prohibition – Cannonball Read 17

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 […]

February-March 2024 Leftovers

The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and the Rise of the Tudors by Dan Jones

A Lowcountry Bride by Preslaysa Williams

Bone White by Ronald Malfi

Alexander the Great by Phillip Freeman

Nero: Matricide, Murder and Music in Imperial Rome by Anthony Everitt and Roddy Ashworth

Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James

A Stab in the Dark by Lawrence Block

The Killing Kind by John Connolly

Shōgun by James Clavell

Nobody's Angel by Jack Clark

A Murder in Hollywood: The Untold Story of Tinseltown's Most Shocking Crime by Casey Sherman

Village in the Dark by Iris Yamashita

Nestlings by Nat Cassidy

Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland

The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age by Michael Woolraich

April 3, 2024 by Jake Leave a Comment

Rain, rain, go away. I thought my reading count looked too low and then I realized I didn’t do leftovers for February, so here’s Feb-March combined. The Wars of the Roses: The Fall of the Plantagenets and Rise of the Tudors ***** Jones is such a talented historian. Gets all the important stuff of the Wars of the Roses in great detail and lets the story entertain. His Templars book will soon be on my radar. A Lowcountry Bride**** Had to read this for a library […]

Raise a Glass

Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol by Mallory O'Meara

May 8, 2022 by Halbs 1 Comment

“All drinks are girly drinks.” This sentence closes Mallory O’Meara’s book and also serves a sort of double-pronged thesis. All drinks are girly drinks in the sense that women can drink what they want. Historically, all drinks are “girly” drinks in the sense that women around the globe were integral to the development of brewing, distilling, mixing, and serving alcoholic drinks. (O’Meara is great at double meanings in subtitles. Her Lady from the Black Lagoon is subtitled “Hollywood monsters” in the horror sense, and also […]

Don’t mess with Louise Lloyd

Dead Dead Girls (Harlem Renaissance Mystery #1) by Nekesa Afia

December 29, 2021 by teresaelectro Leave a Comment

Dead Dead Girls by Nekesa Afia has a beautifully illustrated cover that caught my eye. I (wrongly) assumed this was a cozy mystery set in the Harlem Renaissance. But it’s a historical mystery about a serial killer murdering Black girls who work or visit speakeasies. The book follows Harlem resident Louise Lloyd who is unintentionally famous for surviving a kidnapping as a teenager. Known as Harlem’s Hero, she rescued her fellow captives. In the present time of the book, she wants to move past all […]

“I think many a trouble begins with love, and it’s important to remember that when life feels like the shit scraped off Death’s boot sole.”

The Paragon Hotel by Lyndsay Faye

April 6, 2021 by narfna Leave a Comment

I feel like only Lyndsay Faye could not only make me actually sit through reading a story about the mafia, but enjoy it. (Thankfully, the mafia portions are really only about 1/3 of the novel.) I just, I really hate stories about organized crime. I don’t know why. Really, this story isn’t about the mafia. It’s about Alice “Nobody” James, who is on the run from the mafia, yes, but is taken in by the residents of the Paragon Hotel in Portland, Oregon when a […]

A masterclass in the novella; body horror and racism collide.

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark

February 7, 2021 by Mobius_Walker 4 Comments

We know that the people who join the Ku Klux Klan are monsters. Average people who act in monstrous, horrible ways. But what if some of the Klan members were actual monsters? Giant, hulking, dog-like beasts that want to consume and destroy Black people? Such is the premise of Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark. Maryse, a Black woman, hunts these monsters in Prohibition America with the help of her magical sword infused with the anger, pain, and despair of Black men and women of […]

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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