Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Every war is a war against the child.”

The White Lady by Jacqueline Winspear

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CBR17 Bingo: White – Behold, the cover. Also, a bonus! The title. Elinor is a veteran of two world wars and a trained killer, but all she wants now is to retreat into a peaceful, solitary existence in the English countryside. But when a violent past comes back to haunt her neighbors, she cannot help but become drawn in. I’m sure I’ll eventually get around to checking out Winspear’s long-running Maisie Dobbs series, but in the meanwhile I figured I’d pick up the standalone The […]

Love, Kindness, Danger

The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival by Estelle Nadel, Bethany Strout and Sammy Savos

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“There are very few survivors left, and I want the world to know that there was a Holocaust” The Girl Who Sang: A Holocaust Memoir of Hope and Survival is a short graphic novel, but has a lot packed in. Estelle Nadel, Bethany Strout and Sammy Savos created an informative, quick story about how one girl survived during wartime, a girl who was lost and how she found her voice when all seemed to be the end of the world.  There are uncomplicated illustrations supporting […]

Keeping Hope in the Jungle

Sisters Under the Rising Sun by Heather Morris

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The passengers of the Vyner Brooke are pitched from the frying pan to the fire when the ship upon which they have been fleeing the Japanese invasion of Singapore is sunk off the shores of Indonesia. The women and children, musician Norah Chambers and nurse Nesta James among them, must survive in jungle camps until the end of the war. I am continuing my informal journey through the Pacific theatre of World War 2 with Sisters Under the Rising Sun, which chronicles the lives of a […]

The Nazi Handmaid’s Tale

Widowland by C.J. Carey

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In a 1953 England under the control of German forces, life is good for Rose Ransom, a member of the privileged Geli class – or at least as good as life can be for a woman in the oppressive regime. But when she is given the task of infiltrating Widowland in search of possible subversives, she comes to learn she might have more power than she always thought. The premise of this book caught my eye immediately. I haven’t really read alternate history books before, […]

A Mysterious Introduction to Agatha Christie

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie

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Having never read an Agagtha Christie book before, I decided it was only appropriate to begin with her first Poirot mystery, rather than a more well known title like Murder on the Orient Express. The reader follows narrator Arthur Hastings, a soldier recently released on sick leave from the Western Front during WW2. He runs into an old friend, John Cavendish, who invites him to stay at his families sprawling estate, Styles Court. There, Hastings is reintroduced to several characters: Emily Inglethorp, John’s stepmother Mary […]

“No one survives a war’s front lines without ghosts clinging to them.”

Angels of the Pacific by Elise Hooper

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CBR 15 Bingo – Hold Steady: To survive the war, Tess and Flor have to make a stand and hold steady in their efforts to undermine the Japanese occupiers. After Japan invades and occupies the Philippines during WW2, American nurse Tess and Filipino university student Flor must do whatever they can to survive and help those around them. In my ongoing quest to find WW2 historical novels which don’t simply rehash the experience of the London Blitz or the French resistance, I have looked to the […]



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