Lead stories from SPR’s ever-growing independent book portal
Review: The Coalition by Samuel Marquis ★★★★
The Coalition by Samuel Marquis is a complex but fast-paced conspiracy thriller about a political assassination. Moderate Republican president-elect Krieger is shot down in Denver by a ruthless female assassin. FBI agent Kenneth Patton tries to hunt her down and becomes embroiled in a far larger conspiracy than one lone assassin. A group called The Coalition is bent on bringing about a far-right government in Washington, and they’re not content with just one assassination. Locke needs to find the assassin, uncover the Coalition’s plot, and make sure the death toll doesn’t go even higher.
Marquis knows his stuff: the interworkings […]
Something dark stirs off of the coast of Marillin, and soon it will threaten the entire world. As the Wards weaken and the people of the Vales are constantly thwarted in their efforts to push back the darkness – or even merely survive it in many places – only the last of the rangers can hope to put the Bane back into order.
Tales For Your Monkey’s Mind by Steve Michael Reedy is a book of fables where everything is not always as it seems. Stories about toy factories, clowns, magical storybooks, witch’s spells, and more each give a different moral about life and what’s most important. It’s an entertaining book for kids that dare to be dark. Overall, it’s an ambitious and imaginative work of children’s fiction.
Squirrel Days by Dustin Costa is the hard-to-classify but always-entertaining satire about the so-called US drug war. Renegade disc jockey insults the wrong people on the radio and flees to the marijuana capital of Northern California with his one-legged girlfriend, Juanita. There they find refuge with a wide variety of eccentric characters, each more insane than the last: wizards, an alien, a mad scientist, among others. Harnessing a powerful quantum weapon, this group of misfits thinks they have what it takes to defeat a bloodthirsty drug cartel.
Weeping Water by JT Ruby is an epic novel about cryonic suspension – freezing something with life-threatening injuries in order to heal them when there are significant advances in medical technology. It follows Annie, who dies in a plane crash in the eighties, and Elliot, who dies in a car accident in the nineties, as they try to piece together their lives after being unfrozen. Spanning many generations and covering cryogenics from every angle, Weeping Water is a fast-paced and thought-provoking read.
Illuminarium, by Truth Devour, is the creative and thought-provoking first installment in the planned five book Soliloquy’s Labyrinth series.
When Krasnoslava Tsarinovna, younger sister to the Empress of Zem’, wishes to be let free to explore the world, her wish is unexpectedly granted when an Imperial soldier approaches the kingdom for support in exploring the Midnight Land; the land beyond the sun-line. The young royal volunteers for the mission, and unexpectedly, is allowed to join. Soon picking up the somewhat more casual moniker “Slava”, Slava and her companions venture into the unknown in The Midnight Land: Part One: The Flight by E.P. Clark.