Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

CBR15 Bingo: In the Wild

Magic Claims by Ilona Andrews

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4.5 stars CBR15 Bingo: In the Wild (partly set in a big, spooky wood AND featuring shifters) This short novel, which originally was planned as a novella (but the authors just couldn’t fit all of the story into such a short format, for which their fans are grateful) is the second of the Wilmington Years stories, which could clearly also be called Kate and Curran spectacularly fail at a quiet and uneventful retirement. In the previous story, Magic Tides, Kate has to rescue a bunch […]

Twistin the Night Away

The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly

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Last night, I woke up at 3:30 with a warm flush (being a middle aged woman is aces, y’all) and as I was fanning myself on the sofa, I grabbed my book for the usual 20 minutes or so until my temperature made sense again. I’d been reading this for a couple of days, and I was liking it but I didn’t think it’s be a problem to set it back down and so I could finish getting my night’s sleep. Reader, I’m sure you […]

Cozy mystery set in the 1920s with an agoraphobic heroine and a tiny dog named Presley.

The Socialite's Guide to Murder (Pinnacle Hotel Mysteries, #1) by S.K. Golden

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I liked this, but not enough to buy the second book. I will be librarying it, thank you, mostly because there are a couple of elements I’m curious to see how they play out. It’s really a classic case of had a good time while reading it, but wouldn’t be upset if I couldn’t ever read another in the series. This takes place in 1958 in NYC at the fictional Pinnacle Hotel, where our main character Evelyn has lived since the age of six, when […]

An Innovative Take on a Classic Fantasy Theme

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

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It’s impossible to avoid the allusions and parallels, both implicit and explicit, between Piranesi and other fantasy novels. After all, there’s a quote from C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew right at the beginning of the novel. But somehow this novel feels new, maybe because of how it’s narrated. We get the perspective of the character of Piranesi from inside a world that is the only world he remembers, rather than the perspective of an outsider visiting a world that’s new to them. The book is […]

Most influential murder mystery of all time?

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

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CBR15 BINGO: You Are Here, because I got this book from my local library I have long been a fan of Agatha Christie, and of Hercule Poirot in particular. I’m certain I read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd when I was a young teen, but I didn’t remember anything about it. Granted, it was a long time ago, but given that Roger Ackroyd is considered one of the most influential mystery novels of all time, I was surprised I couldn’t recall any of the details. […]

What’s in a name?

The Swifts A Dictionary of Scoundrels by Beth Lincoln

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Cbr15bingo Dwelling, illustrations by Claire Powell This is a really fun work of kids lit (ages 8-12) that involves a murder mystery set in a very old ancestral home. Swift manor is a house full of secret passages and rooms, a place that has evolved over time along with the highly unusual Swift family. Each member of the family, at birth, is given a name chosen at random from the family Dictionary. Names seem to turn out to be strangely fitting for each member; is […]



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