Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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“I have received many love notes about my wit. Though they are often disguised as strongly worded letters which request I hold my tongue.”

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales

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When a rich, eligible young man comes to town, Beatrice Steele, a Regency-era miss with an unseemly interest in crime, is determined that her younger sister Louisa will be his bride. But when he is poisoned in front of the whole ball, she must solve his murder instead with the assistance of the prickly detective Drake. This book is a humorous pastiche of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie with plenty of intrigue and funny characters, but its inspiration is while in some ways its greatest […]

“Remember, Vera reminds herself, your ass is bad. Very bad. And that is a good thing.”

Vera Wong's Guide to Snooping (On a Dead Man) - Vera Wong #2 by Jesse Q. Sutanto

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I often make mystery comparisons to one of the greats, Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher in Murder She Wrote. But it’s not a comparison I make lightly, because that show and character brings me ALL the joy, and so does this book. So, this is Jessica Fletcher, if she was a 60 year old Chinese tea shop owner in San Francisco who knows more and better than anyone else. Whereas Jessica is subtle, Vera is anything but. She is pushy, demanding, and downright insulting, but the found […]

Lost in the Brain Fog

The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp by Leonie Swann

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When their neighbor turns up shot and killed, Agnes and her housemates are excited to be able to pin the death of their friend Lilith on the same murderer – if only they can solve the crime themselves before the police do. I picked up this book because the premise cracked me up. The image of these pensioners all creeping around trying to cover up one murder and solve another is just so dark and amusing. Of course, as I started reading I quickly found […]

“There was, she thought, not very much difference in the behavior of a cat and a high-handed, chauvinistic Tudor autodidact in the body of a cat. The only thing to truly set them apart was the vocabulary.”

The Village Library Demon-Hunting Society by C.M. Waggoner

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After solving her sixteenth murder in five years, small-town librarian Sherry Pinkwhistle is only just beginning to grow alarmed by the sheer number of death piling up in Winesap. But when her boyfriend is murdered and her cat gets possessed by a demon called himself Sir Thomas Cromwell, Sherry becomes sure there is something dark at work. This is the book for every person who has looked at how many books can pile up in a cozy mystery series and wondered what on earth is […]

Death in a Corn Maze

Guilt and Ginataan by Mia P. Manansala

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Lila Macapagal, Shady Palms’ favorite amateur sleuth, is back for another cozy mystery adventure! It’s been a few months since her last investigation, but Lila isn’t thinking about crime at all. Instead, she and her fellow Brew-Ha owners (best friend Adeena Awan and Adeena’s girlfriend Elena Torres) are planning their menu for Shady Palms’ upcoming corn festival! As the name would suggest, the festival celebrates all things corn, and includes the state’s second-largest corn maze! The three friends agree to have a friendly competition – […]

Judging some books by their covers

Shady Hollow by Juneau Black

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

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A few months ago on vacation, my niece and I stopped in a bookstore to browse. We saw the Shady Hollow series display at the same time and both said, “Ooooh.” These books have the most charming covers, so I downloaded the first one from my library to read on the flight home. Naturally, my hope was that the story would be just as charming so I could justify buying them all to hoard like a dragon. Sadly, ’twas not to be. Shady Hollow, a cozy mystery […]



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