Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

An unusual murder mystery

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

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“Gosford Park” meets “Groundhog Day” by way of Agatha Christie – the most inventive story you’ll read this year.   Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed… again.   It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is killed.   But Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden – one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party – can solve her murder, the day will […]

“People can be unpredictable in their cruelty.”

Real Life: A Novel by Brandon Taylor

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Cbr12bingo Debut BINGO diagonal, Money to Music Brandon Taylor’s debut novel Real Life has been nominated for a Booker Prize. Warning: contains scenes of violence, rape, abuse Real Life is the excellent debut novel from Brandon Taylor, nominated for the 2020 Booker Prize. Taylor shows the effect of memory, the past and racism on one man’s life. The setting is a mid-western university at the end of summer, and the protagonist Wallace is a graduate student who is gay and Black. The action takes place over […]

Another Ilona Andrews book I absolutely loved. Are you surprised? (double bingo)

Emerald Blaze by Ilona Andrews

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4.5 stars #CBR12 Bingo: Green   Spoiler warning! This is the fifth book total in the Hidden Legacy series, and the second book about Catalina Baylor. This review may spoil details from previous books in the series. If you want to start at the very beginning, the book you want is Burn for Me. If you want to start with Catalina’s books, the first book is Sapphire Flames.    It’s been about six months since the end of the last book, where Catalina Baylor made a very unfortunate, iron-clad deal with […]

“Money always decides whether things get better or worse. They never stay the same.”

The Reckless Oath We Made by Bryn Greenwood

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In early January, I had a lot of gift cards to spend. I have my birthday, my anniversary, and Christmas in December, and I always get at least one card for my favorite bookstore, One More Page Books…and this year I think I got two or three. On the day I went in to shop, I didn’t have anything particular in mind, so I just went over to the “Staff Picks — Best of the Year” display, and picked up a few books I hadn’t […]

“I’m a gallery of broken hearts”

Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi

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  Yaa Gyasi’s first novel, Homegoing, was a sprawling family saga about a family whose point of origin was Ghana. Though the family in Transcendent Kingdom also hails from there, this book is nothing like its predecessor. Rather than than span though generations, this book’s main focus is on one person as she deals with the pain and loss her family deals with after coming to America in search of a better life. Gifty is a neuroscience candidate at Stanford studying reward seeking behavior in […]

How to Build and Lose a $9 Billion Corporation While Endangering People’s Lives in 30 Easy Steps

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

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CBR12 BINGO: Money Be a near-genius-level Stanford dropout with a revolutionary idea. (Say, performing dozens of different types of blood tests on a drop of blood on a machine that can fit into people’s homes.) Impress the hell out of potential investors with your charisma, intelligence, and salesmanship. Recruit your staff from the best tech firms Silicon Valley has to offer. Give your company a snappy, tech-sounding name. Pack your board with illustrious individuals, including former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of State […]



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