Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Back from whence you came

The London Seance Society by Sarah Penner

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This was an airport bookstore grab on my birthday, one of those deals where if you bring it back within six months, you can get 50% of the cover price back. The London Séance Society will indeed be going back. It’s not a bad read or story, just not amazing enough to take up some of my limited shelf space. The alternating back and forth between two perspectives and narrators actually does some pretty cool stuff with unreliability; both narrators are but for very different […]

“I, Penelope Taberner Cameron, tell this story of happenings when I was a young girl.”

A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley

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CBRBingo14: Time (time traveling) I think this is one of those books that is a children’s classic in England but didn’t become as famous in the US, or else I just missed it as a kid. I picked it up on vacation in England recently along with two other children’s time travel novels, which seems to be a lively genre over there. A Traveller in Time is a book that’s very centered in one place, in this case the farm of Thackers. Uttley is wonderful […]

I just couldn’t connect with this despite enjoying the author’s previous works

The Raven Spell by Luanne G. Smith

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BINGO – Gaslight Sisters Edwina and Mary Blackwood have to move around quite a bit. Any time their neighbors catch wind of what they really are, they must move. Witches aren’t the most tolerated group of people in Victorian England (hence the gaslight). Edwina has the innate ability to find shiny objects and her sister Mary can capture the memories of morals which she only tries to do right before they pass on. Unfortunately Mary accidentally took the memories of a detective who was not […]

A Rose by Any Other Name

Merlin's Keep by Madeleine Brent

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As a big Modesty Blaise fan, I’ve always enjoyed Peter O’Donnell’s writing ability and reread his 15 Modesty books every couple of years. Imagine my surprise from his obituary to discover that he wrote gothic historic romances under the name “Madeleine Brent.” Merlin’s Keep (named after the birds and not the wizard) won the Romantic Novel of the Year for 1978. While I’ve probably never read a gothic historic romance in my life, I ordered several of his romances and started with Merlin’s Keep (because […]

Crossdressing, murder, and blackmail, oh my!

The Body at the Tower (The Agency #2) by Y. S. Lee

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(Note: mild spoilers for Book #1, A Spy in the House.) This has been a fun series to read in the evenings when winding down: the plotting is nicely propulsive, historical London is very well-centered, and Mary Quinn (née Lang) remains an engaging protagonist. This sophomore entry in Lee’s The Agency series picks up about a year after the first book left off: she is now a full member of the all-ladies investigatory firm concealed within Miss Scrimshaw’s School for Girls, and her two superiors […]

monologuing at the mouth of madness

The House on Vesper Sands by Paraic O'Donnell

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A strong opening pulls us directly into the spooky fold; a seamstress with a secret hurls herself from a very important man’s very high attic window. The House on Vesper Sands has all of the hallmarks of a Victorian throw-back; mazes of manners, decrepit mansions, and gin-soaked police populate a scuzzy world of destitute working girls, complicated family histories, and genteel young men all-aflutter. The Spiritualist movement is in full-swing and a cloaked and creepy group of “Spiriters” may be responsible for a rash of […]



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