Lead stories from SPR’s ever-growing independent book portal
Review: Alliance.125: Hirunda by Raita Jauhiainen
Alliance.125: Hirunda is the first in Raita Jauhiainen ambitious science fiction series about a post-war dystopia called Gavialis. The city is broken up into seven circles, the first being the least prestigious, the seventh is the most. It is forbidden for people from the lower-caste circles to travel to the higher echelons of society. This is a sterile world, where children are bred selectively in “artificial wombs,” and the civilization is facing catastrophe because too few girls are being born. Boys grow up viewing women as rare and exotic, and women are followed around by a pair of bodyguards.
The […]
Gated by Matt Drabble is a classic horror yarn inspired by such creepy tales as Stepford Wives and The Wicker Man. Set in a paradise of a gated community called Eden situated somewhere in the middle of nowhere on the East Coast, Emily and her husband Michael, a horror novel writer of some note, move from the UK to start again when a freak car accident kills their unborn baby. Everyone is so very nice in Eden, too nice, and it starts to give Michael the heebee geebees. When their neighbors reveal themselves to be less than perfect, and Michael […]
The Arrival (Ascension Book 1) is a fantasy epic by Dakota Kemp, and is the winner of the Full Moon Awards 2014 Fantasy Prize.
There is a trend in self-publishing for the “selfie” book, a written version of the frequently-seen Instagram snap that appears online so often. Choices: A Physician’s Journey On Two Continents by Staffan R.B. Nordqvist is such a book: a memoir of a Swedish doctor who emigrates to the USA.
Truth Insurrected by Daniel P. Douglas is a highly effective science fiction thriller about the charged topic of UFO disclosure. Down on his luck private investigator, William Harrison, becomes embroiled in a worldwide conspiracy of the UFO coverup after witnessing a UFO. As he learns more and more people attached to the conspiracy have been murdered, Harrison must unravel this conspiracy that spans the globe, and make sure that he’s not another one of the victims.
If there’s chicklit, Divine Roosters and Angry Clowns by Frank Crimi should be put in the category of Dude Lit. This is especially true because the novel is reminiscent of “The Big Lebowski” and the Coen brothers at their most zany. Tarantino is in there as well. Talking about filmmakers is an appropriate starting point because this novel is distinctly cinematic. Not because it reads like a screenplay but because there’s a very entertaining movie in this book crying to get out.
Michael K Smith’s Civil War novel, Home Again, is a fantastic debut.
What would happen if it were the last day on Earth? In The Gertrude Threshold by Christopher Brooks, a scientific formula named after its creator calculates to the day the last moments of global warming: when Earth crosses that threshold, Earth will burn up taking those last human beings left, who are living in brown tubes underground, with Her.