Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Consider my Pot, Boiled

A Dead Djinn in Cairo by P. Djèlí Clark

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

by Leave a Comment

It started with John Constantine, grouchy creepy detective magician, solving petty punk mysteries and sassing demons.  I love a good pot boiler, but I like them with wizards, or gods, or most preferably ghosts.  My collection is an embarrassment of sassy magicians solving ghost crimes. An anonymous Twitter surfaced in my feed one day to recommend the short story A Dead Djinn in Cairo. Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities must investigate the potential suicide of powerful djinn […]

Good installment

A Crown of Lights by Phil Rickman

by 1 Comment

Phil Rickman writes women very well. Merrily is such a wonderfully drawn character, but she isn’t the only well written woman in the book.  Rickman writes women as people, and, correctly, does not have them think or describe the women in terms of their boobs.  Rickman is also aware of how differently society would see a woman in a situation as opposed to a man.  This is used wonderfully as Merrily’s backstory makes it to social media.  Merrily’s reaction to the problem is one that […]

Ending with a Zombie Killing Porn Star and a Priest in a Bar

Devil Said Bang by Richard Kadrey

by Leave a Comment

I continue with my end of year promise to finish several started but unfinished books before beginning anything new. Next up: Devil Said Bang, Sandman Slim #4. Maybe it was the month or few between starting and picking it back up, but this one seemed to have a lot less action, and a lot more of Stark inside his own head or contemplating his situation or himself. I’m not complaining about this, it just seems a little different from the previous novels in the series. […]

Not just a mystery, but an educational mystery

The Ghost Wore Gray by Bruce Coville

by 2 Comments

We have a tradition at our annual work party of a book exchange.  You get a book that has something to do with history (I work at a historic site) and you gift-wrap it.  Everyone who brings a book gets a number, and then the first person unwraps a book. The next person can either unwrap a book or steal the book the first person unwrapped, and so on.  Most people try not to spend much, if anything on the book. So I went to […]

Childhood favorite

by Leave a Comment

I’m not sure how old I was when I first read this book, but I do remember that it was a favorite.  Some parts of this have stuck with me for over twenty years, influencing how I think ghost stories should work.  Having been born in 1986, I still definitely feel like we 90s kids got the best ghost stories.  We had a lot of authors that we still pass on to younger generations today.  I’m honestly horrified when I meet a young reader-especially of […]

“Five silly ghosts floating by a gate. The first one said, “Oh my, it’s getting late.” 

by Leave a Comment

“Five silly ghosts floating by a gate. The first one said, “Oh my, it’s getting late.”   But it is not too late for you to pick up Five Silly Ghosts for your special witch, ghost, pirate, alien, princess, or goblin! Five Silly Ghosts is a little board book with the same “five little ghost” story (counting, rhyming and having fun) that we have seen before. There is nothing new for the person who knows this rhyme. However, it is still great for the toddler […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo