Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Refusing to conform to stereotypical gender norms on two different continents

My Name is Emilia del Valle by Isabel Allende

by Leave a Comment

3.5 stars Thanks to Netgalley and RandomHouse for this ARC. My opinions are my own. Emilia del Valle Claro grows up in San Francisco in the latter half of the 19th Century. Her mother, Molly, is of Irish descent and was a nun before she was seduced by an unscrupulous young Chilean aristocrat, who left her pregnant and entirely without support (she obviously had to leave the convent). She married Francisco Claro, the intelligent and kind-hearted teacher at the Aztec Pride School, and he’s the […]

A lovely historical romance with some supernatural elements

The Widow of Rose House by Diana Biller

by 5 Comments

4.5 stars Nowhere Book Bingo: Came out more than 4 years ago CBR16 Sweet Books: New (new author) It’s 1875 and Professor Samuel Moore is doing marvellously, thanks to the many inventions he and his family are coming up with. What he really wants to do, though, is investigate and possibly prove the existence of ghosts, and to do that, he requires an introduction to the infamous Mrs. Alva Webster, a widow with a scandalous reputation. Sam doesn’t really care about Mrs. Webster’s apparently lurid past, […]

A Bit Mellow for a Smuggling Pirate Heroine

Destiny's Captive by Beverly Jenkins

by Leave a Comment

Bingo Square: UnCannon I picked this one up because it came up a while back on The Ripped Bodice’s Instagram as a recommendation for one of their summer bingo categories (I am not participating in that bingo, one is enough). I read Indigo a few years ago, and appreciated how well researched and educational it was; since then I have seen Beverly Jenkins comment once in a while on Twitter and have always meant to check out another one of her novels. This one was […]

Cheating shmeating! In the mid-19th century, Harvard really knew how to rock a scandal.

Blood & Ivy: The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard by Paul Collins

by Leave a Comment

Ooh, I do love a good period true crime drama. From Erik Larson’s much-lauded Devil in the White City, to Kate Summerscale’s lesser-known The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, to Bruce Chadwick’s I Am Murdered (which I reviewed all the way back for CBR5),  you take a  murder that’s at least a century old, add some period costumes, a few blue collar witnesses pitted against high-brow lawyers, and a lot of research, mix well, and you have a perfect cocktail of historical entertainment. I especially enjoy reading […]

Back to the future

by 1 Comment

In what must be the most frightening birthday surprise ever, on Dana’s 26th birthday, as she is moving into a new house with her husband Kevin, she suddenly feels dizzy and gets transported away from her safe and familiar surroundings in 1976. She comes to in the woods by a river, where a boy is in the process of drowning. Dana reacts instinctively and wades into the water, rescuing the boy. Faced with the boy’s hysterical mother, and more terrifyingly, the boy’s angry father, who […]

Love during the American Civil War

by 1 Comment

Until she was thirteen, Marlie Lynch grew up with her mother, a freed slave and wise woman. After her white father’s death, she was taken in by her half-sister and has been able to combine her knowledge of herbs and root magic with scientific principles. Three years into the American Civil War, Marlie and her half-sister are working surreptitiously to aid the cause of the Union, giving aid to runaway slaves and Freedmen, taking medicine and food to imprisoned Union soldiers, and with Marlie sending […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo