Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Casino

The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America's Forgotten Capital of Vice by David Hill

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Part of my family is from Arkansas. I never knew Hot Springs to be such a den of vice! This is about as entertaining as true crime can get, especially if you like mob tales as I do. There are three running threads in the story: Dane, Owney, and Hazel. Dane becomes the top man for gambling in the city almost by accident but does all he can to legalize it. His ideas are actually ingenious but he’s consistently working against Arkansas’ theocratic bureaucracy. Owney, […]

What happens at Vega’s….

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So this is a fairly standard historical romance, the first in a new series by Ms Linden – The Wagers of Sin.  I feel like I’ve read several books lately with a similar premise – young, beautiful woman is left nearly destitute after the death of loved ones, and seeks to make a fortune by gambling.  And in the course of this gambling, she meets handsome, wealthy lord who falls into lust with her and must have her. In this case, we have Sophie Graham, […]

Gambling to secure a future, winning a duke

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3.5 stars Sophie Graham is twelve when she is orphaned and left in the care of her arrogant grandfather, the Viscount Makepeace. Her father, his second son, eloped with an opera singer (Sophie’s mother) and was summarily disowned. Sophie spent her childhood travelling through Europe with her parents. When both her parents die from illness, there is no one left for Sophie. Her grandfather sends her to boarding school, where she befriends Miss Eliza Cross, the daughter of an industrialist, and Lady Georgiana Lucas. Sophie’s […]

Revisiting a classic I had seriously forgotten every aspect of – also, Cannonball

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Sara Fielding and Derek Craven have a hell of a “meet-cute”. While researching her future novel in one of the seedier corners of the East End, Sara comes across Craven being held down and attacked by two thugs. They’ve slashed his face open, and she intends only to fire a warning shot from her pistol (which sh obviously keeps in her reticule for defencive purposes), when she instead ends up killing one of the assailants. She discovers that the man whose life she saved is […]

Who fears the wolf should never enter the forest.

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When he wasn’t busy writing some of the world’s finest classic literature, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was busy touring European gambling halls. Like many gamblers, he lost a lot of francs. And, like many gamblers, he seemed to love riding the edge of luck and ruin. In fact, The Gambler was written as the result of a bizarre wager in which Dostoyevsky promised someone that if he didn’t deliver a novel by a date certain, that person would have the right to publish Dostoyevsky’s novels for nine […]

Diamonds, Dames, and Danger!

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I’ve been reading the Ian Fleming Bond books for the last couple of years  in order of release. Diamonds Are Forever is the 4th full length Bond novel and like its predecessors much more focused on tension and mystery than over the top action and unbelievable circumstances. This time out, the British secret service has tasked Bond with discovering the head of a diamond smuggling operation. This assignment pits Bond against a crime organization known as the Spang Brothers and puts him in the company […]



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