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THE NFB STORY
There is a better way. There was the publishing industry before NFB and there will be a different one after NFB. The central idea of NFB is community not corporation. The author, the artist, the editor, the agent, all those involved working toward a common goal: to produce the best books ever or just a really good book. The author retains all rights to their intellectual property without exception, as well as 90% of the royalties after tax and shipping. We hope to provide all that is necessary for the author to flourish including editing, design and in some cases representation. NFB means no excess, no double-speak, no empty promises. The words on the page are the core, the author is the center and the book is the goal. Expansion is always happening. NFB is constantly looking for passionate writers, artists, and anyone associated with the publishing industry interested in something different.
Congratulations to Craig Buchner
Winner of Best Indie Short Fiction 2022 for His Book Brutal Beasts
New Releases
The Badge by Will Caudill
Let the reader beware.
Things are not going well for Ali Kim. On the same day he loses his work badge, his boss tells him, “the boss wants to see you.” The idea of seeing his boss’s boss is not something that fills Ali with glee or delight. Imagine your boss says, out of the blue, “the boss wants to see you” and then provides you no further explanation. Do you feel delight? Do you feel glee? Ali Kim does not.
While Ali navigates the labyrinthine inner-workings of the buildings where “the boss” may be, he encounters a range of characters; some that help him and some that hinder him. Also providing boosts and banes are the insane situations and locations that appear throughout the story.
The story of The Badge is not intended for a future streaming service. It is not the story of a hero. It is not the first in a series of books which focus on a person. It is not a story where pretty people will play the characters. It is a story for readers that do not want to be led to the end in a cozy way or in a straight line. Ali’s quest to find the boss’ boss is an epic adventure, where time and space are not fixed concepts. This may confuse the reader; this may also frustrate the reader quite a bit. It is a story for people who are looking for that kind of story.
Staying Humble: The Journey of Building a High-Performance Team
by Patrick J. Hall
An Invitation To Readers
One of the greatest privileges in life is the opportunity to lead others. You can be a leader in your household, sports team or social network. You can also lead co-workers in big or small teams within your place of business.
To be an impactful leader, though, humility is essential. You must be willing to place the needs of others above your own. You will have to accept that you do not have all the answers to everything. You need to be willing to think differently and learn from past and present failures. And finally, you must take 100% ownership of the actions of those you lead.
If you have ever read a leadership or self-help book based on theory, principles, or practice and struggled to understand how you can apply what you learned to your own life—know you are not alone.
This book is about the journey of building a high-performance team through real-life examples all leaders can relate to regardless of their business industry.
In the course of my journey, I read many books by experts in the field. Their wisdom contributed to both my success and my mistakes. I found their ideas helpful, but ultimately had to rely on my own reading of the situation, my team members, and myself.
Place yourself in the story and apply it to some of the struggles you experience within your own leadership journey.
This book is structured so that it follows the consecutive stages of team-building incorporating insights from other experts that were pertinent to each particular stage. You can see how I adopted and adapted those ideas to form my own blueprint of best practices for building teams of any size.
I hope you can relate to the emotions, struggles, successes and failures I experienced while building a high-performance team.
My journey humbled me. What will your leadership journey do for you?
We Remain: Race, Racism and the Story of the American Indian
by Keith Burich Phd
The story of American Indians is an arguably sad and tragic tale of the conquest, degradation, oppression and near extermination of the Native peoples of North America, all driven by a virulent and violent racism that courses through U.S. history. From slavery, genocide and removal from their traditional ecologies to incarceration on barren and isolated reservations, cultural annihilation, disease and despair, they have suffered much since the arrival of European colonists. And yet, they have endured and even triumphed, albeit in unexpected and surprising ways.
In We Remain: Race, Racism and the Story of the American Indian, Keith Burich meets Native people where they live, sharing their narrative in a profoundly stirring way. An emeritus professor of history at Canisius College, Burich uses his experiences and observations to trace the poverty, deprivation, discrimination and inequities of the present to the racial hatred and violence that invaded North America in 1500. Having spent 25 years in Indian Country, he has seen the worst of the Indians’ plight. Injustices notwithstanding, he has likewise witnessed firsthand the beauty, resilience, courage and compassion of America’s First People.
We Remain is a must-read for anyone who wants to better comprehend the power of the human spirit and the unique and tumultuous history of the United States.
Saving Buffalo Baseball
The 1956 Buffalo Bisons
by Howard Henry Jr.
BUFFALO WAS LOSING BASEBALL!
It was 1955 and the Detroit Tigers, the major league owners of the Triple A Buffalo Bisons, were pulling out of the city. Would the Bisons go, too? Not if a group of determined local baseball men, a ball club of veteran ballplayers and a city of committed fans had anything to say about it.
“Saving Buffalo Baseball: The 1956 Season” takes the reader into the on-field and off-field struggles of a new phenomenon in the Queen City—community owned professional baseball, following the team on a month by month, game by game saga from September 1955 to the hard-scrabble conclusion of the 1956 baseball year. Experience the doubts and disappointments and day to day heroics of what dedicated men (and some women) could achieve if only they stayed true to the cause. Starting from nothing, within three years’ time the Buffalo Bisons became the top drawing ball club in all of minor league baseball and with a valuation of more than half a million dollars!
Thanks to detailed (and sometimes conflicting) newspaper reporting and to the gracious involvement of several ballplayers from that team who discussed the 1956 season with the author, the reader will find inning by inning accounts of each of the 151 games played, plus the off-field efforts to simply keep nine healthy men on the field, pay their salaries and see the season through to the end. Simple box scores accompany each game. An internet link allows access to the full box score for each contest. In the book are the names of 233 Buffalonians and their families, plus 68 community groups, all of whom supported the club during this critical campaign.
Additionally, 18 local lads, Buffalo area ballplayers who dreamed to be Bisons or who played for other professional ball clubs during 1956 are highlighted. Perhaps your family or someone you knew made the newspapers that year; their name is in this book.
“What Happened to Our Heroes” gives brief descriptions of the post-1956 and post-baseball careers of the front office personnel and players, professional and amateur, all of whom strove valiantly Saving Buffalo Baseball.
The Way I went Last Friday
HOW A TEENAGED SCHOOLGIRL REIGNED TERROR OVER THE CITY OF BUFFALO IN THE SUMMER OF 1961
by Patrick Sawers
“We are dealing with a woman maniac,” the mayor declared, urging parents to keep a tight watch over their young ones until the deranged killer could be captured and brought to justice.
It was the summer of 1961, and the city of Buffalo, New York, was cast into a panic when the dead body of a missing boy is found floating in the lake at Delaware Park, a huge, rustic oasis set right in the midst of a thriving urban metropolis. Three-year-old Andrew Ashley had gone missing two days earlier, snatched right out of his own front yard and right in the wake of two previous (although ultimately unsuccessful) area kidnappings. From those would-be victims police had obtained a working description of the culprit – a middle-aged woman, roughly “as old as mommy, but not as old as grandma.” The story would take on another shocking dimension, though, when their "woman maniac" turned out to be something even more chilling - a damaged and maladjusted fifteen-year-old schoolgirl.
This is the story of Chyrel Jolls, a young girl from a broken home and a dysfunctional background, whose yielding to her darkest impulses would shatter a young family and send shockwaves through a typically-calm and family-oriented part of the city. This is also the story of the frenzied police investigation that ensued, and of due process in a court system left struggling to find some precedent to adjudicate the case correctly. It is also a snapshot of post-World War II America, from its looser notions of what constitutes child supervision to its vastly different approach to mental health and institutionalization.
The Gates of Atlantis
By Earl Cantwell
Casey Callanan was satisfied with his life's trajectory. The young attorney had an active law practice, a beautiful girlfriend, and owned a prospering South Buffalo Irish tavern. But when his father dies suddenly during a marine expedition to the Azores Islands, Casey receives a secret bequest to guard a family secret hidden for generations. The Callanan's have discovered artifacts of extraterrestrial origin believed to be from the lost city of Atlantis, including a large portal gate
.
Casey struggles to understand this unexpected heritage. His struggle is compounded by intra-family rivalry with his sister, now in control of the family business, who is furious about being kept in the dark. Casey's struggle is made even worse by the interference of a resourceful Communist Chinese spy desperate to learn and steal the family secret.
Casey's quest leads to his own expedition to the Azores to investigate the Atlantis history and search for more artifacts. The situation turns dire when Casey's friends and family are kidnapped for the ransom of one of the Atlantean gates. Events culminate in a harrowing ship-to-ship exchange at night on a storm-tossed Atlantic Ocean.
Casey and his friends are challenged to unravel the mystery of Atlantis, overcome spying and sabotage from multiple sources, and uncover the secrets lying behind the Gates of Atlantis.
RJ, Farrah and Me: A Young Man’s Gay Odyssey from the Inside Out
by Jack Hilovsky
1976… Ford was ruling… the Bicentennial was blaring… Farrah Fawcett was flying and two Ohio boys were cavorting.
Jack is an only child growing up in Cleveland and by the time he is seven, he knows he’s different. The one constant in his young life is friendship and when Jack meets RJ the two find solace and discovery in one another. From their mutual obsession for Charlie’s Angel and pin-up girl Farrah Fawcett to exploring their sexuality one humid, summer night, they embark on a journey that forces Jack to grapple with his strict Catholic upbringing and an emerging, yet conflicted awareness that he is gay.
Set against the backdrop of the disco dance era, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, sun-kissed lifeguards, high school musicals and college fraternity hijinks, Jack’s pursuit of anything-but-gay personas leads to humor and heartache with people who help and thwart him.
Ever resilient, he navigates an uncertain future on the path to self-discovery in his quest for a happy, Technicolor ending.
17 Italian Greats in Sports and Italian Insights
by Al Bruno
With Updated Articles
Al Bruno is a teacher and writer and has been reporting on sports events and personalities since his college reporting days at Canisius College in the late 1970s. His passion and insights in sports is fueled by his experiences as a published sportswriter, high school coach, and football player.
17 Italian Greats in Sports and Italian Insights (2022) by Al Bruno is an Italian sports and culture publication, an anthology, presenting 42 of his best Italian sports stories and Italian cultural insights about early Italian immigration issues, great first-generation, Italian Americans, images, traditions (St. Anthony’s Day Festival in Buffalo and winemaking), and lessons (good and painful), and the unexpected succumbing of Buffalo’s Italian icon and ambassador, Joey Giambra, to covid-19.
Al Bruno’s insights reveal Italian events and cultural experiences he lived and observed along the way as a first-generation, Italian American and the only child of Italian immigrants (from Pratola Peligna from the Abruzzi region of Italy), perilously arriving at Ellis Island, alone and startled; they survived, making Buffalo, New York, their permanent home for the past 64 years.
Importantly, it primarily focuses on the inspiring insights and successes of 17 Italian sporting greats by traveling through a time tunnel, remembering and honoring Italian sports heroes from the 1940s to the present day.
Pride, Prejudice and Painting
by Jessica DiPalma
A curator at one of New York City’s finest art museums, Bennet Reynolds spends her days under the oppressive rule of a miserable boss and most of what little free time she has trying to avoid the matchmaking schemes of her meddling and overbearing mother. At least at work, Bennet has always been able to find comfort among her beloved paintings. All that changes when she is assigned the task of putting together the exhibition of a monumental art collection gifted to the museum by the demanding socialite Vivian Winthrop who insists her nephew, Luke Dawlton, help oversee the project.
One of the city’s leading businessmen, Luke, is as arrogant as he is handsome. Forced to work together, Bennet begins to see him in a new light. Could there be more to Luke than what she first thought? And what about the charming stranger, Jeremy Burlow, who has suddenly come into her life? Just as things seem more complicated than ever, a series of events develop that threaten her career and her family. Bennet must decide just who to trust and whether she has the courage to listen to her heart and follow her dreams.
Set in Manhattan’s demanding art world, this modern twist on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a novel about first impressions and second chances.
We All Just Bought A Team: The Biggest What-Ifs in Buffalo Sports History
by Jeff Dahlberg
In We All Just Bought a Team: The Biggest What-Ifs in Buffalo Sports History, readers can learn what could have happened if Terry and Kim Pegula didn’t buy the Buffalo Bills in 2014. Would the team be the Toronto, Los Angeles or Las Vegas Bills? How would the sports landscape change if Scott Norwood made that 47-yard field goal in Super Bowl XXV or Jim Kelly had refused to sign with Buffalo when the USFL folded? What if the NHL had disallowed Brett Hull’s goal in Game 6 of the 1999 Stanley Cup Finals or the Vancouver Canucks had drafted Gilbert Perrault? What if the Buffalo Sabres had chosen Connor McDavid or Jack Eichel became an Arizona Coyote? Buffalo sports fans can explore those questions and more in these pages.
Each chapter opens with a recap of the actual history, then pivots to the what-ifs. Prominent sportswriters, authors, historians and sports pundits then weigh in with their view of each question. It’s like being at a bar or a party where everybody is talking about sports and everybody has an opinion. Not everyone agrees but everyone has something to say. We All Just Bought a Team: The Biggest What-Ifs in Buffalo Sports History is sure to be a hit among Buffalo sports fans everywhere.