Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“She accepted the visit and lived in anticipation, wondering what was to come. It was November 19, 1950. She would be dead in ten days.”

The Broken Girls by Simone St. James

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I’m not going to compare this to The Sun-Down Motel, which is the only other book of hers I’ve read, because they are very different books, which I wasn’t expecting because of their seeming similarities (dual timelines, ghosts, murder). And on its own, I enjoyed listening to this book very much. (Rebecca Lowman does a good job with the narration, although her male performances sometimes slip into silliness.) The two timelines are: Vermont, 1950, at the boarding school of Idlewind, a school for girls who […]

I love this series so much.

The Man Who Died Twice (Thursday Murder Club, #2) by Richard Osman

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I don’t even want to talk about it. I kind of want to read both books in the series again right now. They’re just the perfect mix of humor, pathos, mystery, cleverness, impishness, and intrigue. I continue to be so, so impressed by the way that Osman mixes these various elements together so well, so that one moment you’re laughing, one minute you’re puzzling out the mystery elements, and another you’re extremely sad because these character so perfectly represent the tragedy of being human, which […]

Murderbot does the tv detective partner thing

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

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Fugitive Telemetry is basically ‘Murderbot does a murder mystery in a cop-outside expert tv episode’, with Murderbot being the outside expert, Station Security represented mostly by Indah who doesn’t want/trust the outsider, and a bit of a locked-door mystery as to who the dead person is, how and why they were killed all unknown. Besides the usual entertaining Murderbot snarkiness, there is a little bit of world building on Preservation Station, more in the setting sense and a little bit of cultural background. There also […]

Agatha Christie-esque seaside mystery

Murder at the Brightwell by Ashley Weaver

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Its 1932 and Amory Ames is having marriage troubles. Her playboy husband, Milo, has recently returned to their English country home from a trip to Italy and the rumours of his illicit adventures there have preceded him. When Amory’s old flame, Gil Trent, unexpectedly asks her to accompany him on a trip to the seaside for a week, Amory has the perfect excuse to give Milo a taste of his own medicine. Gil’s kid sister, Emmeline, has taken up with a suspiciously charming young man, […]

Christie, Two Takes

The Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

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The Murder on the Links and The Murder on the Orient Express and The Secret Adversary and And Then There Were None Agatha Christie has always been one of my go-to re-reads. It’s my literary comfort food. I’ve read and re-read most of what I have in my library, but didn’t feel like cracking the cover of an old favorite once again. My to-read pile didn’t look appealing, either, so what to do? I had a bunch of Audible credits and found a bunch of (free) […]

“It felt strange. I was about to read one murder mystery while sitting inside another.”

Moonflower Murders (Susan Ryeland, #2) by Anthony Horowitz

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What a fun, twisty (not so) little whodunnit. I was skeptical about this one, because it seemed on the surface like it would just be the same thing all over again, when the resolution of the first book would seem to make that impossible. But he made it work! I should have trusted. This is a 600-ish page book that I read feverishly in about two days one weekend in July. Some spoilers for book one below; you have been warned. We return to former […]



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