted their names and stories known—without first seeking permission from the court. With support from the #LetUsSpeak campaign, Paul fought for and won the right to tell his own story in his own name.

Ridsdale died in prison on February 18, 2025. But his death did not erase the trauma endured by Paul and the many other children he abused. Nor did it end the questions surrounding the institutions that failed to protect them. Paul continues to speak because silence protected the wrong people for far too long.

This is a painful and confronting book. It contains graphic descriptions of childhood sexual abuse and may not be suitable for every reader. But it is also an account of courage: the courage required to survive, to reclaim one’s name, and to insist that the truth be heard.

Paul Levey was once known publicly only as “the boy in the presbytery.”

Today, he speaks for himself.

The Boy in the Presbytery: Paul Levey’s Brave Battle to End the Silence, by Monique Patterson, is now available from Genius Book Publishing.

Read Paul’s story and learn more about the book through the link below.

Explore The Boy in the Presbytery and other carefully told true crime stories from Genius Book Publishing.

On June 30, 1999, a woman driving past a cornfield near West Alton, Missouri, noticed something in the remote field.

It was the body of a man.

He had been dead for days.

His name was Ricky McCormick, a 41-year-old Black man from Missouri whose life, at first glance, seemed unlikely to draw national attention. He had little money. He could not read or write well. He had never married, though he had children. He had served time in prison. He was often unemployed, living partly on disability, and sometimes stayed with his elderly mother.

No one had reported him missing.

The medical examiner ruled his death “undetermined,” and for a while, it looked as if Ricky McCormick might become exactly what so many forgotten people become after death: a name in a file, a body in a field, a question no one pressed too hard to answer.

But tucked inside the pocket of his blue jeans were two pages of strange, coded notes.

And those notes changed everything.

The FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit studied them. Computers searched for patterns. Experts tried to crack them. The same unit known for breaking wartime codes and solving nearly all the encrypted cases that crossed its desk could not solve this one.

Some dismissed the notes as nonsense.

The FBI did not.

“This is not that case,” one FBI analyst said of the theory that the pages were merely gibberish.

Which leaves the question that still haunts the case:

How did a man who could barely read or write end up carrying a code that stumped the FBI?

THE DEAD MAN’S RIDDLE

On June 30, 1999, a woman driving past a cornfield near West Alton, Missouri discovered the body of a poor black man lying dead in the remote field, dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt. A man no one seemed to care about as his body lay decomposed for three days. A high school dropout who never married but had four children. A convicted felon served a year in prison for statutory rape. A father of four children who was never married. A man who was rarely employed and on disability. A man who could not read or write and didn’t own a car. A man still living occasionally at home with his elderly mother. A man who nobody reported missing. The Medical Examiner ruled the death “undetermined.” And there the story appeared to end, just another statistic of a forgotten man of little means.

Yet this obscure man, long forgotten after his death, was about to become an internet sensation. Meet 41 year old Ricky McCormick. Some 30 lines of cryptic notes were found in McCormick’s blue jeans. Cryptic notes that the FBI’s Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit (CRRU) could not solve, quite a statement since they cracked the codes of Nazi spies during World War II, and successfully solve more than 99 percent of such coded cases.

But not this one.

“Nobody can figure out what any of these codes mean,” said a member of the St. Charles County Sheriff’s Department. “It reads like somebody writing a private diary.”

Or something like that.

(MND MKNE M RSE-N-S-M-KNARE) (ACSM) TFRNE NPINSE NPBSE RCB RNSE NPRSE INC PRSE N MRSE OPRE HLD WLD NCBE (TFXLF TCXLF NCBE) AL-PR PPI T XLY PPIY NCBE MGKSE WLD RCB RNSE PRSE WLD RCB RNSE NT SSNE NTKSE-CRSLE-CITRSE WLD NCBE AL WLD NCBE TSME LRSE RLSE U R GLSNE AS N WLD NCBE (NOPFSE NLSRE NCBE) NTE G D DMN SENCURE RCBRNE (TENE TFRNE NCBRTSE NCBE INC) (FLRSE PRSE ON DE 71 NCBE) (CDNSE PRSE ON SFE 74 NCBE) (PR+SE PRSE ON REDE 75 NCBE) (TF NRCMSP SOLE MRDE LUSE TOTE WLD N WLD NCBE) (194 WLD’S NCBE) (TRFXL). ALPNTE GLSE – SE ER+E VLSE MTSE-CTSE-WSE-FRTSE PNRTRSE ONDRSE WLD NCBE N WLD XLRCMSP NE WLD S TS MEXL DULMT 6 TUNSE NCBEXC (MUNSARSTEN MU NARSE) KLSE-LRSTE-TRSE-TRSE-MKSEN-MRSE (SAEG NSE SE N MRSE) NMNRCBRNSEP+E 2PTEWSRCBKNSE 26 MLSE 74 SPRKSE 29KCNOS OLE 175 RTRSE 35 SLE CLGSE UUNUTKEDKRSE PSESHLE 651 MTCSE HTLSE NCUTC TRS NMRE 99.84.52 UNEPLSENCRSEAOLTSENSKSENRSE NSREONSE PUTSEWLD NCBE (3 XORL) DNMSE NRSE 1N2 NTRLERC BRNSE NTSRCRSNE LSPNSE N GSPSE MKSE RBSE NEBE AU XL ‘R HM CRE N MRE NCBE 1/2 MUNDDLSE D-W-M-4 HPL XDRLX

For the McCormick notes, the FBI used computers and state of the art software to look for patterns. Some 15 to 20 experts were brought in to try tocrack the code. No luck.

“Standard routes of cryptanalysis seem to have hit brick walls,” the FBI said.

And nobody in his family knew what the mystery notes meant. And to believe that McCormick was the author is to believe that a semi-literate man who could barely spell his name has stumped the FBI with 30 lines of coded text. Many people look at the notes and laugh, thinking they mean nothing.

“We look at a lot of things that are gibberish, arbitrary strikes on a keyboard,” Dan Olson of the FBI said. “This is not that case.”

“You are talking about a mentally ill man having complex ciphers in his possession,” a detective close to the case told me. “How does that happen?”

Ricky McCormick’s strange and unsettling case is one of the mysteries explored in Bob Cyphers’ 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed, a true crime collection that digs into murders, disappearances, and unsolved cases from the Midwest with a journalist’s eye and a deep respect for the people left behind.

For readers who are drawn to cold cases, unanswered questions, and the human stories behind the headlines, this is one to add to your shelf.

When many people hear the word meditation, they picture something very specific.

Someone sitting cross-legged. Eyes closed. Hands resting neatly on their knees. A silent room. A still body. Maybe a peaceful beach, a glowing light, or a mountain stream being visualized in the mind.

That version of meditation can be beautiful for some people. But it is not the only version.

And when it comes to children, it is often not the most realistic place to begin.

Children are not usually designed for long stretches of stillness and silence. Many of them wiggle. They hum. They ask questions. They get distracted. They need movement, touch, rhythm, play, and connection. That does not mean they cannot benefit from meditation. It simply means we may need to expand what we think meditation is supposed to look like.

I was reminded of this recently on a flight home from Mexico.

I sat next to a young woman who was on her way to work as a camp counselor for the summer. We started talking, and somehow the subject of meditation came up. I told her I had written a book about meditation and that I had been teaching my 9-year-old some simple breathing techniques for stress, overwhelm, and fear.

That led her to tell me about a little girl she had once cared for at camp.

The child was timid and withdrawn. She did not voluntarily join activities or play easily with the other children. At night, she was often scared. Her stomach hurt. She had nightmares. At the time, the counselor simply tried to soothe her fear and help with the physical symptoms. Looking back, though, she wondered if the little girl may have been struggling with anxiety.

Then she said something that stayed with me.

Even if she had recognized it as anxiety at the time, she would not have known what to do.

That conversation made me think about how often adults want to help children through big emotions, but do not always have simple tools to offer them. We may comfort them, distract them, reassure them, or try to reason with them. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it does not.

But what if children were also taught how to return to their own breath?

Not in a heavy, formal, overly serious way, but as something gentle, playful, and always available. Because children already have natural meditative moments.

They watch bugs.

They pet animals.

They listen to rain.

They color.

They sway.

They hum.

They collect rocks.

They notice clouds.

They feel grass under their feet.

They cuddle a stuffed animal.

Meditation for children is not about teaching them something completely new. Sometimes it is about helping them recognize the quiet, grounding moments they are already drawn to.

A child lying on the floor with a stuffed animal on their belly, watching it rise and fall with each breath, is practicing awareness.

A child slowly tracing their fingers along the edge of a leaf is practicing presence.

A child listening to rain at bedtime is experiencing a mindful moment.

A child taking one deep breath before answering, crying, yelling, or shutting down is learning that there can be a pause between feeling and reacting.

That pause matters.

Children, like adults, experience stress, frustration, sadness, fear, embarrassment, overstimulation, disappointment, and anger. They do not always have the words for those feelings. They do not always understand what is happening inside their bodies. Big emotions can feel frightening when no one has taught them how to sit with what they feel.

Simple breathing practices can give children a calm place to land. Not as a way to shut emotions down, and not as a way to force them to be quiet.

Not as a replacement for comfort, connection, therapy, medical care, or adult support when those things are needed.

But as one small tool in their emotional toolbox.

And the breath is a particularly powerful tool because it is always with them.

A parent, grandparent, teacher, counselor, or caregiver cannot be beside a child every moment of the day. But the child’s breath is there before a test, after a nightmare, during conflict, in a new environment, or when the world simply feels too loud.

A simple practice to try: Stuffed Animal Breathing

Have the child lie down and place a favorite stuffed animal on their belly. Instead of making it serious, make it playful.

You might say, “Let’s give Teddy a ride on your belly,” and then invite the child to breathe slowly enough that the stuffed animal gently rises and falls.

That is it.

No perfect posture.

No forced silence.

No need to visualize anything.

No pressure to meditate for twenty minutes.

Even one or two minutes can help a child begin to notice their body, their breath, and the possibility of softening when they feel tense or overwhelmed.

Different children will connect with different practices, just like adults do. Some need quiet. Some need movement. Some need sound. Some need touch. Some need imagination. Some need a candle, a blanket, a stuffed animal, a song, a walk, or a hand to hold.

And some simply need a calm adult sitting nearby, showing them through presence that they are safe.

That presence can be its own kind of meditation. Meditation does not have to look one specific way to be meaningful. For a child, it might look like breathing with a teddy bear.

And sometimes, that is enough.

And for the adults, if meditation has ever felt difficult, awkward, or inaccessible to you, Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed offers a gentle, practical approach for busy minds, non-visualizers, and anyone who needs meditation to feel a little more human.

It is available now from Genius Book Publishing.

Will Johns was born into the kind of music history most of us only read about. The son of legendary producer Andy Johns and nephew of Glyn Johns, Will grew up close to names like Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Eric Clapton, and Cream.

But Bluesdaddy is not a glossy backstage tour or a simple story about rock-and-roll royalty.

It is the story of a boy growing up in the shadow of greatness, a guitarist trying to find his own voice, and a man learning that proximity to legends does not protect you from pain, chaos, addiction, loss, or the hard work of becoming yourself.

With humor, honesty, and the grit of someone who has lived through the noise, Will Johns tells a story about music, family, survival, and the blues as both inheritance and rescue.

Bluesdaddy is available for preorder now from Genius Book Publishing and is scheduled for release on September 1, 2026.

Will Johns was born close to rock-and-roll royalty. That did not make life easy. It made the ghosts louder.

The son of legendary producer Andy Johns and nephew of Glyn Johns, Will grew up in the orbit of Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, George Harrison, Pattie Boyd, Eric Clapton, Cream, and the complicated mythology of modern music. He saw the rooms most fans only imagine. He knew the people behind the records. He inherited stories, wounds, expectations, and a name already tangled in history.

But Bluesdaddy is not a backstage victory lap. It is the story of a boy searching for steadiness, a guitarist searching for his own sound, and a man learning that being near greatness does not save you. The blues does.

With humor, bite, and disarming honesty, Johns traces a life of unlikely refuge, family chaos, musical apprenticeship, road-warrior absurdity, addiction’s shadow, love, loss, near-misses, and moments so surreal they could only happen in rock and roll. He plays with heroes, loses opportunities, survives collapses, sells treasured guitars, and keeps chasing the sound that tells the truth.

When Buddy Guy finally hears him play and says, “Now that’s what you call the blues,” the moment lands not as celebrity approval but as something deeper: recognition earned the hard way.

Bluesdaddy is the story of a man born into noise, raised on chaos, and saved by the blues.

If you love music memoirs, rock-and-roll history, or stories about finding your own voice after being born into someone else’s legend, this is one to add to your list.

Preorder Bluesdaddy today through Genius Book Publishing.

Order Chicago Justice today and dive into Dave Case’s fast-paced Macbeth thriller, a story of revenge, corruption, and one Chicago cop determined to bring a dangerous criminal back to justice.

Some books are written because a story needs to be told. Others are written because silence has gone on too long.

Simple, Safe & Secret is Eve Carson’s deeply researched account of the disappearance and murder of Joan Webster, a 25-year-old Harvard graduate student whose case has remained tangled in unanswered questions, shifting narratives, and a justice system that, according to Carson, failed the very person it was meant to protect.

As Joan’s sister-in-law, Eve brings both personal connection and determined investigation to this story. Her work is not only about what happened to Joan, but about the darker questions surrounding the investigation, the prosecution, and the fight for truth that continues decades later.

Eve Carson was born and raised in Danville, Illinois, and grew up in a close-knit family that became a source of strength through life’s challenges. She graduated from Purdue University with a degree in Industrial Management and Economics and began her career working for General Motors and IBM.

Eve married Steve Webster, Joan Webster’s brother, in 1980, and was the only non-blood relative in the immediate family when Joan disappeared. Since then, she has spent years researching, writing, and speaking about Joan’s case. Her work has appeared in publications including Crime Magazine, The Journal of Forensic Research, The Journal of Forensic and Crime Investigation, Medium, and Unsolved Magazine. She has also presented aspects of the case at forensic research conferences and appeared on programs including The Whistleblower.

Today, Eve lives in the Midwest, where she continues her writing, consulting work, and her ongoing pursuit of justice for Joan.

If you’re drawn to true crime stories that go beyond the headline and ask harder questions about evidence, accountability, and justice, Simple, Safe & Secret is a powerful and unsettling read.

Order your copy of Simple, Safe & Secret today and learn more about Eve Carson’s fight to uncover the truth behind Joan Webster’s case.

I think a lot of people are not actually looking for meditation. Not at first, anyway.

I don’t believe most people come to meditation because they dream of becoming perfectly calm, spiritually enlightened, or capable of sitting cross-legged in silence for an hour while thinking absolutely nothing.

I think most of us come to it because we’re overwhelmed. Because our minds won’t stop racing. Because we’re exhausted.

Because we’re anxious, angry, grieving, burned out, disconnected, emotionally reactive, or quietly falling apart inside while trying to look functional on the outside.

That’s certainly what brought me to it.

When I first started trying to meditate, I thought I was terrible at it. Every guided meditation seemed to involve “visualizing the light” or “seeing the peaceful garden,” and I couldn’t do any of it.

I didn’t yet know I had aphantasia, the inability to mentally visualize images, so I genuinely thought I was failing at something everyone else seemed to naturally understand.

On top of that, I was carrying around a tremendous amount of anxiety, anger, and emotional overwhelm. Sitting quietly with my thoughts didn’t feel peaceful. It felt impossible.

So for a while, I resisted. I assumed meditation just wasn’t for people like me.

But something in me kept nudging me back toward it. And slowly, I began realizing that meditation wasn’t actually about “clearing my mind” at all.

It was about noticing. Noticing when my thoughts started spiraling, when my body tightened. Noticing when I was about to react instead of respond. Noticing that I didn’t have to follow every fearful, angry, or anxious thought that appeared.

That changed everything for me.

One of the biggest misconceptions about meditation is that the goal is to stop thinking.

It isn’t.

Thoughts will come. The mind will wander. You’ll remember your grocery list halfway through breathing. You’ll replay an awkward conversation from six years ago. You’ll wonder if you’re doing it wrong.

That’s normal.

Meditation is simply the practice of noticing when your attention drifts and gently bringing it back.

That’s it.

That moment of returning? That is the practice.

And strangely enough, once I stopped trying to become “good” at meditation, it actually started helping me.

I remember one moment very clearly. I could feel myself building toward one of those emotional explosions where your heart pounds, your jaw clenches, and you can already feel the regret forming before the words even leave your mouth.

But this time, something different happened.

Instead of reacting immediately, I paused.

I stepped away. I breathed. I gave myself a moment.

Nothing magical happened in that moment. My problems didn’t disappear. I didn’t suddenly become enlightened. But I was able to return calmer, kinder, and more grounded.

And for the first time, I realized meditation wasn’t changing me into someone else. It was helping me become more like myself underneath all the noise.

That’s why I continue to meditate now. Not because I’m trying to become perfectly peaceful all the time. Not because I never struggle. Not because my mind suddenly became quiet.

I meditate because life is loud, it can feel heavy at times, and sometimes we need a place to set things down for a few minutes.

Sometimes we need one small pause between ourselves and the chaos. One breath before reacting. One moment where we stop feeling like we’re failing at being human.

That’s what meditation really is.

Not escaping life. Just learning how to return to ourselves inside of it.

I actually wrote an entire chapter in my book Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed about this idea. What meditation really is, why so many people think they’re “bad” at it, and why it may matter far more than we realize.

And if you’ve ever thought:

“I can’t meditate.”

“My brain is too busy.”

“I’m doing it wrong.”

You may be exactly the kind of person meditation was made for.

Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed was written for the people who think meditation isn’t meant for them. For the anxious minds and the restless thinkers. For the people carrying grief, overwhelm, anger, exhaustion, or self-doubt.

It offers practical approaches to meditation for non-visual thinkers, busy minds, and anyone searching for a little more peace inside the noise of everyday life.

I’m excited to share Dave Case’s new thriller, Up North.

This one follows DEA Agent Faith Nelson into a brutal Minnesota winter, where a missing girl, a cartel connection, and a dangerous case pull her farther and farther into the cold.

DEA Agent Faith Nelson is supposed to be going home for Christmas.

Her father is facing heart surgery in Oakland. Her mother needs her. And Faith needs distance from Minnesota, from the shooting that made her a reluctant hero, and from the nightmares that followed.

Then a cartel accountant stops cooperating with a federal grand jury when his college-age stepdaughter disappears.

Faith is sent north to Duluth in the teeth of a winter storm, paired with a partner she does not trust and trapped in a case that keeps turning darker. The missing girl may not have been taken at all. Her roommate knows more than she is saying. A Mexican cartel executioner has entered Minnesota. And when the trail leads beyond Duluth toward the frozen north shore of Lake Superior, Faith finds herself alone, injured, and running out of time.

Up North is a crime thriller about violence, survival, and the terrible cost of doing the right thing when the cold is closing in and no one is coming fast enough.

If you love tense crime thrillers, winter settings, strong female leads, cartel investigations, and stories that keep tightening the screws, this one belongs on your list.

Grab your copy of Up North today and follow Faith Nelson into the storm.

On a Wednesday night in March 2003, seven-year-old Dalton Mesarchik sat on his front porch waiting for the church bus. He had no way of knowing the bus had been canceled. His family had no way of knowing that no one had called. And somewhere in that small, terrible window of confusion, Dalton disappeared.

What followed was a heartbreaking case filled with questions, missed chances, and one haunting detail that never lets go: The bus he was waiting for was never coming.

THE BUS THAT NEVER CAME

It was Wednesday night, March 26, 2003. And that meant it was children’s Bible school night at the Church of the Nazarene in Streator, Illinois, a rustic blue collar town 100 miles southwest of Chicago. And that meant seven year old Dalton Mesarchik, with long hair and bright eyes, was very excited. He came home from school, had his dinner, sat down to play with his plastic Harley-Davidson motorcycles, then prepared to go to church with his older sister Deana who was at a friend’s house.

But on this night, this horrible, horrible night, fate fell on Streator.

The bus driver, a church volunteer, unexpectedly had to leave for Iowa for a family emergency. The church had no replacement driver. There would not be a bus coming to pick up little Dalton Mesarchik, or any of the other church goers tonight. The church’s policy was to notify families whenever transportation was not available, but on this night, this horrible night, no phone calls were made.

Around 7:15 p.m., family members recall seeing Dalton still sitting on the porch, anxiously waiting for the bus.

The bus that was never going to come. At 7:45 p.m., realizing the church bus was not coming, Deana came back home from her friend’s house. Within minutes, she sounded the alarm. “Where is Dalton?” she asked.

Search dogs picked up Dalton’s scent, tracking him from his front porch to the middle of Morrell street, right in front of his house. And then the trail stopped. Police believe he got in a vehicle at that point. By dawn, with no sight of Dalton, word spread quickly through the small town. Some 500 volunteers showed up to help with a search. It did not take long. By midday, police delivered the news to the Mesarchik family.

Just a couple of miles from home, Dalton’s body was found in the Vermillion River, discovered by a local fisherman who knew the family. Police said he was bludgeoned to death with a hammer. But at every turn, there was a dead end. And police kept coming back to their original question: Why would someone target, but not molest, a seven year old boy? Why would they risk taking him, right in front of his house?

“He was coaxed into that vehicle,” an officer said. “No screaming. No struggle. No sign he was afraid of anything.”

If stories like this stay with you long after you’ve read them, 25 Frozen, 1 Thawed is available now. It’s a collection of cold cases, strange clues, and the rare moments when the ice finally begins to crack.

I’ve been working on a new book recently, and this one surprised me a little. It is a book about forgiveness.

Forgiveness did not come easily for me. For much of my life, I was not a particularly forgiving person. I could hold onto a grudge with both hands, and I often believed I was justified in doing so. Sometimes I was. The hurt was real. The betrayal was real. The anger made sense.

But eventually, I began to understand that my anger was not hurting the person who had hurt me. Most of the time, they were going on with their life while I was the one still carrying it. I was the one replaying the conversation, remembering the betrayal, bracing myself against old pain, and letting something from the past take up space in my present.

That does not mean the anger was wrong. It simply means it was heavy. And over time, I began to see that forgiveness was not about excusing what someone had done, or pretending it had not mattered. It was not something I gave to the person who hurt me so they could feel better. It was something I eventually chose for myself, because I was tired of letting the wound keep taking from me.

Forgiveness, when it finally became real for me, released a weight I had not fully realized I was carrying. It did not erase what happened, and it did not always restore the relationship. But it did give me back pieces of myself I had been tying to the hurt.

Part of what moved me toward writing this book was a conversation with someone close to me.

They shared a deeply personal story about someone they love, someone who had endured severe abuse as a child and, after many years, had eventually found a way to forgive and even begin rebuilding a relationship with the parent connected to that pain.

The person telling me this story was proud of their loved one. They could see how much healing it must have taken to reach that place. But they were also struggling, because they could not understand how forgiveness had become possible.

At one point, with so much heartbreak in their voice, they asked me, “If she can forgive her mother, why can’t I?”

And the answer came to me almost immediately.

“She had forty years to grieve, process, and eventually forgive. For you, this is still fresh. You deserve the same grace.”

The sob she uttered in response was not one of guilt, shame, or anger, but one of gratitude and relief.

Because I think so many of us do this. We compare our healing to someone else’s. We look at someone who seems peaceful, forgiving, or farther along, and we wonder why we are not there yet. We start to believe that if someone else has released something, we should be able to release it too.

But forgiveness does not work on someone else’s timeline.

Pain does not expire just because enough time has passed. And sometimes pain that looks old from the outside is still fresh inside us, because we are only just beginning to understand it, feel it, or tell the truth about what it meant.

That is part of what I want this book to explore. Not forgiveness as something forced. Not forgiveness as a spiritual performance. Not forgiveness as pretending something did not hurt, or allowing someone back into your life who should no longer have access to you.

But forgiveness as something honest. Something deeply personal. Something that may take time. Something that cannot be demanded, rushed, or measured against anyone else’s process.

As I begin writing this book, I would love to hear from you.

When you think about forgiveness, what feels hardest? What questions come up for you? What would you want from a book on forgiveness?

Would journal prompts be helpful? Gentle reflections? Personal stories? Guided meditations? Practical exercises? A spiritual perspective? Something else entirely?

I’m still shaping this book, and I would be grateful to know what might actually support you, not in a perfect, polished, “just let it go” kind of way, but in a real human way.

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If you’re new to my work, I’m also the author of Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed, a meditation book written especially for people who have struggled with traditional meditation. It’s for busy minds, wandering thoughts, ADHD brains, aphants, and anyone who has ever thought, “I must be doing this wrong.”

Get your copy of Out of Cabrini today.