Black Art Today!'s Reading Room

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This book outlines the journey of collecting African-American Art by collector, Dr. Sheila Wright. It also features images of 70 works of art by African-American Masters and Contemporary Artists.  

 For the last two years, Dr. Wright has been writing about her journey as a collector. This literary project has become an extension of her passion for African American Art as it also features 70 works in The Wondrous Works Collection. She shares her lessons about acquisitions, collection management, and framing. Wondrous Works: The Fine Art Collection of Dr. Sheila D. Wright is a must have for your coffee table. 

 In her stirring memoir, Bronco Strong, Angela M. Odom, a personnel services battalion commander, recounts daily life as a soldier in an active war zone during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Odom came into command of the 15th Personnel Services Battalion in 2006, and immediately they were deployed to Baghdad via Kuwait. The soldiers under her command had proven themselves before in the same theater of war. But things had changed in their time at home, and now they found themselves walking into a living nightmare.

The soldiers of Task Force Bronco bravely endured, fulfilling their monumentally difficult support tasks throughout a grueling fifteen-month extended deployment. But things didn't always go according to plan. 

 “She loathes him…

He buys flesh and she despises him for it. A man of color, who enslaves his own kind, is someone Yearie Hart can’t abide. Yet, there is something about Benedicte Larieux that she finds intriguing. He is a wealthy businessman, a patriarch of one of the most influential families in all of New Orleans. She is a poor, free woman desperate to secure her family’s freedom. They have nothing in common. Or so she thought, until a chance meeting thrusts her into his privileged and controlled world. Faced with his blatant pursuit of her charms, she is caught in a tug of war between what her soul wants, and what her mind believes. Can she trust this man with her heart?”

“He wants her…

She is a laundress, a hired servant. Benedicte has no time to deal with the servant class. That is someone else’s responsibility. Nor has he ever dallied with the help, it just isn’t done. Yet her deep hazel eyes and the sway of her hips have him tempted to break his own rule. He has no business desiring her. They are from two different worlds. Bedding her would assuage his physical needs, but her feisty attitude and tenacious spirit could ensnare his heart. Will his overwhelming passion and his deep family secret destroy their tenuous bond? Or could his honesty allow her to open her heart to a union with a man who is unloved…”

Robert Manis is known throughout the world as the deadliest man alive. He becomes the Director of the NU FBI in 2109 out of duty. The same duty leads him to free those clad in "red and grey" better known as the Forgotten. This action launches two continents into the sex slave revolt and solidifies him as the "Lord Protector." For five years, Director Manis subdues international crime lords, quells a coup from western Governors, secures the distribution of the wonder drug "Nomescula," and all but eradicates the Carnal Cartel from the sex trades of the 22nd Century. 

 “Open your eyes and believe”: ZION RIVERS, an international man of action and the last ALLUNDAE GRANDMASTER, is a member of an ALIEN race that came to earth over 20,000 years ago. He searches for the remnants of his kind, to halt a growing EVIL in the guise of cult leader LANDEN MUELLER (an Allundae of lesser stock known as the SANGANESE). Mueller has developed a cult following numbering in the tens of thousands and seeks to corrupt mankind by replacing established religions with his own perversion. He is allied with an ancient enemy of the Allundae, the FICAR EGO, from the planet MAKUWE in the CYGNUS star system. SWORN ENEMIES of the Allundae who now seek to colonize earth. Mueller is clever in hiding his crimes and even more devious in assigning dark deeds to underlings. 

The historical Melvina Massey, was a complex soul.  Our story opens in 1884 with the discovery of a murdered prostitute in Deadwood, South Dakota. U.S. Marshal Seth Bullock arrives at the scene and reviews the evidence splattered over the body. He then decides that it is time to interview the most notorious Madam in the Red River Valley, MELVINA. What made Melvina Massey so mysterious? Was it her racial ambiguity, or the fact that she leverages this at every turn? Why do prosecutors set up fake witnesses to convict her? How does a 63-year-old woman pass for 49, was she really that beautiful? Was she a successful brothel owner or bootlegger, which is true? In 1900, an older seductive woman in her 60s rides a lonely train car.