SPR’s book reviews of new self-published books
Still Dreaming: Poetry and Short Stories by Ellie Rose McKee
In her latest collection, Still Dreaming, Ellie Rose McKee weaves together poetry and prose to consider themes of loss and longing, dreams, and family secrets. One story concerns a coffeehouse with a mysterious regular customer, while two different stories deal with young women in distress, one on the verge of losing her sight, another considering ending her life after suffering a traumatic event.
McKee’s poems are sparse but endearing. In one, the author wishes she could flip a switch to gain sudden inner peace, “Insomnia? No problem! Flick a switch and that’ll solve ’em.” Her language is direct and […]
When Are You Leaving by Melissa Powell Gay is a twisted mystery of hometown and heartbreak.
In Items May Have Shifted: How to Travel With Your Baby or Toddler, journalist NJS Kaye presents a “guerrilla guide” to traveling with young children based on copious experience and scholarly research.
When protagonist Jeffrey Porter’s father Randall suddenly goes missing, he moves his wife and children back to the family ranch in Santa Cruz to investigate. While searching the cellar, Porter uncovers a portal to the past where he meets the Kimbralls, the family who lived on the ranch in 1870. Porter and the Kimbrall patriarch Augustus embark on a mission to find Randall but the unpredictability of time travel and the portal itself make this a perilous pursuit. When they hear rumors that Randall is involved in labor disputes that have angered local farmers, they realize his life is in […]
It’s a new beginning for Mia O’Halloran, and in a sense a homecoming. After a long twenty years enduring the worst that London has to offer and a life of drugs and selling her virtues to make ends meet, a heady mix of nostalgia and fear is a cold shower for Mia as she returns to face up to her past, all in order to make a better future for herself. After all, home may be where the heart is, but it is also where some of her worst memories lay in wait, and the abusers that had made her […]