SPR’s book reviews of new self-published books
Bright Moon Ridge: A Search in China by Linus Treefoot
Bright Moon Ridge by Linus Treefoot is a literary adventure about Johnny Bartooth who’s dropped a bombshell at 19-years-old – he learns, via a journal brought to him by an aging hippy, about the origin of his parents, who he’s never known. His father once traveled through China and met the beautiful Mei, a doctor tending to his wounds after a vicious attack. They start a love affair, but Mei is trapped in China, so Johnny’s father must go back to save her. Years later, Johnny follows in his father’s footsteps to China to finally discover his parents’ fate.
It’s […]
Must be Relevant to Make Some Money by Dr. Phil Copeland (“The Other Dr. Phil,” as it says on the cover) is a comprehensive guide outlining long-term planning for businesses, focusing on such important facets as leadership, innovation, sustainability, marketing strategy, and effective engagement with consumers.
Philipe Bruce has a passion for human resources and how to maximize potential in a diverse workforce. Millennials, otherwise known as Generation Y, are changing – and breaking – the rules of business, and talent management heads are going to have to learn how to make the most of this resource, as millions of young workers enter the job market.
Author Finn Bell’s exciting New Zealand thriller about a missing girl and a suicidal disabled man on a mission opens with a quote from Hitler about God. This powerful start is surprisingly the exact scene-setter for what can only be described as an unforgettable, cutthroat fable that examines ego and self-obsession in the face of murder. All of this in a book set in New Zealand, it’s unlikely readers will have picked up anything quite so original in this genre for some time.
In The Tale of Miss Berta London: “Recollections of Accomplishments,” readers experience the turmoils of the eponymous character as she overcomes adversity with shocking resolve, and demonstrates an ability to roll expertly with life’s many punches in her role as a fashion editor for the international E-Fashion Magazine and then onto becoming a nanny for the Williamson children.
Woodiss is Willing, edited by George Dalrymple, is a fictionalized account of the life of Henry Woodiss, who gained notoriety in the 1920s in England due to his high-profile affair with the wife of Sir Coningsby Coningsby-Clarke, Lady Edith. Penned by Woodiss himself in a manuscript supposedly finished in the 1960s, he presents his story as comical fiction at the expense of both himself and the myriad figures involved in the debacle.
The Assyrian Girl by Thomas W. Devine is a terrorist thriller following Matt Couper, a security contractor who’s stationed in Iraq in 2003. There he saves the life of Tara Nasrim, an Assyrian teenager, a memory which haunts him years later. When she shows up in New Zealand five years later, their lives become as complicated as war-torn Iraq – thrust into a struggle with a Islamic terrorism. It’s a book about the power of faith versus the seductive pull for many of fundamentalist dogma, and how to maintain love in this increasingly complicated and dangerous world.
In Blanket of Hearts, poet Robert A. Cozzi explores themes of love and memory and the bittersweet nexus of the two when a union ends. He captures the pain of seeing an old lover with their new flame, the chances not taken and still remembered years later, and the all-too-human desire to “hit the rewind button.” In other poems, he recalls the ecstasy of new love, “when everything tasted of ice cream” and desire is like an all-consuming riptide, pulling him toward oblivion. He charmingly describes the beloved’s voice as “the cinnamon in my hot chocolate.” The final poem […]