New Orleans – Cannonball Read 17

B is for Ballad

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

August 3, 2025 by CoffeeShopReader Leave a Comment

Bingo 1: “B” square I was in New Orleans in January for a work conference; the only time I went into the French Quarter was to visit a bookstore. On the local interest shelf there was one title I vaguely recognized: The Ballad of Perilous Graves. This was for the first half a generally interesting musical and magical realism kind of mystery in which local kids notice something is wrong with the spirit of the city of Nola and must then save everyone and everything […]

Let’s take this to the neck level

The Confessional by Paige Hender

January 13, 2025 by BlackRaven Leave a Comment

Recently I entered a “Grab a Galley” sweepstakes thingie and I have been honored to win a few that I really wanted. But one of them I was on the fence about putting my name in for. This was The Confessional by Paige Hender. But (and I know one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover) the cover was calling me. Which might not be a good thing since it is about vampires. Picture it: New Orleans, 1922. Cora Velasquez is a fairly newly turned […]

July-August 2024 Leftovers

Heartsick by Chelsea Cain

Brief Answers to the Big Questions by Stephen Hawking

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Conversations With Friends by Sally Rooney

Confucius for Christians: What and Ancient Chinese Worldview Can Teach Us about Life in Christ by Greg A. Ten Elshof

Lucky At Cards by Lawrence Block

A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block

Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK by Gerald Posner

Doing the Devil's Work by Bill Loehfelm

The Kneeling Man: My Father's Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Leta McCullough Seletzky

The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter

Burning Angel by James Lee Burke

The Queen City Detective Agency by Snowden Wright

Poetic Justice by Andrea J. Johnson

September 14, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

Because I’ve been posting most of my reviews due to Bingo, I haven’t kept up with the leftover ones until now. Hope everyone had a good summer. It’s my least favorite time of year but this one wasn’t so bad. Heartsick***: I took this book too seriously when I tried to read it the first time. I relaxed and enjoyed the ride the second. Goofy fun, nothing more. Brief Answers to the Big Questions****: I do enjoy listening to Hawking’s desire to push the boundaries […]

RIP Celestin you would have loved r/Brochet

Bitter Promise by Ila Dell Youngblood

April 22, 2024 by Pooja Leave a Comment

Though Micaela falls in love with pirate’s son Dominique, she agrees to marry Celestin, the man she’s been betrothed to since she was a child. I went into this book expecting a historical romance – I was not aware that the Baroness Pontalba was a real person with a lengthy Wikipedia entry, and so that the story does not necessarily have a happy ending. In that light the way this book is written, with plenty of emphasis on the more mundane up ands downs of […]

Nun of the Above

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy

March 6, 2023 by Jake 3 Comments

As readers, we all dream of books that are specifically written for us. Certainly, we sometimes like to be challenged and pulled out of our comfort zone. But most of the time, we sit around asking questions like: Man, I wish someone would write a book in the hardboiled vein of a badass Catholic nun trying to solve a mystery in sun soaked New Orleans. Or words to that effect. Anyway, yes, Margot Douiahy wrote a book that was basically fine tuned to someone who likes the […]

Everybody is sleeping on this one, and they shouldn’t be!!

The Ballad of Perilous Graves by Alex Jennings

December 23, 2022 by narfna Leave a Comment

This book was incredibly imaginative but also sometimes confusing, but overall a very good time. I was going to Review Amnesty this book but it hasn’t broken out like I hoped it would do, and I would like to see more people reading it, so I am going to say some stuff. This is an extremely imaginative adult fantasy book, despite three of the main characters being children, set in an alternate New Orleans that is just called Nola. In this Nola, magic is commonplace, […]

Zirza on A Gothic Classic for a ReasonIt's one of those wish-you-could-read-it-again-for-the-first-time books. I loved it.
Emmalita on “It came to something when you found yourself hoping that the footsteps you heard were ghosts.”I loved the ending! I don’t think it’s been out long enough to talk about why though.
Dixie on Track Her Down by Melinda LeighI am just starting Track Her Down and I have read them all in order till now and thought I...
Roland of Gilead on How can you give us the gift of a crazy character named Rando Thoughtful and then just as suddenly take that gift away? We need to talk, Uncle Stevie.I came across this randomly years after it was written because I was searching "Random Thoughtful. But I have the...
Emmalita on “Only you, Em, would refer to heartbreak as a distraction. I think I would have a more sympathetic response if I asked to marry a bookcase.”Oh my goodness, Gallifrey was beautiful. I’m sure her mittens were gloriously murdery.

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