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Lead stories from SPR’s ever-growing independent book portal

Review: My Kill Play: When a Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby by Tim Patten

★★★★ My Kill Play: When a Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby by Tim Patten

Roller derby, in its modern form, has been a cult phenomenon across the world. A thrilling and dangerous sport, it has evolved from childhood pastime to a spectacular arena of courage and cunning on-wheels. My Kill Play: When A Virus Hijacked the Roller Derby is a personal account of author Tim Patten’s experiences with the sport, as childhood hobbyist to professional, and the way his life and those around him changed throughout the late 20th Century during one of the most infamous first-world medical crises of the past forty years.

My Kill Play joins Patten’s previous publication, Roller Babes: […]

2017-03-31T11:44:57+02:00March 30th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , , |
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Review: P.O.VEE (The Chronicles of VEE Book 1) by Denis Jay Klein

★★★★★ P.O. Vee by Denis Jay Klein

There are many things we disagree about here on Earth, but the fact that we are in a period of rapid technological advancement isn’t one of them. Human beings are doing things every day that would have seemed like something out of far-flung science fiction fifty years ago.

In the cleverly titled P.O.Vee by Denis Jay Klein, readers are flash-forwarded two decades into the future, when android technology is beginning to find its footing, and the first real attempts at artificial intelligence are being fleshed out. Klein is a masterful storyteller who paints the future in completely believable terms, […]

2019-04-29T12:16:52+02:00March 22nd, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |
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Review: The Diary of an Immortal (1945-1959) by David J. Castello

★★★★ The Diary of an Immortal by David Castello

In The Diary of an Immortal, author David J. Castello shows his skills as a wordsmith and creates an unforgettable narrative that looks at immortality from every possible side.

As a main character, readers can hardly ask for more from Steven Ronson, who begins as a hapless but heroic young man who stumbles upon something unimaginable – a formula that allows him to live forever. Readers are quickly taken away from the battlefields of WWII, but the fight is far from over. Ronson soon learns that chasing his every dream, without fear of failure or fatality, is not […]

2019-01-24T19:47:01+02:00March 1st, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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Review: Don’t Go, Ramanya by Rush Leaming

★★★★½ Don't Go, Ramanya by Rush Leaming

Transporting readers to another world, a different time, or a new way of looking at things is the great task of an author, and in Don’t Go, Ramanya, author Rush Leaming does a marvelous job of doing all three. Packed with vivid descriptions and unique, unforgettable characters, this novel grabs readers within the first few pages.

The story centers on three men, Father Bob, Michael Shaw and Ramanya, an ex-rebel soldier from Burma, as they serendipitously join forces and attempt to smuggle Ramanya back into his home country. This simple premise goes far deeper, as Ramanya is also […]

2017-02-17T04:43:17+02:00February 3rd, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |
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Review: Detention Land (Book 1) by Susan Orion

★★★★ Detention Land (Book 1) by Susan Orion

Detention Land by Susan Orion is a wholly unique and affecting young adult novel about Roger Prism, who’s trapped in a prison of his own making. Roger keeps acting out at school, including drawing his teacher on a blackboard in permanent ink, which lands him in the strange zone dubbed Detention Land, in which a woman’s voice behind the wall probes Roger about his misdeeds. This limbo reflects Roger’s own mind, and his feeling of being trapped in his life, and he must come to a better understanding of himself if he’s ever going to be free of Detention […]

2017-02-17T05:40:52+02:00January 14th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |
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Review: God, Grace, Dumb Luck by Phloyd Knucklez

God, Grace, Dumb Luck by Phloyd Knucklez

In God, Grace, Dumb Luck, Phloyd Knucklez writes self-deprecating urban prose that explores the connections between his experiences with women, and snapshots of life in short story form with down-on-their-luck characters.

In a way, this is a difficult book to read because it’s not entirely clear if the writer understands how deeply depressed he is, even if his expectations for life are so low as to wear his distress and apathy as a badge of honor. His characters seem to reflect memories and situations he himself has been in, or search for meaning in their dark and squalid settings.[…]

2019-02-11T09:18:45+02:00January 13th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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Review: Of Endings and Beginnings by Robert Speigel

★★★★ Of Endings and Beginnings: A Memoir of Discovery and Transformation by Robert Speigel

Understanding why we behave, feel, react and survive the way we do has been a subject of fascination since the dawn of self-awareness. The endless debate of nurture vs. nature, research into the essence of being human, and concerns of destiny and fate have always intrigued our species. In Of Endings and Beginnings: A Memoir of Discovery and Transformation, author Robert Speigel paints a beautiful, tragic, optimistic and brutally honest picture of existence, and also shares a number of tools and strategies to overcome the darkness in your own life, and control the beliefs that will otherwise control […]

2017-02-17T05:41:23+02:00January 12th, 2017|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |
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Review: Awakening: Bloodline Book One by Tiera Rice

★★★★½ Awakening: Bloodline Book One

Tapping into the paranormal and vampire market has been the goal for many YA and fiction writers in recent years, and while the genre feels full to bursting, certain gems stand out, like Awakening from Tiera Rice. The first book of the Bloodline series, this novel creates two gripping tales for readers to enjoy, separated by 600 years, but linked by mysterious and ancient powers.

The book is almost equally split between the Old World and the New; Antanasia is a Romanian vampire from the 1400s, while Nadia is the unsuspecting heroine in present-day NYC, wrestling with emerging powers […]

2017-02-17T05:40:43+02:00December 23rd, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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