Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Dorothy Dingle: the Perfect Mother

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman by Gennifer Choldenko

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After his mother has been gone for a week, eleven-year-old Hank and his toddler sister Boo are forced to seek out the stranger listed as their emergency contact. But with Lou Ann’s help comes social workers and a new school, and Hank worries he might have made a huge mistake. I don’t read much middle grade nowadays, but I was intrigued by this book because I haven’t read any middle grade book dealing with foster care and parentification before. The author’s note about her own […]

A History of Royal Intermarriage and its Consequences

Royal Inbreeding and Other Maladies by Juliana Cummings

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Royalty was supposed to rule by divine right and meant to preserve their bloodline, but in their zeal to do so lay the seeds of the madness and maladies that plagued many royal houses. It’s always fun to read about mad royals. Removed by time and societal changes, they don’t feel real enough to be sorry for, and so you can fully indulge in ogling at the bizarre stories without shame. And with unlimited money and power at their disposal, there’s a lot of bizarre […]

An Adulterous Fiction in King Henry’s Court

The Tudors in Love: Passion and Politics in the Age of England's Most Famous Dynasty by Sarah Gristwood

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The various romantic travails of the Tudor dynasty have been well-covered in dramatic novels and shows in the centuries since they lived and died, but they too may have been influenced by earlier literature and tradition, specifically the idea of courtly love. In a market flooded with books concerning Tudor marriages, it’s hard for new releases to stand above the crowd. The Tudors in Love tries to carve its niche with the theme of courtly love, that fashionable alleged holdover from Arthurian times, and how […]

The Story at All Costs

Off the Air by Christina Estes

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When controversial talk show host Larry Lemmon dies under mysterious circumstances, local reporter Jolene pursues the story – and gets in over her head in the case itself. At some point, like most people who enjoy writing, I considered journalism as a career path, though I quickly realized I was nowhere near as persistent and unafraid of failure as the job requires. This book, written by a long-time reporter, only reinforced this. The mystery interested me off the bat – the poisoning of far-right radio […]

Rescue Mission in the Desert

K-9 Security by Nichole Severn

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When Elena’s younger brother is abducted by the cartel that’s been slowly taking over the town, she must turn to Cash and his canine partner Bear in her crusade to get him back. I’m a sucker for a dog on the cover. And Bear is a working dog, which is a novel idea for someone whose own dog lives for sleeping, eating, and sniffing every blade of grass he comes across on his daily walks. This is an action-packed story, where the main characters take […]

Old Sins Cast Long Shadows

Shadows of Berlin by David R. Gillham

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A decade after World War 2, Rachel Perlman may have moved to New York City and gotten married, but she is still haunted by her experiences as a Jewish girl hiding in plain sight in Berlin and the death of her mother. Despite what the blurb led me to expect, this book is not a World War 2 novel – at least, not exactly. Though Rachel’s experiences in Berlin hang over the entirety of the story, we spend most our time with her grappling with […]



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