SPR’s book reviews of new self-published books
The Waste-Wise Gardener by Jean B. MacLeod
Author Jean B. MacLeod is a peerless maven of making do, as she proves with this well-constructed catalogue of gardening strategies, The Waste-Wise Gardener – Tips and Techniques to Save Time, Money, and Natural Resources While Creating the Garden of Your Dreams.
MacLeod begins with a brief introduction revealing her own gardening troubles and triumphs, then provides an alphabetical list of simple solutions for some of the thorny problems involved in home horticulture, which are generally easy to use, and some quite eye-opening.
For example, materials for the staking required for a variety of crops can be ribs from […]
In Scipio Rising, the first book in the Scipio Africanus Saga, Martin Tessmer has done an expert job of weaving historical fact and narrative into a well-structured plot. The mirroring of Hannibal with Scipio works to weigh them both as military geniuses, bringing the forgotten Scipio to the historical stage that Hannibal has dominated for so long. 
Beyond Borders by Ngozi Iwuoha is a touching story of belonging, identity, and family. Borders can separate us and time can keep us apart, but what keeps us together, as shown touchingly by Iwuoha, is love.
Raptor Ray by Brent Reilly is an eccentric show of imagination. It opens on the strange birth of Ray, the poor scaly dino-kid doomed to ridicule, and it gets stranger and stranger from there on out, telling a story that blends together a huge number of sci-fi tropes (time travel, space travel, dinosaurs, cataclysms, the list goes on), as well as non-fictional elements, for a completely inventive read.
The Fat Girls Club: Paris Bound is the sequel to Lila Johnson’s Fat Girls Club, a fun and emotional novel about a group of friends who gather together to lose weight. As the title suggests, Paris Bound finds the group traveling to Europe, and all of the temptations it provides, as well as a scenic backdrop for the women to bond more deeply.