Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Good modern whodunnit

Bleeding Heart Yard by Elly Griffiths

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Continued my read of all the works of Elly Griffiths with Bleeding Heart Yard.  This book is set in London with three focal characters, DI Harbinder Kaur, DS Cassie Fitzherbert and Anna Vance.  Harbinder is investigating the murder of an MP which occurred at a school reunion; both Cassie and Anna were friends and classmates of the murder victim.  It quickly becomes apparent that there may be a connection to the death of another classmate just when GCSE exams had ended. Griffiths excels at writing […]

Intriguing way to write a fictionalized biography

Briefly, A Delicious Life by Nell Stevens

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I listened to this as an audiobook and found it simultaneoulsy sad and uplifting.  In Briefly, A Delicious Life, Nell Stevens sets up a ghost story around the winter that George Sand, Chopin and George’s children and maid spent in an abandoned monastery in Majorca.  In 1838, Sand and company travelled to Majorca under the impression that the winter there would be warm and sunny, just the thing to help Chopin’s failing health.  Things did not go as planned.  That much is documented in Sand’s […]

Disappointing fictionalized biography

Margaret the First by Danielle Dutton

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Conceptually, I love the book but in execution, not so much.  The book by Danielle Dutton is an overview of the life of Margaret Cavendish, a 17th century English polymath who survived the British Civil War in exile while much of her family was executed, eventually returning with her husband upon the restoration of King Charles II.  Margaret was self-taught in that unlike her brothers she was not sent to school or provided with tutors, yet became an accomplished writer, philosopher, fashionista and commenter on […]

Contemplative modern novel

Double Blind by Edward St. Aubyn

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This was a pretty quick, humorous read that focuses on modern issues among wealthy people.  Double Blind follows a group of loosely connected people: biologists and best friends Olivia and Lucy, Olivia’s ecologist boyfriend Hunter, and Lucy’s global business boss and boyfriend Hunter. There are others as well, including Catholic officials, dilettante California heiresses, Olivia’s father (adoptive – important point) Martin and his patient Sebastian. The book meanders among a variety of topics in modern life – environmental destruction and attempts to combat it, drug […]

Mid-century mind-boggler

The Embroidered Sunset by Joan Aiken

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Many of us read Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase or Arabel’s Raven as children, but she also wrote a host of novels for adults.  The Embroidered Sunset shares the same sensibility as her children’s books, namely, Dickensian villains with no good qualities, crazy side characters who speak in rhymes and break out in song, and a habit of wrapping up the plot in wholesale destruction (for instance, blowing up a castle in Black Hearts in Battersea, attempting to make a cannon so powerful […]

Sweet, slightly mystical mystery

Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton

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Quick read, following a down on her luck woman (Lori) who out of the blue receives an inheritance from someone she thought was a fictional character, Aunt Dimity.  Lori was raised by a single mom who told her wonderful stories starring Aunt Dimity, an archetypal British eccentric.  Imagine Lori’s surprise when, after her divorce, her mom’s death, and struggling to make ends meet, she is left a bequest that requires her to travel to England and live in Aunt Dimity’s cottage for a month. Once […]



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