Cannonball Read 15

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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August 2023 Leftovers

Red Cat by Peter Spiegelman

You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy

Gangland by Chuck Hogan

Death and the Good Life by Richard Hugo

You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington by Alexa Coe

Britt-Marie Was Here by Frederik Backman

Occupied City by David Peace

Sleepless City by Reed Farrel Coleman

Bad Summer People by Emma Rosenblum

Run Time by Cathy Ryan Howard

Loyalty by Lisa Scottoline

None Of This Is True by Lisa Jewell

The Club by Ellery Lloyd

Not in Bronxville by Rita K. Farrelly

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Unquestionably the worst month in the calendar. Red Cat*** It’s not the writer’s fault that I just finished Robert Kolker’s excellent Lost Girls in light of the apprehension of the man they think is the Gilgo Beach murderer. But my threshold for murdered sex workers was low going into this. I only finished it because it filled a specific square for my library summer reading game. It’s not bad; the mystery is done well but it doesn’t stand out as far as the rest of […]

“We can both hate and love in the same breath and still not want to change a single day of how we live.”

The Sins That Find Us by E.M. Lindsey

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I don’t normally read dark romance, but I’m a pretty big fan of this author, so I figured I’d give this book a try. It’s different but still quite enthralling as well as quite steamy. Kane and his Misfit Toys, as one of them calls them, all have reasons to hate Alice’s father, and kidnapping and hurting her seems like the best way to get their revenge. But the more they spy on her, the more they realize she’s not what they think. Perhaps the […]

Problems of a Family of Psychics

Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory

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I discovered this book in a roundabout way. When I was reviewing a short story collection, I ran across a story I really liked and wondered what else the writer had done. I was pleasantly surprised to find Mr. Gregory had several novels, so I ordered Spoonbenders (recommended by several readers). It’s strange, wonderful, gritty, and a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. The Telemachus family is highly unusual. They’re psychics but not very good ones. Teddy, the dad, isn’t psychic, but he is the greatest card-playing shyster […]

In which I surprisingly don’t hate a mafia romance

Run Posy Run by Cate C Wells

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CBR14Bingo – Minds: Because the dude’s a freaking psychopath (I KNOW) and one of the main ways he initially interacts with Posy is through playing games, mainly chess Look, I don’t read mafia romance. It’s just not my cup of tea. So the only reason I picked this up was because I needed something for the “mafia” square on the Ripped Bodice Summer Bingo. I fully expected this to be a joyless slog, but instead I found an absolutely captivating romance between a psychopath and a […]

June 2022 Leftovers

The Cage by Bonnie Kistler

Gangsterland by Tod Goldberg

Gone 'Til November by Wallace Stroby

Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Survivor's Guilt by Robyn Gigl

The Old Man by Thomas Perry

Iron Annie by Luke Cassidy

The Drop by Michael Connelly

The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy by David Nasaw

Barbed Wire Heart by Tess Sharpe

Amateur City by Katherine V. Forrest

Booth by Karen Joy Fowler

The Fury of Blacky Jaguar by Angel Luis Colón

He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott

Lysistrata by Aristophanes

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I was dealing with work turmoil and on vacation for most of June so I didn’t get the chance to write as many in depth reviews as I’d have liked to. Which is a shame because some of these deserved a longer look; I just didn’t have the time or energy… The Cage **** I went back-and-forth on my review. I’ve been giving out a lot of 4-star reviews lately and considered docking the book for that reason since it’s very borderline. But the more I […]

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba & Then Lost it to the Revolution by T.J. English

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No doubt about it: T.J. English is one of our great gangster chroniclers. Here he takes on a crime story with an added degree of difficulty: the mob’s role in Cuba’s casinos just as Fidel Castro was ascending to power, changing the island (and, frankly, American politics) forever. I know next-to-nothing about the Cuban Revolution so take that for what it’s worth; my competency in fact checking English’s work here is not up to a high standard. Still, I felt like English did a great […]

https://cannonballread.com/2022/06/havana-nocturne-how-the-mob-owned-cuba-then-lost-it-to-the-revolution-jake/



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