Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

A 300 year saga that goes surprisingly quickly

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

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Addie LaRue was born in a small town in France. Over 300 years ago. It’s 2014, and swhe now lives in New York and survives by lying, stealing, pilfering, and taking advantage of her unusual gift (or curse), she is forgettable. Not as in plain or nondescript. Rather, once she leaves someone’s sight, they forget her and meet her all over again. This is mildly inconvenient in shops and movies theaters, but it is tragic with lovers and friends. Imagine having a perfect day with […]

Crime Spree

Skin Deep by Sung J. Woo

The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny

Hell in the Heartland: Murder, Meth and the Case of Two Missing Girls by Jax Miller

Later by Stephen King

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I binged a lot of crime fiction (with one non-fictional exception) as there was a lot of traffic on my already long commute this week, allowing me to synergize eyeball reading with audio. Plus I took off the weekend so I had some extra time… Skin Deep 3 stars So rare, entertaining and enjoyable to have a transracial adoptee as a protagonist. While author Sung J. Woo doesn’t lean too hard on Siobhan’s background, he weaves it in to make her a fully realized person. The […]

“Bind your fate to mine”

Lore by Alexandra Bracken

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Official book description: Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.   Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family’s sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory. For years she’s pushed away any thought of […]

50 Shades of 9/11

Small Town by Lawrence Block

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I don’t quite know what to make of Lawrence Block’s Small Town.  On the one hand, Block is trying to catch the spirit of the City in the months following 9/11. The story follows a cast of characters: a cop, a criminal, and a few in between, whose lives converge due to a series of murders that shake a still shaken city. Lawrence Block is one of New York City’s great poet laureates, and I appreciate what he is trying to do with the story, even […]

A cozy mystery for coffee geeks

On What Grounds by Cleo Coyle

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I decided for a change of pace with On What Grounds by Cleo Coyle, the first Coffeehouse mystery. I like coffee, but I really like humorous pun book titles even more. I also LOVE me some cozy mysteries. I’m patiently waiting for the Christmas romances to disappear and the return of Hallmark mystery marathons. They are a balm to the soul whether on screen or the page. I like how the mystery tends to be solved swiftly and how easily I can devour the pages. […]

Famiglia

Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America's Most Powerful Mafia Empires by Selwyn Raab

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After reading Michael Cannell’s A Brotherhood Betrayed, I had an itch to scratch for mob books. I read a few others but all roads led to me finally tackling Selwyn Raab’s massive tome on New York’s famous five families. Let’s just say the itch has been scratched…raw. This is as good of a book as could reasonably be expected, considering its ambitious and unwieldy goal of writing a narrative about all five New York mafia families. Having read a lot of mob origin stories lately, I’m […]



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