Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Slow burn chills

The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston and Athena Gubbe

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The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston and Athena Gubbe (illustrator) is a bizarre story set in an equally bizarre blizzard. Some tension, a big reveal, and questions left unanswered. The beautifully dark images tell more of the story than the minimal text. Perhaps for the more mature audiences. Let me start over. The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston and the illustrator Athena Gubbe is a  bizarre story. It is set in a blizzard. The students are sent home due to the storm starting. A group […]

OutFoxing the Paranormal

The Forgotten Dead by Jordan L. Hawk

Rattling Bone by Jordan L. Hawk

Into the Dark by Jordan L. Hawk

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I’ve been a fan of Jordan L. Hawk since I was introduced to his Whyborne & Griffin series in 2018, and his stories have only improved in that time. OutFoxing the Paranormal is one of his few contemporary series, and it follows a group of ghost hunters who have a YouTube series and a professor at Duke’s Institute of Parapsychology who uses their adventures as part of his studies for papers. It is one of my favorite JLH series, and I cannot wait to see what Oscar, […]

Demonology

Play Nice by Rachel Harrison

Fiend by Alma Katsu

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I read two books last week, both horror, both the kind of horror that used its tropes to tell a larger tale… Play Nice**** I’ve confessed my love for Rachel Harrison’s work many times in this space. If you don’t count Stephen King — who I don’t exclusively read for horror — Harrison is my favorite horror writer. I love her textured takes on womanhood and the decisions women have to make at critical moments of their lives. I’m glad I was cued into her […]

Break your silence if you would/before the sun goes down for good

The Sun Down Motel by Simone St. James

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It’s 1982, and small-town Viv has big-city ambitions. Mostly, she just wants to get out of the town where she has lived all her life; she has a vague ambition to move to New York and become an actress, so off she goes in spite of her mother’s protestations. One dodgy hitchhiker later and she ends up at the Sun Down Motel, a run down establishment in the town of Fell, New York. The hotel manager offers her free board in exchange for running the […]

Twist and Shout

The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware

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Rowan works at a London daycare with the suitably horrible name Little Nippers. Though she likes the children, she dislikes her coworkers and the put-upon, complaining parents that she has to deal with. She lives in a cramped, run-down apartment, which she shares with a coworker who is now on Sabbatical. So when she finds a job ad for a live-in nanny on a country estate in the Scottish Highlands, she does whatever she can to get the job. It doesn’t go well; the book […]

Holiday Reads Part Deux, because I apparently read better in a tent

Craven Manor by Darcy Coates

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John Le Carré

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Craven Manor (Darcy Coates) *** Daniel is down on his luck. He’s a decent guy (this is made abundantly clear) but the only thing keeping him from homelessness is his slob of a cousin. One day, a letter is pushed underneath the door of Daniel’s apartment, mysteriously offering him a job on a mysterious manor that Daniel has never seen even though he grew up in the town. With great trepidation, he makes his way over to Craven Manor, an abandoned home in the middle […]



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