Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“That had been a little more than forty years past. Fatma was born into the world al-Jahiz left behind: a world transformed by magic and the supernatural.”

A Dead Djinn in Cairo (Dead Djinn Universe, #0.5) by P. Djèlí Clark

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The highlight of this short story is definitely the world-building. I was immediately intrigued by the way Clark wrote about his alternate-history Cairo in 1912, populated with djinn and angels and steampunk machinery, and refreshingly devoid of colonialism. This takes place in a Cairo about fifty years after a curious man opened up a gateway through which djinn and other supernatural creatures, along with magic, entered the world. Egypt has become a world superpower, as the djinn helped them to kick the British out of […]

The Searcher by Tana French

The Searcher by Tana French

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Reading Tana French makes me want to go to Ireland. Her Ireland feels like a much more complex and textured place than I’ve seen represented in more romantic representations.  However, after reading The Searcher, it strikes me as not the wisest choice for an American to up and move to the Irish countryside.  That’s precisely what Cal Hooper has done. Cal is a retired Chicago police detective, and he takes his nest egg to Ireland to buy a run-down old home in a small, quiet […]

Too Good to Be True: Who’s to blame?

Too Good to Be True by Carola Lovering

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Skye has found love. She never thought it would be possible, especially with her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Her knocking patterns and need to kiss clocks prevents her from living a “normal” life. But Burke sees her for who she is, OCD and all, and he accepts her.  They haven’t known each other for long, and they got engaged after a couple of months. They are planning to be married within a year of meeting, and Skye could not be happier.  However, in chapters which alternate […]

Will You Ever Win?

Dream Girl by Laura Lippman

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Laura Lippman continues to outdo herself. After an entertaining (but pedestrian by recent standards) standalone in The Lady on the Lake, she again finds the form she had in Sunburn. I don’t know yet which is better but I know I liked them both a lot. While I guess it’s somewhat of a mystery, this book is a horror, with transparent shades of Stephen King’s Misery. And yet, Lippman is able to make it a work all of her own by taking the piggish perspective of Gerry, the writer, and […]

“The sun is up, the skies are blue, and murder is in the air.”

The Thursday Murder Club (Thursday Murder Club, #1) by Richard Osman

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This really hit the spot, and it had a lot more emotional depth than I was expecting from it! I think I was expecting something more on the cozy mystery side of things, something lightweight, and it did have a bit of that feel to it as well. But this also had a larger scope than a cozy mystery, way more characters, and a lot more focus on uncozy things, sad and emotional things—like accepting death and dying, the realities of getting older, dealing with […]

“When you’re documenting everything you do, you stop living life for yourself and start living it as a performance for others. You’re never in the actual moment, just the response to the moment.”

Pretty Things by Janelle Brown

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Two wildly different women–one a grifter, the other an heiress–are brought together by the scam of a lifetime… This book tells the story of two women from very different backgrounds.  Nina has learned to make a living by playing the con game along with her boyfriend, Lachlan.  They make a comfortable living, but her mother is sick and there’s big medical bills to pay.  Things start to unravel, and the police come knocking on her door so Nina decides to disappear for awhile.  She and […]



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