Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Pithy friendship story masquerading as a heist novel

The Payback: a Novel by Kashana Cauley

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On Bluesky, Kashana Cauley basically asked people to tell the internet about her novel The Payback if they liked it, and to throw it at their enemies if they didn’t. The book is about a woman named Jada, who could have supported herself with a fashion career if Hollywood was fair and if she didn’t steal. That’s why she ends up doing fetish work, which is enough to pay rent or student loans, but not both. Jada understandably chooses housing. In this world there are […]

Why Would Anyone Prefer Yorkshire to Greece?

Bride's Lace by Violet Winspear

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Two years after Bliss’s family home is sold to Paris, she must petition him to save her brother from jail – and the only thing he’ll offer mercy for is her hand in marriage. I’m not entirely convinced that a family that would name their son Justin would name their daughter Bliss, but go off, Harlequin Presents. This has your usual Winspear trademark dark, rich, and apparently sinister hero paired with an innocent heroine rather down on her luck. There’s lots of drama between the […]

I think a woman should inspire a modicum of terror. It is her right.

A Lady for All Seasons by TJ Alexander

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A Lady for All Seasons reminded me of a Shakespeare comedy – fluid genders, secret identities, couples trying to arrange themselves rather than be arranged, and at least a few fools. Be warned, Lord Byron makes multiple appearances. We met Lady Verbena and Éttienne Charbonneau in A Gentleman’s Gentleman. When Christopher (Lord Eden) and James left the country to avoid the requirement that Christopher marry to retain his inheritance, he transferred ownership of his London house to Éttienne. Now a year later, Verbena needs a […]

Mother, Daughter, Friend

The Brittle Age by Donnatella Di Pietrantonio

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In 1997, in the hills of Abruzzo, Italy, a shepherd assaulted three women while ostensibly helping them find a hiking trail. Two of the women died, but the third survived. This chilling crime, which you can read more about here, is the nucleus of The Brittle Age, Donnatella Di Pietrantonio’s somber meditation on trauma and resilience. “Italian Quilt” by Mikeachim is licensed under CC BY 2.0 . The story begins, however, in 2020, with Lucia, whose daughter Amanda, has come home from college because of COVID […]

Better Than the Last Ones, With a Side of Homophobia

Death in Ecstasy by Ngaio Marsh

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I pick up Ngaio Marsh’s books when I want an old fashioned mystery that isn’t an Agatha Christie (though no one beats Christie in this genre, period). However, they keep letting me down, though they are certainly inoffensive for the most part. The last two Marsh books I reviewed were rather dull. Marsh’s Death in Ecstasy was better, although still not Christie caliber. Nigel Bathgate, journalist and similarly dim Hastings to Chief Detective-Inspector Alleyn’s Poirot, finds himself at a mysterious religious service at a place […]

The Harsh Law of Memory

The Accident by Elie Wiesel

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“I knew that our suffering changes us. But I didn’t know it could also destroy others.” “I told him what I had never told anyone. My chidhood, my mystic dreams, my religious passions, my memories of German concentration camps, my belief that I was now just a messenger of the dead among the living.” Content warnings: death, suicide, sexual assault In Elie Wiesel’s The Accident, protagonist Eliezer is a survivor of the Holocaust, where he lost his grandmother, mother, and others in the death camps. […]



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