Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

How about some vintage Nora to start the year off?

Chesapeake Bay by Nora Roberts

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This is actually what I read to end the year because mentally, I couldn’t manage much else. I needed the book equivalent of like, season 7 Law & Order, where I don’t have to pay attention to much except when Lenny Briscoe has a good one liner. And it was available on Kindle through the library, so I could read in bed while awake from 2:30 to 4:30 every morning. Christmas season is tough, y’all.  So’s menopause, for those of you wondering. Anyway, Nora loves a […]

A fantasy zoo that is a love letter to the importance of conservation

The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean

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First and very importantly, Thank You CoffeeShopReader!  I thoroughly enjoyed The Phoenix Keeper.  It was a perfect book to close out a year that required lighter reading due to life challenges.  Also there was an added layer of fun as the zoo and location were clearly inspired by San Diego and our world famous zoo. As phoenix keeper at the magical San Tamculo Zoo, Aila is close to achieving a lifelong dream.  Overseeing a breeding pair of critically endangered Silimalo phoenixes and helping to bring them […]

“…and in the old days they did things for a reason. And if you don’t understand why—well, you might end up opening a few doors better left closed. “

Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand

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A story about Windhollow Faire a fictional British folk band, who in the 1970’s England,  rented an ancient and super creepy country house so they could lock themselves down and record an album.  And oh, the text lets us know what an album Wylding Hall (named naturally after the home they were recording in) was, it was the one that made the band capital F famous.  But it came at quite the cost, as the groups lead singer vanishes into the house and is just […]

Slay Ride

The Christmas Card Crime and Other Stories by Martin Edwards, ed.

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This collection is from the British Library’s Crime Classics series and features 11 stories by some surprising (and surprisingly forgotten) crime writers. I found it at one of the coolest independent books stores I’ve ever seen. If you are ever in the Cincinnati area, particularly Sharonville (a northern suburb), check out out the Book Bus Depot. The store is a non-profit with the goal of raising money to promote childhood literacy and to build up classroom libraries. I met the owner when I visited, and […]

It’s not too late to be in the year’s best

The Women by Kristin Hannah

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So there’s good news and bad news. Good news is, I loved this book. Bad new is that I had my top five already written up before I finished The Women, and now I have to rewrite it. It’s definitely worth the extra work though (although the book that got booted might disagree). The Women is set during the Vietnam war and follows the path of Frankie McGrath, who comes from an affluent family that proudly celebrated military service. Following the path her brother took, […]

A Ghost Story

The Voyage Home: A Novel (Women of Troy Book 3) by Pat Barker

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The Voyage Home is Pat Barker’s final installment in her Women of Troy trilogy. The first two novels, The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy, take on the events of The Iliad and imagine them from the point of view of the vanquished, in particular from the point of view of the Trojan women who became enslaved to the victorious Greek armies. The princess Briseis, who became Achilles’ concubine/slave, was the primary focus of those novels, which were brutally realistic in their […]



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