Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Jane Austen but with Lady Pirates. With Flying Houses.

The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton

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“It is violence that best overcomes hate, vengeance that most certainly heals injury, and a good cup of tea that soothes the most anguished soul.”  – Motto of the Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels Cecilia Bassingthwaite has been raised by her hypochondriac spinster Aunt ever since she was seven and her Father murdered her Mother and tried to kidnap her. Because of her father’s terrible reputation, the other ladies of the Wisteria Society don’t trust her enough to make her a full-fledged member, which vexes […]

Not for bedtime reading or the faint of heart or stomach

The Icepick Surgeon Murder Fraud Sabotage Piracy and Other Dastardly Deeds Perpetrated in the Name of Science by Sam Kean

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The Icepick Surgeon is not bedtime reading, unless you want really weird dreams. I enjoy popular science reading, especially when there’s some narrative, and this book is both those things. Basically it’s a review of mostly the past 275 years of medical history and the ugly things people have done and tried to justify in the name of science or helping people in the future. There’s a lot of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century piracy and grave robbing involved, a good bit of slavery and racial history, […]

Well, it has a nice theme

Mermaid and Pirate by Tracey Baptiste

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Picture books are my current go-to as they make me happy. They are quick, usually fun, and you can say, “By George the Third! I have finished a book!” And that sense of accomplishment is a real mood booster! However, I read a book that gave me the “I finished a book feeling” but also had a “That was not what I needed” feeling as well. I will start with the negatives of Mermaid and Pirate. This picture book has some bumps with the flow […]

It’s the biggest and most dangerous dating show in the universe!

Sweep of the Heart by Ilona Andrews

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This is not the place to start The Innkeeper Chronicles, as it’s the sixth installment overall (four full books and a novella come before it). This story has a LOT of callbacks to previous stories, so just start with Clean Sweep if you haven’t tried this yet. Innkeepers Dina DeMille and Sean Evans are still trying to recover from the last cosmic adventure that taxed them when they discover that Wilmos, the aging werewolf who’s pretty much Sean’s surrogate grandfather has been abducted. The traces […]

“Funny who gets to call themselves a hero, too.”

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

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I don’t even know how to begin describing this book. It’s like mashing a noir detective novel with a queer pirate fantasy and adding in a dash of horror. It’s weird and sort of wonderful and while parts didn’t work for me, the ones that did worked really, really well. While this is the first in a series, enough is resolved to give it a very satisfactory ending. Yat lived on the streets of Hainak after the death of her father, and joined the police […]

Shiver me timbers and pull up a cutlass

When I Was a Pirate by Tom Silson

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You can take When I Was a Pirate with you can take this book with a shot of rum and coke and say it is a true whale of a tail. Or you can believe that the grandfather has had some far out times in his life.  I mean, does the grandfather in the story tell the truth? Was he a grand old pirate in his youth? (Tattoos seem to confirm this.) Or is he just diving deep into a bit of exaggeration?  I would […]



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