Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

The Three S-s: spooky, sad, and a little bit sexy

The Wild Hunt by Emma Seckel

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Honestly, what else could you need? If you are our Heroine Leigh Wells, you need quite a bit. You’ve been called back to your ancestral island home, far flung from the wild shores of Scotland. World War Two did not hit your home directly, but it stole many young men and sent very few back home. The few that returned are not who they once were. The island is not what it once was. The Sluagh (sloo-ah) still return every October, but every year they […]

a manor on the edge of ruin, a mute little girl, a butler with a dangerous past, and a potentially magical drunken dandy…

The Maker of Swans by Paraic O'Donnell

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What looks like a recipe for potential nonsense is actually a truly surprising and unique thriller! Paraic O’Donnell follows up the Victorian spiritualism of The House on Vesper Sands with another historical mystery, but where I was expecting (and hoping for, honestly) a continuation of the former, The Maker of Swans jumps head-first into the 20th Century and dares the reader to catch up. A butler tries his damndest to keep his employer safe, sane, and sober- but the draws of the Jazz Age have the […]

There is beauty to be found in the melting snow and McDonalds wrappers

Little Foxes Took Up Matches by Katya Kazbek

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Mitya is not good at math, as you can see. But he’s good at imagination. Mitya is utterly convinced that no one has ever looked at two halves long enough, or attentively enough. Mitya has some stories for you. Much like Mitya himself, this novel contains multitudes. Katya Kazbek, who often works as a translator, holds the door open for the curious reader with snippets of fairy tales. Sometimes these tales are her takes on mythology, and sometimes they are the mythology of being a […]

monologuing at the mouth of madness

The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O'Donnell

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A strong opening pulls us directly into the spooky fold; a seamstress with a secret hurls herself from a very important man’s very high attic window. The House on Vesper Sands has all of the hallmarks of a Victorian throw-back; mazes of manners, decrepit mansions, and gin-soaked police populate a scuzzy world of destitute working girls, complicated family histories, and genteel young men all-aflutter. The Spiritualist movement is in full-swing and a cloaked and creepy group of “Spiriters” may be responsible for a rash of […]



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