Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Don’t Stop Me Now (I Want) Somebody To Love, and you’re it Freddie

Freddie & Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody by Mike Dawson

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Do have a band that just followed you throughout your life? Did you eat, sleep and breath that band? Did you also tease your little sister merciless about her “boy bands” and their breakups? Well Mike does in Freddie & Me: A Coming-of-Age (Bohemian) Rhapsody. The story Mike Dawson tells us is how the band, Queen and mostly Freddie Mercury, made an impact on his life. It colored almost every big moment of his life (from the first time he heard them, from the time […]

Another solid work from Charlie N Holmberg

Spellbreaker by Charlie N. Holmberg

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In Victorian England, magic leaves traces: runes, smells, and even sounds, and Elsie Camden has the rare ability to not only perceive these vestiges of magic but to undo the magic behind them, though she cannot perform any magic herself. Elsie is employed by two people: a stonemason who can perform only the most basic spells and a mysterious cadre of people trying to equalize the world. It is with this group, The Cowls, that Elsie uses her unregistered and illegal skills to undo unjust […]

Murder, They Wrote (And Directed)

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz

Made Men: The Story of Goodfellas by Glenn Kenny

The Big Fix by Roger L. Simon

The Damsel by Richard Stark

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I went on a bit of an unexpected reading tear these last few days, which is good because I need to clear some space off the TBR pile in advance of reading Barack Obama’s new book.   Moonflower Murders 4 Stars ::Trigger Warning:: Tragic homosexual plot And how sad it is because the book didn’t need it. I was curious as to how Anthony Horowitz was going to follow up with his superb Magpie Murders series. He does so by giving us most of an Atticus Pünd novel, […]

Behold…

The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

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I’m not an Agatha Christie expert. She’s an excellent writer, quite talented at setting up clever, puzzle box mysteries. But as I’ve said countless times, the whodunnit has never interested me much. I’m more interested in the whydunnit. I do believe aspiring mystery writers need to read her in order to hone their craft. But I’m not a diehard. The English countryside whodunnit really isn’t my thing. However, I saw this one was a standalone (the only recurring character is a mystery novelist one that […]

“It is difficult, after the passage of more than a century, to understand the extent to which the train robbery of 1855 shocked the sensibilities of Victorian England.” #CBRBingo – Money!

The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton

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I would love to see the movie version of this, which Crichton also wrote and directed. Sean Connery as Edward Pierce, the mastermind behind the robbery that threw Victorian England for a loop. He really was a smart guy. It’s obvious Crichton did his research about the period (apparently he became obsessed with the Victorian criminal underworld). The book is chock full of criminal slang. You catch the meaning eventually, and it certainly lends an atmosphere. This was a bit hard to get into at […]

If Jessica Fletcher was British and 11 (Bingo – Red)

The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley

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The tenth in the series, I find Flavia de Luce just as delightful now as I did in the beginning. Still precocious, curious, and clever (the way she talks about her bicycle always makes me smile) she’s grown up a bit and experienced real loss, but she is just as vibrant to me as she ever was. Okay y’all. We are calling this red. It’s not a hard red, more of a pinky/salmon/Ross’s shirt on friends sort of shade, but the powers that be in […]



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