Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Southern Fried Vampires

Bless Your Heart by Lindy Ryan

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This is the story of a family of women (the Evans) in Southeast Texas whose family business is running the only funeral parlour in town.  Well, that is their main business, but their side hustle is killing the restless dead (vampires) who end up in their funeral home.  The Evans are standing between their town and the Strigoi, who occasionally show up.  But the latest round of undead really puts the family to the test, and unearths some family secrets rising up from the grave. […]

A tale of two parallel expeditions

Queen Demon by Martha Wells

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Bingo Square: Culture (it’s a fictional culture but so much of what drives and explains Kai is his cultural background and his status as one of the last remainders of his culture after they were victims of genocide/mass murder – he is the one who remembers the traditions and beliefs that have been lost) – also, 2nd Bingo (5th column). I absolutely adored Witch King when I read it two years ago and was excited to read this sequel. While I remembered the broad strokes […]

Two Completely Unrelated Books

Death to Anyone Who Reads This by Hugh Howey and Elinor Taylor

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen

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cbr17bingo – free (replacing Arts) Death to Anyone Who Reads This  So almost immediately after I said I wasn’t likely to read this short (100-page) sequel to The Balloon Hunter, I went ahead and read it. I’m not sure what had made me think it would be more of a horror novel than the first one. It isn’t really, although there is some more violence in this once. Similar to The Balloon Hunter, this one is a “found novel,” but this time through journal entries instead of postcards. […]

When someone is that calm in a crisis, either they don’t know what’s happening, or you don’t.

The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley

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Suffering doesn’t make people good or noble. A little bit gives them perspective. A lot turns them cruel, and too much – you get a murder or a marvel, and neither of those are really people any more. ― Natasha Pulley, The Hymn to Dionysus His duty was hurting him, and this is the medicine, and the only reason you think that’s unreasonable is that your duty has hurt you much more, there never was medicine for you, and you don’t see why other people […]

I don’t know what a newt is. It’s a lizard, right? I really don’t want to be a lizard.

The Kiss Curse (Graves Glen #2) by Erin Sterling

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Gwyn had no doubt that whoever he was, his ancestors had absolutely once stared down the business end of a guillotine. You didn’t get cheekbones like that without oppressing some peasants. ― Erin Sterling, The Kiss Curse CBR17 Bingo: Purple This story takes place one year after The Ex Hex. Gwynn is bored. Her shop, Something Wicked, is barely breaking even, she hasn’t had a relationship in over a year, and her cousin and best friend Vivi is disgustingly in love and unavailable for witchy shenanigans […]

How to save the community center

How to age disgracefully by Clare Pooley

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This was a fun read – it feels very much in the same tradition as novels like Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murder or The Thursday Murder Club. To be clear, this one doesn’t have a murder (just an unfortunately timed death when a ceiling partially collapses) but it has a similar mix of zany characters that come together and enrich each other’s lives. I know I have read other non-murder examples of this kind of story but my brain isn’t working enough to think […]



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