Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

More Murder, Less Family Drama Please

The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins

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Decades after the heiress Ruby McTavish was kidnapped as a toddler and dubiously recovered a year later, her adopted son Camden and his wife Jules return to her ancestral home in a bid to claim her long-neglected inheritance. This book draws inspiration from several cases in the early 20th century in which a kidnapped or vanished child was thought to be returned, only for it to be later discovered that it was instead some unrelated child who for whatever reason was trying to be forced […]

“I have received many love notes about my wit. Though they are often disguised as strongly worded letters which request I hold my tongue.”

A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales

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When a rich, eligible young man comes to town, Beatrice Steele, a Regency-era miss with an unseemly interest in crime, is determined that her younger sister Louisa will be his bride. But when he is poisoned in front of the whole ball, she must solve his murder instead with the assistance of the prickly detective Drake. This book is a humorous pastiche of Jane Austen and Agatha Christie with plenty of intrigue and funny characters, but its inspiration is while in some ways its greatest […]

“If I were to live here in Cardiff, by the sea, I think that another self would emerge in me. My soul.”

Cardiff, By the Sea by Joyce Carol Oates

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Joyce Carol Oates presents four uneasy novellas of suspense, all of which are centered around a woman in peril, often from the male forces in her life. Cardiff, by the Sea – 3.5 stars Clare, an academic who was adopted as a toddler, returns to her unknown past when she unexpectedly inherits a house from her birth grandmother, but what she learns about her birth family leaves her unmoored. I loved the prose in this novella (as I did in all of them), as well […]

With friends like these…

In My Dreams I Hold A Knife: A Novel by Ashley Winstead

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If you like murder mysteries and want a quick read, this book could fit the bill. I found it hard to put down, even though (maybe because?) the characters are all pretty terrible people. Main character and narrator Jessica Miller is looking forward to her ten year college reunion, but when she returns to Duquette, some old ghosts get stirred up and the unsolved murder of her best friend and roommate will dominate the weekend’s activities. Could one of her friends, the infamous East House […]

I can’t stop thinking about my lost pizza.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives (The Kamogawa Food Detectives, #1) by Hisashi Kashiwai

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I maintain that this premise is amazing, and it needs to exist in real life. The idea of food I will never taste again HAUNTS ME. I am not even being dramatic, I am being so real with you right now. (My #1 pick for this would be Pizza D’Amore’s piping hot square pizza slices, in the Paradise Valley Mall. AND I AM NOT THE ONLY ONE.) I will also admit that the premise hit me so strongly that I gave this book more stars than […]

“Why is it I tell you all my secrets?” “Because you like the way I look draped over a tree branch?”

Beast Business by Ilona Andrews

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Augustine Montgomery is the head of a very successful investigative agency and a deeply private man. He is an illusion Prime, who can alter his appearance at will, and there are very few people alive who know what he actually looks like. Augustine presents himself to the world as calculated, efficient, ruthless and detached. He is never swayed by emotion and has very few friends as a result. Diana Harrison is the Head of House Harrison and a very powerful animal mage. Like Augustine, she […]



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