Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Review #3: I stayed up until 1:38 AM to finish reading this one

The September House by Carissa Orlando

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1:38 AM is very late for me. I’m a landscaper, so I tend to wake up around 6 AM, willingly or not. And I shouldn’t be reading new books anyway – I haven’t even finished the 10 book reviews I owe Cannonball in the next 10 days. But I read the plot description of The September House by Carissa Orlando last night and couldn’t say no. The website “Vulture” releases their “Best of 2023” lists this time of year, and for some reason the book […]

The Kind of Man That Deserves to Be Run Down

Peg and Rose Stir Up Trouble by Laurien Berenson

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When Rose encourages Peg to meet up with a man she met on a dating site, the last thing they expect is to see him on the news as the victim of a hit-and-run, let alone to find out that there’s plenty of people who would want to see him dead. This is the second book in the Senior Sleuths cozy mystery series, which follows long-estranged sisters-in-law Rose and Peg as they become better friends and solve murder cases that they unexpectedly stumble into. This […]

Some Unexpected Twists and Turns

The Housekeepers by Alex Hay

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Best for: Fans of mysteries set in a different time. In a nutshell: Mrs King has been let go from the fancy De Vries household, where she served as a housekeeper. She now has a plan to pull off the most dramatic heist London has ever seen. Worth quoting: “Choose your first move wisely, and you could steer things any way you liked.” Why I chose it: I was looking for something interesting but somewhat mindless as I’ve been having some trouble finishing the non-fiction […]

Hot Priest Plus Actual Witch? OK, I’m Here For It.

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

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I have a new favorite niche – Mexican Gothic.  Actually this genre and I go way back to my high school days.  I was in Spanish III, junior year, and we read Doña Barbara by Romulo Gallego, written in 1929.  OK, it was actually a Venezuelan novel rather than Mexican, but I suspect the landed gentry in those two countries were not all that different back in those days.  Of course, my Spanish was still fledgling, so what was going on was frequently a mystery, […]

The Mona-Lisa (Saperstein) of Old New York

The Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton

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Edith Wharton’s 1913 novel The Custom of the Country is a commentary on manners and society in the vein of a Jane Austen novel, and it is a dark, brooding tale of dysfunctional families reminiscent of the Brontes. The main character, Undine Spragg, is a strikingly beautiful young woman from one of the upstart “new” families, desperately trying to break into New York society and make a good marriage to old money. I’ve seen the name Undine Spragg come up quite a lot recently in […]

Take a look it is in a book (and it’s fun too)

The Spell of a Story by Mariajo Ilustrajo

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I just counted and if my count is right, this is not only my oddball review of 884 (I like “boxed numbers” or ending in zero or five; or all three being the same….sometimes), but also my SEVENTEENTH Cannonball. (I think I might have reviewed a few books this year. What do you think?) But regardless if this is my 884th or 4th, this book is something special. Which is interesting as The Spell of a Story did not immediately grab me when I first saw/found it. […]



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