Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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The Charms of a Competent Man

Lord Ravenscar's Revenge by Barbara Cartland

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After Romara is beaten and thrown out of the house by her sister’s abusive lover, the last thing she expects is to wake up married to Lord Ravenscar, who wed her while extremely drunk. But when he steps in to help her solve Caryl’s problems, she starts to wonder if they will be able to make a real marriage work. I read a lot of historical romance, so of course I am familiar with the insanely prolific Barbara Cartland, though I haven’t read any of […]

The Audacity of Princes

The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily by Nancy Goldstone

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Joanna I, Queen of Naples, is best known today for having stood trial for the murder of her husband during the height of the bubonic plague, but she faced many other challenges during her thirty-year-long reign. The whole time I was listening to this audiobook, I kept marveling at the absolute audacity of the royal men of this era, who over the decades launched a number of invasions and plots in an attempt to claim Naples for themselves. A woman on the throne seemed to […]

“Anybody who spends a lot of time burrowing through primary records of the old South is going to find almost anything they can imagine & more than a little that they never imagined.”

A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South by Melvin Patrick Ely

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When people think of slavery in the American South, they usually imagine vast, intensely segregated plantations. However, usually Black people and their White enslavers lived cheek by jowl, and this terrible intimacy could give rise to many different kinds of tensions, as demonstrated by the six court cases covered in this book. Most of what I know about slavery in the United States was learned in the long ago days of high school and before, so I chose to pick up this book to both […]

On the Trail of Murderous Magic

The Helm of Midnight by Marina J. Lostetter

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After the dangerous relic of a serial killer is stolen in a daring heist, Krona and her fellow Regulators must uncover the greater conspiracy at play and recover the mask to keep the murders starting up again from beyond the grave. Not only is this book is an intriguing mix of fantasy, suspense thriller, and horror, but it is also stuffed chock-ful of unique world-building and follows three separate POVs, each with their own storyline. It definitely is a lot, but the author does a […]

“Maybe I just thought I was a nonviolent person because in my old life, nobody had ever backed me into a corner with a knife to my throat.”

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

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Maggie wakes up one day, cold, naked and soaked to the skin in the gutter of Kair Toren, the sprawling capital city of Rellas, where her favourite fantasy novels are set. For the past decade, Maggie has read and re-read the two books in the unfinished series enough times that she knows the setting, prominent characters and the plot intimately. It’s what makes it possible for her to lie in wait, trying to rob a shady minor character just so she’ll have enough money to […]

“Writing gives you the power to shape your own world when the real one hurts too much”

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo

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Dark Corner Selection: March 2026 In a different version of 16th-century Spain, young Luzia Cortado works grudgingly as a scullery maid for the miserable and petty Doña Valentina. Luzia can use what she calls “small magics” to make her life easier. She can mend seams, multiply the groceries, unburn bread or reassemble broken things. She performs these little spells, learned from generations of her Jewish ancestors, by singing quietly. Luzia is a convert; she dutifully goes to Mass and hides any traces of her Jewish […]



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