Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A Whole Cast of Jessica Fletchers

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

by 3 Comments

In The Thursday Murder Club a group of retirees gather weekly to solve puzzles and mysteries – courtesy of a friend who has retired from the police force and who has a pile of unsolved cold cases to amuse and intrigue them. The story is told from more than one viewpoint and the reader is given the choice to read between the lines of some accounts, or to consider the reliability of the narrator. The Club soon evolves from being armchair detectives to the real thing […]

Not until I helped kill a man did I realize how complex an act a murder can be

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

by 6 Comments

A month or two before, I would have been appalled at the idea of any murder at all. But that Sunday afternoon, as I actually stood watching one, it seemed the easiest thing in the world. ― Donna Tartt, The Secret History “Time, and repeated screenings, have endowed the memory with a menace the original did not possess. -Donna Tartt, The Secret History Based on my experience reading The Goldfinch, I knew that my next Donna Tartt book would be a serious undertaking. After being […]

A nightmare before a 1950s Irish Christmas

Snow by John Banville

by Leave a Comment

Content note: this review will discuss child sexual abuse, which is central to the plot of the novel as well as to the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland (which is also at the center of the novel). A lady has not been able to catch a damned break so far in 2022, so this is the first moment I’ve had to sit down and write a review, of the most recent book that I’ve finished, and goddamn was it a bleak and tough […]

Poisoning, Police, ex-husbands, oh my (Bingo – Fresh Start)

Catering to Nobody (A Goldy Bear Culinary Mystery, #1) by Diane Mott Davidson

by Leave a Comment

This was a silly book about silly people and it is exactly what I was looking for. I’ve devoured many a mystery series in my day, and have a strong fondness for small town murder mystery hijinks, as I’m a big fan of TV’s Murder She Wrote and the book series by Lillian Jackson Braun, Rita Mae Brown and Alan Bradley. So, it was this hole I was trying to fill with Diane Mott Davidson so picked up the first of this series, published in […]

“On a little street in Singapore We’d meet beside a lotus-covered door”

The Frangipani Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu

by Leave a Comment

  This book is what I call a “cozy-ish mystery.” It’s not an examination of the darkest parts of humanity, nor does it take place entirely in a knitting shop in a cozy New England hamlet. It’s just about the perfect thing for me when I’m feeling overwhelmed by the world or my previous read or both. The murder still feels important to the story without getting you bogged down in misery. This is the first in the Crown Colony series and I’ve added the […]

Nothing better than reading Agatha Christie on a train!

Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

by Leave a Comment

CBR11bingo: Summer Read I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie. Last year, when I finally got around to reading Murder on the Orient Express, I was surprised to discover that her writing was, perhaps, not as nuanced as I remembered it from when I used to devour her novels in grade school. So I was pleasantly surprised at Death on the Nile; I’d even hazard to say this might be one of Christie’s best. Although I saw the movie many years ago, I […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo