Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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Your Confederate Sympathies May Vary

The Outlaw Hearts by Rebecca Brandewyne

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When schoolteacher Jenny Colter takes the train into the little Ozarks town of Tumbling Creek, she’s hoping to leave behind the violence which destroyed her family in post-Civil War Atlanta. But when she catches sight of the uncovered face of Luke Morgan when he’s robbing the train, he’s determined to keep her quiet by any means necessary… Rebecca Brandewyne is another of those writers of big off-the-wall 80s bodice rippers which I love, though her work doesn’t reach for the soaring heights of WTF-ery that […]

Between the Accident and the Incident

Curse of the Blumenthals by Phyllis Karas

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Three generations of journalist Phyllis Karas’s family are marked by two great tragedies – the car crash which killed six members of the family, and the murder committed by the first grandchild born after that accident hardly twenty years later. This is an interesting mash-up of a book – part family history, part true crime, and sometimes even a scrapbook. Karas dives into the crimes which impacted her family, whether they were those who committed them or the victims, studying how their effects rippled through […]

The American Female Q

In True Face: A Woman's Life in the CIA, Unmasked by Jonna Méndez

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Jonna began her work at the CIA as a ‘career wife,’ supporting her husband’s job, but soon she started taking on bigger and important roles in the agency, for which she lived all over the world and eventually rose to the position of Chief of Disguise. Having read plenty about the CIA’s origins as the OG old boy’s club in which a lot of men threw ideas at a wall and hoped they’d stick during World War 2, this book was interesting to me for […]

A Jété into Love

Second Night Stand by Karelia Stetz-Waters, Fay Stetz-Waters

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When professional ballerina Lillian has a one night stand with a beautiful stranger in Portland, she does so only because she’s certain she’ll never see her again. But when it turns out that Izzy will be competing in the same dance competition show, their growing connection may get in the way of the win they both desperately need. I really loved Karelia Stetz-Waters’ previous book Behind the Scenes, so even though I haven’t been interested in reality show romances in the past I was excited […]

The Power of Audacity

The Improbable Victoria Woodhull by Eden Collinsworth

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Victoria Woodhull started life being paraded around as a child psychic by her conman father and marrying an alcoholic twice her age, but through a lot of work, luck, and audacity, she lived many lives as a stockbroker, a newspaper editor, a suffragette, the first female presidential candidate, and much more. Victoria Woodhull is one of those interesting American characters that’s been popping up in books I’ve read set in the Gilded Age for several years. She was eccentric and scrappy, but in many ways […]

“No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.”

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson

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Raoul Duke and his attorney go on a mad, drug-fueled tear through late 1960s Las Vegas, where they haphazardly cover a desert motorcycle race and attend a police convention. The whole time I was reading this book I could not help but keep thinking about how very annoyed I would be if I were on this trip with Duke & the Doc. Not that anyone I know’s ever gone on so wild a tear, but I could certainly see the echoes of herding around friends […]



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