Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

Putting the Sex in Texas

Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera

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Listen for the Lie, by Amy Tintera, is the other book that I took with me on vacation last week, as a backup to The Ferryman. Like The Ferryman, it is a mystery. Unlike The Ferryman, the ending wasn’t particularly interesting, exciting or unexpected. Instead, the final chapters of Listen for the Lie were just super horny. In fact, the whole book was surprisingly sexually charged for being about a non-sexual murder. It’s almost like someone told the author that sure, murder is okay, but […]

My most surprising 5-star read of the year (also Cannonball, finally)

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

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Monthly Keyword 26: Bright Reading the Rainbow: Yellow CBR18 Bingo: Versus (The brave, tenacious and determined women vs the spineless and depraved serial killer Official plot synopsis: Tallahassee, 1978. Sorority president Pamela Schumacher wakes to a shocking scene of implausible violence and death, and is drawn into a mystifying crime that grips the nation for decades . . . In Seattle, Tina Cannon connects her best friend’s disappearance to the Tallahassee tragedy, and is convinced that a single man is responsible. Determined to find justice, […]

Are all fictional detectives neurodivergent?

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

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4.5 stars Dark Corner selection: April 2026 Nowhere Book Bingo 26: Award Winner (Hugo and World Fantasy Award 2025) CBR18 Bingo: Map (there’s a map at the start, showing the various walls to keep out the Levianthans) Official plot synopsis (since I’m reviewing a book I finished in APRIL): <i>In Daretana’s most opulent mansion, a high Imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree spontaneously erupted from his body. Even in this canton at the borders of the Empire, where contagions abound and […]

Let’s Meet the Meat Industry

A Trade in Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett

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It’s another Shadow of the Leviathan book! And this means there’s a new mystery for Ana and Din to solve. Like the previous two books, The Tainted Cup and A Drop of Corruption, A Trade in Blood takes us to a new canton in Khanum and with that comes a new murder and a new aspect of Empire for Robert Jackson Bennett to pick apart. This time, it’s meat. Or to be more specific, how does an Empire with an increasingly expensive tastes and a […]

“People always say that your wedding day is the happiest day of your life, but honestly, people should try solving murders more often.”

Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto

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CBR18 Bingo: Joker – Vera is a wild card in the investigation around Malcolm’s murder, and shakes up the lives of the suspects out of the blue. After a dead man is found in Vera Wong’s teahouse, being rather unimpressed by the police’s efforts, Vera decides to investigate the death herself. Unfortunately, she finds herself liking all her murder suspects a little too much. A word to the wise: Don’t read this book while hungry. Vera cooks up veritable feasts throughout the book, and the […]

CBR BINGO: You—”‘Mm. Two lovers, from two feuding gentryclans, meeting secretly under false names for their tryst!’ She scoffed. ‘How puerile. How derivative. I pray it is more deviant than it appears!'”

A Trade of Blood (Shadow of the Leviathan, #3) by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Robert Jackson Bennett is on a mission to document the entirety of his own made-up world by creating unsettling, weird, fantastical murders that letting him explore it, and I am here for it. This time we’re exploring the complicated and fraught world of agriculture and how it intersects with capitalism, Romeo and Juliet-style. Also, FUNGUUSSSSS. ALSO! I had assumed that this would only be a trilogy, because his other three series are trilogies, but THERE WILL BE MORE! Maybe a lot more! (More than five, […]



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