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Lead Story

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

Review: Leadership Wisdom by Bob Vanourek

★★★★★ Leadership Wisdom by Bob Vanourek

Leadership Wisdom: Lessons from Poetry, Prose, and Curious Verse by Bob Vanourek is an enlightening collection of sage and timely advice.

Books about leadership and self-improvement seem to be a dime a dozen, which makes it difficult to know who to heed and where the best advice actually comes from. Sidestepping that common failing, Bob Vanourek’s new book, Leadership Wisdom, instead relies on great minds and wise figures from human history to support his unique perspective.

While it can be easy to dismiss the occasionally condescending lessons from modern leaders and success stories, it is far harder to […]

2016-07-12T09:29:58+02:00July 12th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , , |
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Review: New Age Lamians (The Lamian Trilogy Book 1) by Didi Oviatt

★★★★ New Age Lamians by Didi Oviatt

New Age Lamians (The Lamian Trilogy Book 1) by Didi Oviatt is a unique and addictive YA adventure.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to find a new angle on the post-apocalyptic genre, as the recent popularity of this topic has led to hundreds of new books trying to capture the horrors of a dystopian future. The YA genre has been less inundated with these types of stories, however, and Didi Oviatt’s new novel, New Age Lamians, stands out as a truly creative and engaging story. The premise of the novel is bleak – a planet that has been […]

2016-07-12T11:09:47+02:00July 12th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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Review: The Martyr’s Blade (The Chronicles of the Martyr Book 1) by Joel Manners

★★★★★ The Martyr's Blade by Joel Manners

Magic, mayhem and memorable characters abound in The Martyr’s Blade (The Chronicles of the Martyr Book 1) by Joel Manners.

The sword and sorcery genre has had a major resurgence in recent years, thanks to a particular hit HBO show and a fresh generation of eager readers, but Joel Manners is clearly not a novice to the realms of fantasy. For a debut novel, The Martyr’s Blade welcomes readers into an incredibly dense and meticulously crafted world that becomes more enrapturing with every chapter.

At the outset, Manners works hard to establish reader rapport with a range of intense […]

2016-07-12T09:14:58+02:00July 12th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |
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Review: Let There Be Linda by Rich Leder

★★★★½ Let There Be Linda by Rich Leder

Let There Be Linda by Rich Leder begins with a poodle being thrown out of a window on an L.A. freeway. Brothers Mike and Dan Miller, one an almost-respectable accountant and one a completely crooked talent agent get embroiled in a caper with many angles: a missing $75,000, a brutal loan shark swarf and his much bigger sidekick, a coke-addled dentist, and other denizens of the sweat-infused San Fernando Valley. Add to that a girl who can raise the dead and you have a novel that’s part crime fiction, part satire, and the strangest supernatural story you’ve ever read. […]

2020-12-23T05:49:41+02:00July 5th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: |
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Review: Connected by Kat Stiles

★★★★ Connected by Kat Stiles

Connected by Kat Stiles is an entertaining paranormal escape for young adult readers.

Emily is a high school student who doesn’t feel like she fits in. To make matters worse, Em discovers she has a special power. Fortunately, she isn’t alone and her best friend Roz has her own gift. Tommy, the boy Em likes, seems to be different as well. When people in their town start to die, Em, Roz, and Tommy join forces to find a murderer.

The theme in Connected is intriguing and inspirational for younger readers in a world that is becoming increasingly more disconnected. […]

2016-06-27T09:24:02+02:00June 24th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , , |
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Review: Wyrd, TX by David Shawn

★★★★½ Wyrd TX

Wyrd, TX by David Shawn is a terrifying, stylish thriller.

Balancing humor, wit and terror is an ability that few authors ever master, but David Shawn releases a macabre tour de force in Wyrd, TX, a city that time seems to have forgotten, but demons have not. Shawn marvelously sets the tone for readers within the first few chapters – a supernatural first scene to cleanse the palette for fantasy, followed by patient, thorough introductions of the major characters populating this bizarre world.

Chief Butler is the perfect antihero for this type of setting; a good man with […]

2019-01-22T05:46:01+02:00June 17th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , , |
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Review: The Voice of Divine Love by Arlene Dayrit

The Voice of Divine Love by Arlene Dayrit

The author of The Voice of Divine Love, Arlene Dayrit, is self-described as a fervent attendant to God’s will and has spent much of her life in constant search of God’s redemption and love through her spirituality and religious devotion. The result of her meditations on scripture and Christian ideals is her first published work.

Essentially a re-examination of the scripture, the book takes the point of view of the Lord expressing his infinite love for his children and how to interpret his messages from a first-person point of view. Rather than a fearful, vengeful figure depicted elsewhere, Dayrit […]

2019-02-11T09:44:23+02:00June 16th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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Review: How to Fail at Life: Lessons for the Next Generation by Mark Aspelin

★★★★★ How to Fail at Life: Lessons for the Next Generation by Aspelin Mark

Failure sucks. There’s no denying that. But every pratfall and tumble has an upside, even if it’s just the schadenfreude of knowing someone else screwed up too, or even worse than you ever have.

Enter Mark Aspelin. Aspelin bills himself as an “experienced practitioner in the failure arts” who has “been there, done that, and got the t-shirt when it comes to messing up in life.” Aspelin boasts years of speaking experience prior to his newfound membership into the circle of author-hood, focusing on the subject of failure and the lessons to be learned from the falls we inevitably […]

2016-06-16T03:15:56+02:00June 16th, 2016|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: , |
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