I’m certainly not the first, nor will I probably be the last, CBRer to review Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. That being said, I won’t go on too much about the plot. The book’s been out for quite a few years and garnered some attention on those lists everyone has of MUST READ THIS books. Basically, this young graphic designer in San Francisco, Clay Jannon (I think? His last name is rarely mentioned) finds himself unemployed and desperate. Wandering around the city one afternoon […]
Awesome Lady Spy
Since with CBR6 I dropped the ball and didn’t regularly contribute, I can’t possibly expect regular Cannonballers to recall that I have a penchant for World War II stories, badass ladies, and intrigue. Suffice it to say, I do, so when my book club chose to read Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved: The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville I was stoked. While at times tedious, the biography delivers all my jams, in spades! I won’t go into too many of the historical details […]
My first book for CBR7 was a doozie! The second installment in Robert Galbraith’s (ahem, JK Rowling) series on war vet turned private detective Cormoran Strike, The Silkworm, was quite an interesting crime novel. Set in wintry London several months after Strike famously solves the Lulu Landry case (in Cuckoo’s Calling), Silkworm begins with a tired housewife on the hunt for her artistically-temperamented, mildly-successful novelist husband. Naturally this being a mystery series, said husband isn’t missing; he’s dead, and in quite a gruesome way. Cormoran […]
Here She Goes Again
Charlaine Harris recently wrapped up her Southern Vampire Mystery series, more famously known as “The Sookie Stackhouse” novels. In my opinion she should have done so much sooner but one can look to previous CBR reviews I’ve posted to get into that. I heard Harris started a new series in a new location and though Sookie’s world became stale and tiring, that isn’t to say Harris is incapable of having a new one that is light and fun and full of mystery. Enter Midnight Crossroad, […]