Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

That Feeling When Your Dog Retrieves a Dismembered Leg

Flight Risk by Cherie Priest

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CBR 15 Bingo – North America: This book is set in rainy Seattle, Washington, and we see plenty of the splendor of its nature as well. Leda, a travel agent and part-time psychic, gets swept up in the case of a dual disappearance when a couple is reported missing in seemingly unrelated circumstances. This is the second book in The Booking Agents series, which follows Leda and a skeptical police detective, Grady, as they solve confounding crimes. I read the first book a few years […]

A great time, unless you’re on the death list!

The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

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“All life is dangerous. We forget that, we who have been reared in one of the small pockets of civilization. For that is all that civilization really is…small pockets of men here and there for who have gathered together for mutual protection…They have beaten the jungle – but that victory is only temporary. At any moment, the jungle will once more take command. Proud cities that were, are now mere mounds of earth, overgrown…Life is always dangerous – never forget that.” Those lines from a […]

“Justice may be slow, but she’s also relentless.”

The Change by Kirsten Miller

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Bingo Square: Bodies, Bodies (lots of talk about the female body and menopause, but also dead bodies) Three middle aged women, tired of being ignored and facing hideous sexism, band together to take on a serial killer. Nessa hears the call of dead girls, coming from near the ocean. She was told she had this gift when she was a child, and it would surface when she was much older. Now she can’t rest until she helps these lost souls. Jo’s hot flashes are almost […]

Watching Beckett while the world burns

The Performance by Claire Thomas

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Bingo: Bodies;  Passport: Contemporary fiction On the stage a woman is buried up to her waist in a hill of parched grass, desperately cheerful under the blazing light.  In the theatre three women watch, their thoughts sliding between the performance, their surroundings and their lives outside.  Margot sits with her “expensive, unobstructed view of the stage” trying not to think about the meeting with the dean, when the prospect of her retirement was spoken aloud.  Margot is tense, envious of the woman’s offstage husband and […]

“Even the afterlife is designed to keep the masses stupid.”

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka

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Bingo: Asia/Oceania; Passport: Sri Lanka Maali Almeida is dead.  He can’t remember exactly what happened, and it takes a while for the reality of his situation to sink in.  Death is confusing, a bureaucratic maze with rules that everyone seems to expect him to already know, and forms that must be filled in before his seven days are up and he must choose what happens next. Maali desperately wants to know how he died.  He can follow his body through the ghost-ridden streets of Colombo […]

Coming soon to a screen near you

Damascus Station by David McCloskey

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Bingo: Politics, Passport: Syria This is a book that’s begging to be made into a movie, or maybe a prestige mini series.  It ticks all the boxes.   Author David McCloskey, is a former CIA agent, so will have some great anecdotes for the promotional tour. Main character Sam Joseph would be a great role for someone trying to break into the action hero gig before the old guys hog all the lead roles forever using CGI to stay young.  There are also strong female characters […]



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