Books
Author Cassandra Taylor’s New Book, “Why I Serve,” Highlights the Powerful and Impactful Stories of Women Veterans of the United State Military
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in Maywood, Illinois, has completed her new book, “Why I Serve”: an impactful collection of stories in which female veterans share the reasons behind their selfless service in the United States Military.
Author Cassandra Taylor attended Proviso East High School for her first two years then relocated to Fort Madison, Iowa, where she graduated from Fort Madison High School. After graduation, she enrolled at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and majored in liberal arts. She would later transfer to the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, to continue her studies in liberal arts.
In 2007, she received a bachelor’s degree of Science in Technical Management at DeVry University in Addison, Illinois. And in 2008, she earned her master’s degree in human resource management at Keller Graduate School of Management in Schaumburg, Illinois. She went back to school in 2019 to complete her MBA with a concentration in healthcare management.
Ms. Taylor is the founder and CEO of Top Flight Defense Inc., a nonprofit organization created by women veterans for all women. established in January 2020. Their mission it to promote the overall health and wellness of women veterans and women in their community across the United States by providing a variety of focused education and resources coordinated by women veterans. Her current employer is Rush University Medical Center in Chicago where she is an ambulatory analyst. She was a contestant in the Ms. Veteran America 2016 and 2017 competitions and made it to the top twenty-five contestants in both years. The mission of Ms. Veteran America was and still is to bring awareness to the number of homeless female veterans in the United States on any given day, as well as raise funds to educate and house them and their children.
As a singer, she has performed at numerous sporting and military events such as Chicago Sky WMBA, Professional Bull Riders, Chicago Wolves and Chicago Bandits, Mission Barbeque, and Monster Truck Jam. She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc., Schaumburg Hoffman Estates Alumnae Chapter. And on the board of directors for Operation Support Our Troops-America. Her hobbies are exercising, singing, dancing, and spending time with her family.
Ms. Taylor discusses her work, stating, “This book is a collaboration of stories of the brave women veterans that joined the military. Not everyone received the emotional support of their family when they were told of their decision to join. But their determination didn’t stop them from doing what their hearts led them to do. No particular branch of service is greater than the other, but the stories in why each woman chose their branch is an amazing story to read.”
She continues, “I believe our stories will touch your heart and make you proud that we did what some either wouldn’t or couldn’t do. We are all conquerors in our own way! For too long our voices have not been heard and no one wanted to talk about the things that women accomplished while serving. But this book will tell you about the women that served and why they decided to serve. Through creative storytelling, these stories will take you on an emotional ride; our intent is to share with you our one desire! And that desire is to serve our country.”
Published by Covenant Books of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, Cassandra Taylor’s new book invites readers to laugh, cry, cheer, or get angry alongside these women as they share what their service has meant to them.
Readers can purchase “Why I Serve” at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.
Covenant Books is an international Christian owned and operated publishing house based in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Covenant Books specializes in all genres of work which appeal to the Christian market. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Covenant Books at 843-507-8373.
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Books
Scottsdale Author Joe Reina’s New Novel Follows a Killer Who Gets Away With It
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Shadows over Scottsdale: An Unsolved Murder Mystery," built around a scenario true-crime statistics make uncomfortably familiar: a man commits a devastating crime and simply disappears, leaving investigators and a grieving community with no resolution.
The book follows a character named Robert, who flees the country using forged documents and a cargo ship after an act of destruction that leaves behind, as the publisher describes it, charred remains and an unanswered investigation. The case goes cold. The novel, according to its publisher, is less concerned with the mechanics of the escape than with what happens afterward, to the people left waiting for answers that never come.
Reina, now retired in Scottsdale, spent decades in international business across apparel, footwear, and real estate, with extensive time in Europe and a particular connection to Italy that shaped two earlier books, "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen" and "A Love Affair in Tuscany." "Shadows over Scottsdale" marks a different direction, built instead around the real scale of unsolved homicide in the U.S. The publisher’s materials cite roughly 346,000 unsolved homicides since 1965, with more than a dozen occurring unresolved each day. Separate reporting on the book has cited a figure of about 7,778 murders in 2023 alone, which it similarly frames as more than a dozen a day going unresolved.
"Writing ‘Shadows over Scottsdale’ forced me to confront uncomfortable questions about justice itself," Reina said, according to the announcement. "Too many crimes go unsolved, too many families wait endlessly for answers. I wanted readers to understand that behind every cold case statistic is a real story, real suffering, and real questions that may never be answered."
The publisher positions the novel as an examination of institutional limits as much as a crime story: the toll of a case gone cold on the people who can’t move past it, and what it means for a community when accountability simply never arrives.
"Shadows over Scottsdale" is published by Covenant Books and is available in paperback and hardcover through the publisher’s website and major retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple Books.
Cold-case statistics tend to get cited and then forgotten. Studio CarryOnHarry is curious whether fiction built directly around that number does more to stick with a reader than the number alone ever does.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
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Books
Joe Reina’s ‘Lost Masterpieces’ Imagines a Fictional Farewell Among Renaissance Painters
Balle Balle Radio™ Entertainment Desk
Joe Reina has published a new novel, "Lost Masterpieces: Three Paintings, 500 Years A Journey Through Time," built around an imagined scene from Renaissance history: the night before Leonardo da Vinci leaves for Milan, when three fellow painters each hand him a small work carrying a private message.
According to the announcement, those three gifts come from Sandro Botticelli, Titian, and Andrea Mantegna, each painting standing in for a different kind of counsel. Botticelli’s piece is described as layered with allegory and coded warnings about power and patronage. Titian’s is framed as warm and sensual, suggesting reinvention and a break from convention. Mantegna’s is austere and classically precise, encoding discipline and endurance. According to the announcement, these three paintings form a wordless exchange between masters, transmitting wisdom, mutual regard, and assurance across generations through visual means.
Reina comes to this material from outside the art world. His career was built in apparel, footwear, and real estate development in Chicago, and the publisher’s materials trace his interest in European history, and in Italy specifically, to years of international business travel. He has published several previous books, including "The Goat Sleeps in the Kitchen," "A Love Affair in Tuscany," and "Shadows over Scottsdale," before turning to this account of a fictionalized moment at the hinge of the Renaissance.
"I wanted to capture that extraordinary moment when masters speak to each other across time through their work," Reina said in the announcement. "These paintings represent not just gifts, but a conversation about what it means to pursue greatness while remaining grounded in purpose and principle."
The book is published through Covenant Books and is available in hardcover and paperback, as well as through Apple Books, Amazon, Google Play, and Barnes & Noble.
Studio CarryOnHarry is intrigued by novels that build fiction around real historical figures at a specific, dramatized turning point rather than attempting straight biography — the approach succeeds or fails based on how seamlessly the fictional moment integrates with documented historical fact.
Read more People’s Choice stories on Studio CarryOnHarry. Reporting via Live News Vault.
Are you an author with a new release? We’re always looking for books to cover and authors to interview — tell us about yours here.
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