Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time


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A timely reminder that Nazis are evil and fighting them is heroic

D-Day Girls by Sarah Rose

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D-Day Girls: The Spies who Armed the Resistance, Sabotaged the Nazis and Helped Win World War II is a work of non-fiction about the women who worked in secret, behind the lines in France in the years of WWII leading up to D-Day. These women were recruited, vetted and trained in England to be dropped behind enemy lines. There, they helped co-ordinate the  resistance and lay the groundwork for the allied invasion. As their work was part of secret intelligence (the Special Operations Executive or SOE), […]

Don’t Say We Didn’t Try

Rescue Board: The Untold Story of America's Efforts to Save the Jews of Europe by Rebecca Erbelding

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Due to extensive documentation in all manner of media, World War II is an enduring object of fascination. Just when we think we’ve heard everything, the inexhaustible well comes up with something new. In my favored stories of resistance, espionage, politicking, and propaganda, the Holocaust—Nazi Germany’s systematic genocide of Jews in occupied Europe—is impossible to avoid. (Yes, other minority groups were targeted, too. This book is not about them.) It’s a favorite pastime among WWII buffs to finger people, besides the Germans, who ought to […]

Accessible, exciting historical fiction for the tween set

Lifeboat 12 by Susan Hood

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Almost accidentally, author Susan Hood stumbled upon a historical event that has gone mostly overlooked and it is the basis of her exciting middle grade novel Lifeboat 12.  The book is told in verse format by narrator and actual survivor Ken Sparks, who is thirteen years of age right before London is destroyed in the Blitz. His life in London is troubled by things large in scope (like running to bomb shelters nightly when the alarms go off and living off rations and hand-me-downs) and […]

an exercise in lying to liars

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

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What began as a slow and cold (le Carré-esque) waiting game grew into a white hot flash of deceit, anxiety, and dangerous thrills. I cannot claim to know the full horrors and trials of World War II- nor can I draw a true comparison between that dark time and the present, but the world of this book is a different world from our current version. One constant remains: the truth is subjective. In 1940 a young woman is recruited into the fold of MI5. Europe […]

you will falsely remember being told about Melmoth by your grandmother’s mother when you were very small

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

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There is something immediately nauseating – hear me out- about this book. You can be nauseous when you feel ill, when you ride a roller coaster, when you are nervous, or when you eat too many sweets. There is a feeling of hopeful dread that climbs over you (and all of the characters within) before you have finished reading the first page. There is a feeling that you have been here – in a cafe in Prague, under an overpass in Manila, in a field […]

A Dual Biography that works

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I read Churchill and Orwell because I am a fan of the author, Thomas E. Ricks.  Ricks is best known as a military historian who wrote Fiasco and The Generals, both of which I highly recommend.  This book is a bit of a departure for Ricks but the topic seemed interesting.  Churchill and Orwell is a dual biography of two British men who had similarly parallel lives during WWII-era Great Britain.  I was surprised to find how much the two men had in common, especially […]



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