Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Murder Makes for Strange Bedfellows

A New Lease on Death by Olivia Blacke

by Leave a Comment

When Ruby impulsively moves to Boston, she’s glad to get a fully furnished apartment for a decent rate. She does not even mind that the previous inhabitant committed suicide – though those views may change when she realizes that Cordelia is still hanging around, and keenly interested in the murder of a neighbor. Say ‘an unlikely crime-solving duo’ in application to a cozy mystery, and I will be there in a flash. Also, roommates of all stripes can be tricky, so I was curious how […]

“Maybe the question shouldn’t be why am I doing this, but why isn’t everyone looking?”

Before She Disappeared by Lisa Gardner

by Leave a Comment

Frankie Elkin is a roving seeker of missing people, and in her latest case she’s come to Boston to discover what happened to Angelique Badeau, a Haitian teenager who vanished almost a year ago. Like she does to the cops and the community, Frankie first struck me as strange and perhaps untrustworthy but like she did with them she grew on me too. She’s a flawed person with no illusions about it, and her steadfast pursuit of the missing won me over during the course […]

January 2024 Leftovers

The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of the Anglo-Saxons and the Rise of the Normans by Jim Bradbury

Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block

Charlesgate Confidential by Scott von Doviak

Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell

The Trouble With Peace by Joe Abercrombie

Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey

by Leave a Comment

A lot of folks said this month was slow but I thought it flew by… The Battle of Hastings: The Fall of the Anglo-Saxons and the Rise of the Normans *** Bit too stuffy and academic but gave me a great outline as to the importance of the Battle and its outcomes. Time to Murder and Create **** This is the second time I’ve come out of a Matthew Scudder re-read with a better impression than the first time I read it. How it bodes for the […]

To The Moon

Love You More by Lisa Gardner

by Leave a Comment

Here’s something funny: as evidenced by a thousand hammy postcards and Live Laugh Love-adjacent signs, Love you to the moon and back is a term of endearment in English. In Dutch, however, if you want to tell someone to fuck off, you tell them to walk to the moon. I’m not sure what that says about us as a people, but I was reminded of the duality by Gardner’s Love You More. Not because it involves either linguistics of astronomy, but because there’s an inherent […]

December 2023 Leftovers

Mandarin Plaid by SJ Rozan

Lady Killer, Volume 1 by Joëlle Jones

Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend by Alys Arden

Batman, Vol. 6: Graveyard Shift by Scott Snyder

The Confession by Domenic Stansberry

A Friend is a Gift You Give Yourself by William Boyle

Joe Dogs: The Life and Crimes of a Mobster by Joseph Iannuzzi

Robert B. Parker's Cheap Shot by Ace Atkins

Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow

by Leave a Comment

Merry Christmas. We may need to dispense with the cold/snow songs. They’re about as realistic as Santa at this point. Mandarin Plaid **** SJ Rozan continues to improve with each book in this series. This one has layers and moves well to its conclusion. I’m not gonna be totally sold on a white person writing from the perspective of an AAPI one but I think Rozan does a better job with it than she did in the first one. May have to go long with […]

May-July Leftovers

There Will Be Fire: Margaret Thatcher, the IRA, and Two Minutes That Changed History by Rory Carroll

City of Dreams by Don Winslow

Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York's Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist by Jennifer Wright

Under Color of Law by Aaron Philip Clark

The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson

The Last Quarry by Max Allan Collins

Tripwire by Jack Reacher

Baby Moll by John Farris

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle

The Laundromat: Inside the Panama Papers Investigation of Illicit Money Networks and the Global Elite by Jake Bernstein

Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem

Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich

X by Davey Davis

Our Last Season: A Writer, A Fan, A Friendship by Harvey Araton

The Testament of Mary by Colm Tóibín

Hard Rain by Samantha Jayne Allen

The Boys From Biloxi by John Grisham

Ex Machina Book Four by Brian K. Vaughan

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite

Straight Cut by Madison Smartt Bell

The Crust on Its Uppers by Derek Raymond

That Kind of Danger by Donna Masini

An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green

Spenser Confidential by Ace Atkins

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Weyward by Emilia Hart

The Mysterious Disappearance of Leon, I Mean Noel by Ellen Raskin

The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

by Leave a Comment

I usually do these at the end of the month but then I went through a big reading slump March-May. And then I roared back but realized I was behind. So apologies for this being so long. There Will Be Fire **** A good, readable text on a moment in history I knew little about. Even after reading Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing, I still had a lot of problem keeping track of all the socio-political dynamics so it’s good that Rory Carroll makes it accessible […]



Help Our Mission

You can donate to CBR via:

  1. PayPal
  2. Venmo