SPR’s book reviews of new self-published books
Status Quo by Henry Mosquera
Lemat is living every writer’s nightmare: the starving artist, unknown and unheralded. He hits such rock bottom that he attempts suicide, splits up with a girlfriend and gets fired from his job. He then meets Guy, a talent agent who urges him to write something lurid and incendiary, which is more like doing a deal with the devil. Selling out his artistic soul works: he becomes famous and controversial, lands a 6-figure publishing contract, but comes to realize that compromising one’s integrity also comes at a great price.
In this day and age, with so many writers and artists clawing […]
Workman’s Complication by Rich Leder is the uproariously funny and engaging debut novel in the McCall & Company series. Off-Broadway actress, Kate McCall, reluctantly inherits her father’s private investigator business. Her first case is investigating a construction accident, which may or may not be a scam. Meanwhile, she’s also investigating her father’s murder with a strange assortment of eccentrics in her apartment building, all the while keeping up rehearsals in a vampire musical.
The Button Chronicles by Juniko Moody is the highly inventive dystopian novel about the very nature of human evolution. Replete with its own inventive language, The Button Chronicles is about a dark 22nd century where mysterious buttons appear from out of nowhere. When pressed, a person disappears, and soon there are buttons for every person on earth, with millions of people disappearing. No one knows where they came from or how the devices work. A suspenseful and thought-provoking read, The Button Chronicles asks serious questions about the nature of reality and how mankind can survive on its current dystopian path.[…]
Peter G Pollack’s new international political thriller centers around Courtney, a student who decides to join the Students for Palestinian Justice (SPJ) group on her university campus, and her retired CIA father Leonard’s reaction to her decision. But when Courtney becomes a target for a planned bombing assignment hitting Jewish organizations, it’s up to Leonard and her mother Allison to try and save her before it’s too late.
Having been injured by an IED, distorting half his body and face, Mason Harris is resigned to living the rest of his life alone. Rejected by his girlfriend after she sees his disfigurement, Harris instead decides to pour himself into his job as an undercover FBI agent. When he’s sent undercover to investigate a Russian crime family in New Orleans called the Nolikovs, he meets a fiery redhead named Ruby, a bartender at the Red Fox Bar, an establishment the Russian mafia is using as a front for their illegal activity.
Billy the Bully is a short informational picture book for younger children by Lacretia Palmer, and illustrated by Romney Vasquez, centering on the issue of bullying and its effect on children’s nutrition.
Eternity Shattered is the debut novel of author Gideon L. Thomas. It is a science fiction/action/military adventure that takes place in a galaxy populated by anthropomorphic animals. The plot follows the desperate adventures of the elite Seraph Corps, a black ops unit made up of the most skilled pilots in the galaxy.
Giyur: A True Love Story by Michael Salita is, as the title implies, an alleged entirely-true love story as documented and retold by Salita, originating from a Caribbean cruise.