Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Time Travel Done Right

Doomsday Book by Connie Willis

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This is the second Connie Willis book I’ve read, and it will not be the last.  The phrase tour de force is thrown around with a distressing lack of discretion, but this book truly deserves it.   In Doomsday Book, the author follows two main characters in two times: Kivrin is an enthusiastic young historian who travels to 14th century England for investigative purposes despite the warnings of Mr. Dunworthy, her tutor at Oxford and the main character we follow ‘back home’ in the 21st century.  […]

Early 80s Gothic YA

The Callender Papers by Cynthia Voigt

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I picked up The Callender Papers after reading a reference to it, and wondering how it would compare with Cynthia Voigt’s other books.  I read several of her others (Homecoming, Dicey’s Song and Jackaroo) as a teen, and had kind of a love hate relationship with them.  Those books are very much products of their time (the early 1980s) and were very bleak and depressing – think of the avocado green, puke brown and mustard yellow that pervaded the 1970s and you’ll understand the mentality […]

Gentle kids book for dollhouse fans

Miss Happiness and Miss Flower by Rumer Godden

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I recently discovered the Internet Archive, where one can read older books online by borrowing 1 hour at a time.  This is a fantastic resource for those older books you loved as a kid.  I’ve been obsessed with dollhouses my whole life, and one of my favorite books was Little Plum by Rumer Godden, about little girls in England and their Japanese dolls and dollhouses.  However, as a kid I wasn’t able to get hold of the first book about the dolls, Miss Happiness and […]

Fun but not stellar who-dunnit

The Midnight Hour by Elly Griffiths

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The Midnight Hour is book 6 in a series by Elly Griffiths, but the first that I have read.  I read it since I adore her Ruth Galloway series but have finished it.  Even though I started in the middle of this series, I don’t think it matters that much, it worked fine as a stand alone.  The Midnight Hour is set in 1960s Brighton, UK, where a theatrical producer has died and his retired-actress wife is implicated in his death.  The story primarily follows […]

Great heroine in a 1920s fantasy

The Monsters We Defy by Leslye Penelope

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In The Monsters We Defy, Leslye Penelope takes a small footnote about a real woman who lived in Washington DC in the 1920s and weaves an amazing tale around her.  Clara Johnson was born wrapped in her caul, and because of that she has grown up seeing and speaking with spirits.  As a Black woman in DC in the 1920s, she’s part of a vibrant, striving community struggling to cope with emerging Jim Crow laws and the ever-present threat of white people. Clara wants to […]

Kept me guessing

Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner

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This is the first in a series about DS Manon Bradshaw of the Cambridgeshire PD.  For those who don’t read/watch way too much British murder of the week stories, DS is detective sergeant.  Manon is an unhappily single 39 year old, estranged from her father and sister, but very good at her job.  When Edith, a young Cambridge University student from a wealthy family, disappears shortly before Christmas leaving an open front door, blood splatter, and overturned furniture, it doesn’t look good. Although Manon is […]



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