Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Local Booksellers Know Best (Part One)

These Hollow Vows by Lexi Ryan

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A few months ago I started asking the teams at my two nearest bookstores, “what’s the best thing you’ve read this month?”  I have come home with a variety of genres (only one of which I’ve never really been into), and a 100% strike rate. These Hollow Vows is the first book in a YA fantasy series by Lexi Ryan, who I was quite sure rang a bell when the bookseller mentioned her (as it turns out, I’ve read about 8 of her adult romances).  […]

Pure comfort

Alpha by Audrey Faye

Heart by Audrey Faye

Rebel by Audrey Faye

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Several people in my not Cannonball Read book community recommended Audrey Faye’s Ghost Mountain Wolf Shifter Series. I grabbed the first one from Kindle Unlimited and, as I do, opened it to read the first couple of pages. And then I kept going and read until 5 am. I immediately downloaded the rest of the series. Which may have been a mistake, but seriously, this series is a soft therapy session and pure comfort. While I was reading the series, there were a number of […]

Embarrassment, as it turns out, is more powerful than information. And shame is the enemy of truth.

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

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This is one of those books that I will be thinking about long after I finished it. When, in 1955, hundreds of thousands of women of all ages spontaneously turn into dragons, the government’s official statement is that the women “disappeared.” Scientists who defy the government’s gaslighting call it the “Mass Dragoning” and begin to study the phenomenon. Much of that study is driven undergound by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Meanwhile, families are left to pick through the wreckage, both literally and figuratively, of […]

If Crooked Kingdom continued for an additional 700k words

Dealing with Our Demons by ravenyenn19

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Kaz removed the paper to reveal a hat just like the previous one she had ordered for him nearly a year ago, but of even better craftsmanship. He picked it up and turned it over. The inside was lined in black suli silk identical to what Inej had worn tonight, but just inside along the seam, stitched in red silk thread, was a ‘K’ next to a heart. The font was the exact replica of a playing card. The ‘K’ did not stand for ‘Kaz’. […]

Fish or fowl?

The Cat, the Owl and the Fresh Fish by Nadine Robert

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When reading the title I read, The Cat, the Owl and the Fresh Fish as “The Cat and Owl” making me think this was going to be an Owl and Pussycat remake. Was it going to be “modern” or keep to the classic format? Was it going to be long, short or…. Oh, wait it has this fish thing going on, too. Well maybe I will read then (I thought) as it is going to be different. It is not an Owl and Pussycat story. […]

A wonderful SF/F anthology for young adults (and really anyone!)

Firebirds by Edited by Sharyn November

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In retrospect so many of the books I loved from a young reader until today were published under the Firebird imprint, and I feel incredibly lucky to have been contemporaneous with what were clearly great years for their publishing program. Just looking at the list of books that takes up the first two pages here — Lloyd Alexander, Nancy Farmer, Sylvia Engdahl, Brian Jacques, Robin McKinley,  Tanith Lee, etc — and then considering the additional star power of this anthology — Charles Vess, Garth Nix, […]



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