Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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 […]

Maiden, Mother, and Crone of the Corn

Harvest Home by Thomas Tryon

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CW: Incest, rape, sexual assault, violence against women, suicide I found Thomas Tryon’s Harvest Home after digging around Reddit for books similar to Ari Aster’s artful horror movie Midsommar and bought a used copy online. The jacket artwork is cool. I’ll venture back for rereads, absolutely. It’s a folk horror novel written during the production of The Wicker Man in 1972, although neither the author nor director were aware of one another at the time. Neopaganism was having a moment in the 1960s. Times and […]

People let me tell you ’bout my best friend

Stick and Stone Explore and More. by Beth Ferry

Simon and Chester V02 Super Sleepover by Cale Atkinson

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CBR15Passport Other country (Simon & Chester author from British Columbia) Two cute stories for the at least five and up crowd found their way to my reading table the other day. I was looking for something quick, and they seem to fit the bill. The first was Stick and Stone Explore and More. This book by Beth Ferry is at least the second in a series. The adult reader should be fine picking it up but do find the introduction story for the kiddos! Mostly […]

“It’s true on a technicality. I’m being held unlawfully. I didn’t commit the crime for which I’ve been convicted. But if you look at it another way, I deserve to be here. I did a lot of other shitty things, for which I wasn’t punished.”

The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang

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I wish I would have known this was a retelling of The Brothers Karamazov before I purchased this book and got all excited about it. I probably never would have picked it up. There is a reason that I have never read any of Dostoyevsky’s stuff (or Tolstoy for that matter). The Family Chao follows the titular family, owners of a Chinese restaurant in a small town in America. The parents of the family are immigrants from China, and there are three sons. When the […]

Did Something Bad Actually Happen or Is She Just An Addict? *Sigh* I Hate These Books

The House in the Pines: A Novel by Ana Reyes

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Maya is haunted by the death of her best friend years earlier when they were on the cusp of high school graduation and planning their futures.  This is brought to the forefront of her memories when she sees a video on youtube of a woman dying on camera despite not being touched.  Maya knows though, that the man in the video, Frank, (someone she dated for a few weeks at 18)  is responsible for the stranger’s death, just as she knows he was responsible for […]



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