Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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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 – […]

Come for the Murder, Stay for the Food

Murder and Mamon by Mia P. Manansala

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You do have to wonder how many murders have to happen in your small town before you consider that it might be time to move away. But for Lila Macapagal, solving a murder is just a part of her life now, just like the Brew-Ha Café that she runs with her two closest friends, and her aunties April, Mae, and June, also known as the Calendar Crew. In this, the fourth installment of Mia P. Manansala’s cozy murder mystery series, the Calendar Crew come to […]

A mystery complete with recipes!

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

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Lila Macapagal has had to move back to her hometown and work at her Aunt’s restaurant. As if that wasn’t bad enough, she has to serve food to her douchebag ex-boyfriend, who thinks of himself as a food critic. He writes terrible reviews of the family restaurant, yet insists on constantly eating there. One day, after Lila serves him some special desserts she made, he drops dead. The police immediately make Lila their only suspect. To make matters worse, the ex’s stepfather is the restaurant’s […]

CBR15 Bingo: Edibles

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

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CBR15 Bingo: Edibles (this book features both a lot of food and quite a few drugs) Lila Macapagal used to live in Chicago and dreamed of opening her own restaurant, but both her business and relationship failed miserably. She’s back in her hometown, helping to run her tita (aunt) Rosie run the family restaurant, where they serve Philipino food. Unfortunately, Lila’s ex-boyfriend is a food critic and seems determined to come back, again and again, to sample the food and write scathing things about the […]

Sausage Dogs and Murder

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala

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CBR Bingo, Edibles Arsenic and Adobo was a Cannonball book review choice, but I couldn’t get it from the library until after the discussion passed. Still, I do look a cozy mystery and I especially like a cozy mystery with recipes, I usually cook something from the recipes in the back of the book. (Full disclosure, I do not cook it, I show my husband the recipe and he makes it for me.) So I read this and enjoyed it, it was cute, and the […]

Murder most delicious

Blackmail and Bibingka by Mia P. Manansala

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CBR Bingo Square: Edibles I love cooking, and I love murder mysteries, so I’m always happy when those two things coincide. Pushing Daisies had all that pie, Recipes for Love and Murder is very fun, etc etc. So I’ve also enjoyed Mia P. Manansala’s series focusing on Lila Macapagal and her Filipino family, particularly as audiobooks. Blackmail and Bibingka is the third in the series, and Lila, the baker-slash-mystery-solver, seems to finally have her life in order: the coffeeshop she opened with her best friend is doing great, […]



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