Book Reviews | Self-Publishing Review

Review: Finding Billy Battles by Ronald E. Yates

Finding Billy Battles is the story of a rather remarkable character who lived during the last part of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. The book is fiction, but according to the author, draws heavily on the author’s family history. Nonetheless, the book reads like a novel and never seems like those, usually unsuccessful, attempts to interest other people in one’s own family stories. The book gets off to a somewhat slow start, using the frame device of Battles’ great-grandson finding his great-grandfather’s journals, but soon enough becomes a page-turner about a fascinating, multidimensional character and […]

Review: Travels With My Hat by Christine Osborne

Christine Osborne is a travel photographer who has dedicated her entire life to capturing on film what it is to live on Planet Earth. Tracing a line through the Middle East and Africa, into countries that might be thought of by most to be “scary” destinations for a slim, blonde woman, Christine jumped in feet first with her Australian roots to help her along, in her trusty blue hat and a camera her constant companion.

This book is written so well because Christine has lived these details, these colors, these characters. There is no substitute for writing what you know, […]

Cate Baum2019-01-23T12:48:16+02:00May 5th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Memoir Book Reviews, Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: Bloom, Or, the Unwritten Memoir of Tennyson Middlebrook by Martin Kee

The SPR Awards 2014 Best Fiction winner Bloom, Or, the Unwritten Memoir of Tennyson Middlebrook by Martin Kee reviewed by co-founder Cate Baum.

When Bloom hit our judges it stood out immediately. When you open the first pages of Bloom it’s a tantalizing mystery.

From General Knowledge Extraction Subject: Name
Unknown
Estimated Age: —
Godstem Fragment: 5547896-33398b by 33388452d
PARTIAL
Bloom – See Science and Nature):
1. (Science and Nature) One or more flowers on a
flowering plant
2. (Science and Nature) Algal blo0m – A rapid
increase in the population of microscopic algae or
phytoplankton in an aquatic system

[…]

Cate Baum2019-01-23T13:07:53+02:00April 29th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Fantasy Book Reviews|

Review: Searching For Pekpek: Cassowaries And Conservation In The New Guinea Rainforest by Andrew L. Mack

You won’t find a lot of cassowaries in this book, just a lot of their droppings. What you will find is a beautifully written, well-told story of a biologist who goes to the Papua New Guinea (PNG) rainforest to live among the native Pawai’ia and do basic research. In the process he learns a great deal about how cassowaries distribute seed throughout the forest, and a great deal more about the challenges and heartbreaks of international conservation.

Of course it all starts with pekpek, the Pawai’ia name for cassowary dung. Mack brings a literary flair even to the description of […]

Avery Hurt2019-01-23T12:36:08+02:00April 21st, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Non-Fiction Book Reviews, Travel Book Reviews|

Review: The Brain Within Its Groove by L.N. Nino

The Brain Within Its Groove is a novella by L.N. Nino inspired by the poem of the same name by Emily Dickinson.

The book is written as a final confessional and memoir by a long-retired, previously-proud and renowned psychiatrist having succumbed to an overwhelming and mysterious mental illness. Now mostly paralyzed by his own mind and needing constant care from a young nurse, a shared reading of poetry and a question into his past triggers a severe breakdown, and for the worn out doctor to reminisce on a patient who seems to be the key to his condition.

Comparisons to […]

James Grimsby2014-05-11T22:53:30+02:00April 20th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Horror Book Reviews|

Review: Searching For Paradise by Gerard Marconi

Cate Baum, editor of SPR reviews SPR Awards Shorts winner Searching For Paradise by Gerard Marconi.

It is rare that a male American writer writes about his feelings and experiences in relation to others, especially women. Offerings over the years have been rather narcissistic perspectives in the form of Kerouac, Thompson and Bukowski, with females no better off than a hatstand. We never really learn how the male protagonist feels about the women in their stories, past the sexual attractiveness or hysteria of each one, and god forbid we learn his weaknesses.

Enter Gerard Marconi, author of Searching For Paradise […]

Cate Baum2014-05-21T16:35:14+02:00April 18th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews|Tags: Short Stories Book Reviews|

Review: From Blood Reborn by Keith Soares

From Blood Reborn is the third part of the Oasis of Filth series by Keith Soares, following the unlikely hero of the nameless doctor in his continuing journey across the formerly United States of America. Years after the human race’s fall from grace with the outbreak of “RL2013” – a mysterious disease that causes a slow and maddening death to anyone who is infected, with no known cure – governments move their people more and more into sterile, utilitarian walled settlements where anything but absolute cleanliness and obedience is enforced with strict justice and regular “disappearances” of accused plague victims.[…]

James Grimsby2019-01-22T10:42:43+02:00April 11th, 2014|Categories: Book Reviews, Lead Story|Tags: Apocalyptic Fiction Book Reviews, Zombie Fiction Book Reviews|

Review: Behind the Sun by Sherrie Todd-Beshore

Behind the Sun by Sherrie Todd-Beshore is an ambitious book that is just shy of 600 pages. At the crux of the story is a mystery about an ancient people who captivated Dr. Guy Williams, an archaeologist, after Williams uncovers a key piece of documentation. A captain’s log surfaces after a ship sank two hundred years before. Williams is fascinated by the ancient culture and wants to secure the funds to unearth more about them since many questioned that they ever existed. However, he is unable to get the money needed and he’s never able to fulfill his dream. Years […]