Oct 25 2026

Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher

Selena gets out of a bad relationship by gathering up her dog, a black lab named Copper, spending almost the last of her money, and taking a train two and a half days from the unspecified city where she had lived out into the desert Southwest to a settlement called Quartz Creek, to find her Aunt Amelia. Snake-Eater is set in a nearish future America, though Kingfisher clues readers in on that slowly, gradually doling out the details that show the differences. “Selena knew that the area was a historic zone, which meant that you couldn’t put developments up all over the place and drones were banned, but she hadn’t expected a lack of taxis. Or maybe there just weren’t enough people around for taxis to make any money, which was a somewhat alarming thought.” (p. 8) Selena is a city woman, and Quartz Creek is about as far as you can get from being a city while still being a settlement and not just a homestead.

Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher

Selena has been traumatized by the relationship she is getting out of, and she was likely neurodiverse to begin with. One of the ways that Kingfisher shows both is how Selena practices what to say to people, and the bits of her interior monologue that Kingfisher writes out as she works out what to do next. When an older Latino man offers her a ride into Quartz Creek from the station — she has been dragging her suitcase down the dusty and taxi-less road for about a quarter of a mile, and he says “It’s a short drive but a long walk” — her first reaction is to refuse as she thinks of how many things could go wrong. She decides to accept, reasoning that “If they were planning on kidnapping her, it didn’t matter whether she climbed into the truck or not.” (p. 11) Then she reasons through the next step in the interaction:

“Thank you,” she said. Was that enough? Probably not. “I’d appreciate that a lot.” There, that should be good. Just enough, not too much. (p. 11)

She gets into the back of the pickup, where it is too loud for conversation. That gives her time to prepare the next step, too.

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Oct 24 2026

The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher

I’m glad that T. Kingfisher, a.k.a. Ursula Vernon, is having a publishing moment because I missed The Raven and the Reindeer entirely when it first came out in 2016. It’s a re-telling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” that is irreverent, tension-filled, funny, scary, and more than a little weird. That’s fitting, though, because as Kingfisher says in her afterword, Andersen “was a weird dude. … His idea of a happy ending is that everybody dies attended by angels.” She’s no fangirl, finding his work “mawkish, sentimental, and frequently utterly unreadable, and yet there’s … something. I can’t put my finger on it. … He has a line directly to the lizard brain parts that react to fairy tales. Some people do.” (p. 267)

The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher

Kingfisher takes the bones of “The Snow Queen” and does her own thing with it. She begins in a small town in the north, though not in the far north north. A baby boy is born “with frost in his eyes and frost in his heart.” (p. 7) His name is Kay. A few days later, a baby girl is born across the street. “They named her Gerta. She was chubby and good-natured and slept easily through the night.” (p. 8) Their grandmothers were friends. Kay and Gerta grew up together, playmates when they were small children. When the snow piled high, there was a link between their upstairs rooms so that even in the deepest winter they could visit each other.

Gerta would have said that Kay was her best and truest friend, that they could tell each other anything and they would take on the world together.
Kay would have said Gerta was the neighbor girl. “She’s all right. I guess.”
In fact, he did say this, on a number of occasions.
There are not many stories about this sort of thing. There ought to be more. Perhaps if there were, the Gertas of the world would learn to recognize it.
Perhaps not. It is hard to see a story when you are standing in the middle of it. (p. 8)

As they grow into young adulthood, Kay continues to love the cold, and Gerta continues to love Kay. Sometimes he seems to love her too — Gerta wonders again and again what it meant that he kissed her one time — but mostly he loves the cold, its sharpness, the quiet it brings, the feeling that you might be the only person in the world. Soon enough, a blizzard blows up, a hundred-year storm according to Gerta’s grandmother, who adds that the Snow Queen rides that night.

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Oct 22 2026

Spookie Cookies by Karen Thi

Readers, I have written a weekly cooking column for over ten years now, but I fear that I will never be able to come anywhere close to the mastery Karen Thi displays in this spectacular tome on making the perfect scary treats for Halloween (or your other favorite spooky occasion.)

This cookbook has actually been in my kitchen for weeks, looming at me from the top of my microwave as I went about my daily cooking and chores, taunting me with my lack of precision baking skills. And while Ms Thi assures readers that you don’t have to be as skillful as she is in order to bake the impressive confections on display here, it probably helps if you’re at least more into baking than cooking, which latter is my preferred area of kitchen expertise. I also need to send a special shout-out to the wonderful publicists who endeavored to give me every tool I needed to make these cookies; you can see a pic of these awesome goodies — including a bench scraper, food coloring, icing bags and cookie scribe — below! I am deeply embarrassed to admit, after weeks of contemplation and a hard reckoning with my energy levels, that I simply Cannot.

What I CAN do is tell you about this terrific cookbook and its provenance tho! Ms Thi went from baking elaborate cookies in her spare time, selling them on Etsy and to friends, to making cookies for corporate brands and winning competitions on the Food Network. Her cookies are inventive and meticulously decorated, adopting 3D shapes and ingenious effects that I’d never even imagined cookies could be or showcase. In the lead-up to Halloween, she’s published her very first cookbook so that fans and baking enthusiasts can try making some of her amazing creations at home, too!

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Oct 21 2026

Mind Vs Machine by Steve Sheinkin, Maurice Ashley & Thien Pham

subtitled The Chess Match That Changed the World.

I am really glad that Grandmaster Maurice Ashley was involved in the making of this book and wrote a really thoughtful Author’s Note at the end, because otherwise I would have probably Gone Off in this review. Which isn’t to say that this book is bad at all! It’s just aimed in a weird direction that felt entirely exasperating narratively, at least until Mr Ashley added his closing words.

Let’s talk about what I unreservedly loved first tho: Thien Pham’s extraordinarily expressive art! Tho his work occasionally veers towards the polygonal (the noses, lol!), his ability to evoke emotion while discussing, essentially, a series of chess matches is truly outstanding. The panels going over Garry Kasparov’s facial expressions while he was playing against Deep Blue actually increased my heart rate in sympathy.

This non-fiction graphic novel is about that much ballyhooed series of matches in 1997 between the reigning World Champion and the chess-playing computer built by the team at IBM. Narrative structure is provided by Mr Ashley himself, who tells the story to kids at a park while they all play chess together. Mr Ashley was one of the commentators for the six-match tournament, broadcasting live from the ground floor of the building where Garry and the computer team were going head-to-head. He provides a ton of eyewitness insight into what happened, grounding the story in a very human perspective.

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Oct 20 2026

We Are The Keystones by Katy S Duffield & Hannah Salyer

subtitled Animals that Hold Habitats Together. And honestly, I feel like I probably learn more facts more quickly from kids’ non-fiction than I do from nearly any other form of media (and I am 100% not the only former Jeopardy! contestant who will tell you so.)

We Are The Keystones is the perfect example of this. This picture book for advancing readers covers a good number of animal species that serve, like their namesakes do in the construction of arches, as a crucial component in holding ecosystems together. As author Katy S Duffield explains in her afterword, keystone species, whether plant or animal, are particularly impactful in encouraging the balance that allows a community to thrive, if not outright survive. Removing these species is the surest way to threaten environmental collapse, as nothing else can step in to provide quite what they do.

Unsurprisingly, this includes creatures such as beavers and wolves. The former are important in the creation and maintenance of wetlands, while the latter keep down the population of creatures that can ravage forests with overgrazing. I was more surprised to learn about the roles of elephants and especially alligators in their respective ecosystems, but that is the beauty of books like these: to bring information in as accessible manner as possible to as wide an audience as it can.

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Oct 19 2026

Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez

The 25th Anniversary Edition of this seminal Young Adult novel underscores how far American society has come in these past twenty-five years, and how important it is that we never go back to more repressive times.

Rainbow Boys is the story of three turn-of-the-century high school seniors (in Virginia!), Nelson, Kyle and Jason. Nelson is out and proud despite the bullying he faces for embracing his differences. Nelson is a little in love with Kyle, his best friend, who’s also gay but not out like Nelson is. Kyle, however, has a crush on Jason, the basketball star who’s in a loving and sexually active relationship with Debra, the pretty girl who’s probably going to be homecoming queen.

But when Jason needs help getting his math grade up in order to graduate, he starts hanging out with Kyle, who’s both smart and a champion swimmer. Soon, Jason is questioning just how straight he really is, even as he and Kyle start getting closer. Nelson is jealous, but doesn’t want to lose his best friend either. As the three of them navigate love, friendship and fraught family lives, they’ll have to grapple with what it means to be true to yourself as well as the worth of self-esteem.

The answer to that last, of course, is everything. Being able to believe in yourself and in a world where you’re loved and accepted for who you are is truly a wealth beyond measure. You can’t make everyone love you, ofc, but the fundamental ability to live and love without being coerced or coercing others is a big deal, and frankly the singular ideal that this country was founded on. The implementation may have been far less than perfect over the ensuing centuries, but the promise of America is of a mutually tolerant society that continually strives to do better for all its people.

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Oct 18 2026

The Sworn Sword by George R.R. Martin

Two years after the events of The Hedge Knight, Dunk and Egg find themselves at the ass end of nowhere, sworn to serve a knight who’s not far from a hedge himself, while much of the region struggles with a drought. The novella opens with the two of them returning from an errand to buy casks of wine from a neighboring town. They had to go further than expected because raiders (from the Iron Islands, for people familiar with more of Martin’s stories) had plundered the nearer place that they had planned to buy from. The drought is making maintaining order more difficult. At the edge of the lands of Ser Eustace Osgrey they find another knight of Dunk’s acquaintance, Ser Bennis of the Brown Shield, who is serving Ser Eustace along with Dunk and Egg.

The Sworn Sword by George R.R. Martin

They also find that the stream that Dunk had hoped to cool off in has dried up in the few days that they were away. Ser Bennis attributes the dry creek bed to the drought, but dunk insists on following the course upstream. When they do, they find that a neighboring landholder has dammed the creek and the workers are still there. In the confrontation that follows, Ser Bennis cuts the face of one of the workers. The Osgreys and the hedge knights serving them might have been in the right about the stream before blood was drawn, but that sword stroke puts the dispute into a different category. The Osgreys have a proud history, but poor political choices reduced them to the one town that Ser Eustace is spending his declining years in, his heirs having perished in a war about a decade previous. The neighbor in question is Lady Rohanne Webber of Coldmoat, also known as the Red Widow. At the age of 25, she has already buried four husbands, and of late her reputation has preceded her leading to a dearth of new suitors.

She has more land and more more money that Ser Eustace. More to the point, she can summon far more fighting men than the paltry eight untrained peasants that Dunk calls together when he realizes that the dispute is going to escalate. The stream might have been Osgrey water, but now that Ser Bennis has provoked a confrontation, might is likely to make right, and who will argue the Osgrey side if Ser Eustace is no more. The rest of the novella tells how Dunk searches for a vaguely just solution without betraying his oath of service, without revealing Egg’s true background, and without getting himself killed or the Osgrey levy wiped out. It’s a tall order, possibly taller than Dunk himself. Worse, nobody but Dunk seems to be telling the whole truth.

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Oct 17 2026

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

I’m not really a blurb person, but as short descriptions of A House With Good Bones go — “(a) funny, (b) scary, and (c) charming. You will gulp this book down like sweet tea on a hot day.” (Charlaine Harris) and a “special blend of horror and snarky mundanity, wherein the not-so-dearly departed demand half-frozen ham, terrifying abominations hunger for blood, and the vacuum is full of ladybugs. A creepshow in taupe with extra vultures.” (Travis Baldree) — are pretty darn good ones. Kingfisher sets the tone with the very first sentence: “There was a vulture on the mailbox of my grandmother’s house.” (p. 3) She continues, knowingly —

A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

As omens go, it doesn’t get much more obvious than that. This was a black vulture, not a turkey vulture, but that’s about as much as I could tell you. I have a biology degree, but it’s in bugs, not birds. The only reason that I knew that much was because the identification key for vultures in North America is extremely straightforward. Does it have a black head? It’s a black vulture. Does it have a red head? It’s a turkey vulture. This works unless you’re in the Southwest, where you have to add: Is it the size of the small fighter jet? It’s a California condor.
We have very few condors in North Carolina.
“I bet you have some amazing feather mites,” I told the vulture, opening the car door. The vulture tilted its head and considered this, or me, or my aging Subaru.
I took out my phone and got several glamour shots of the bird. When I tried to upload one to the internet, however, my phone informed me that it had one-tenth of a bar and my GPS had conked out completely.
Ah yes. That, at least, hadn’t changed. (p. 3)

The first-person narrator, Samantha, has an insect-related biology degree. She drives a car that’s deep into its service live. She’s back in a neighborhood that’s very familiar to her. Kingfisher will soon relate that she’s back to visit her mother, who lives in the house that she inherited from her mother eighteen years previously. The subdivision is somewhat isolated off of a rural road and full of slightly peculiar characters. The narrator’s grandmother had been one; there’s nosy neighbors who watches the others with binoculars from barely parted curtains; the vultures, her mother says, belong to a lady down the street.

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Oct 16 2026

Tantalizing Tales — October 2026 — Part Three

I just unexpectedly received some super intriguing recently published books. so let’s cover those before diving into upcoming releases!

First up, we have Emmeline Duncan’s Hysteria At The Historical Society, the third Halloween Bookshop mystery. This one is kinda on me: I thought it had recipes in it, as I super enjoyed prior series of the author’s which did. Alas, this series does not, but I always enjoy how tightly written her cozies are and am not at all unhappy to have this book otherwise. It’s also the perfect read for Spooky Season, as it’s set in an Oregon town that celebrates Halloween year-round!

That said, the residents of Elyan Hollow are getting ready to welcome another big holiday season by putting their signature spin on Christmas. Bookstore owner Bailey Briggs is booked and busy but loving it. Adding to the festive air is the news that the Elyan Hollow Historical Society has received a Historical Preservation grant to map out the town’s tunnel systems. The society’s director Jude is especially thrilled.

Not everyone is happy about this tho. Graham, the leader of a rival historical society, and his second in command Walter are both in opposition, leading to a blowout fight at EHHS’ winter holiday reception. As the duo are escorted out by security, Walter threatens revenge. The arguing continues during an escape room party several days later that Bailey is also attending. When Walter collapses, dead, everyone is shocked — except for his murderer. Bailey is soon in a race against time to find his killer before the wrong person is convicted of this terrible crime.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/10/16/tantalizing-tales-october-2026-part-three/

Oct 15 2026

When The World Was Happy by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

The experience of reading this book made a lot more sense once I realized it was written by an older person at the end of his life (RIP, Benjamin Alire Sáenz.)

And I’m not saying that there’s an age range in which you can or cannot write a book for a certain audience. This wasn’t even the first Young Adult novel I’ve recently read that seemed to draaaaaaaaag (and the other was written by someone much younger than this author.) But the reliance on philosophy vs characterization, as well as a certain lack of immediacy in the narrative, had me questioning why this was written for the YA market, where readers are generally assumed to have shorter attention spans. Sure the main characters are teenagers, but they’re young people written by someone focused more on message than on actual viscerality. Even tho When The World Was Happy is written in the first person, all the emotions feel at a remove, as if this was meant more as a parable than an otherwise realistic chronicle.

That chronicle is ostensibly of the life of CheChe, a gay teenager entering his junior year of high school in El Paso, Texas. He has a twin sister Emma, a mom who’s their school librarian and a dad who’s an artist and lecturer at the University of Texas El Paso. Their life is nerd heaven. CheChe knows he’s both lucky and privileged, and revels in his idyllic existence. He’s well-aware that there’s a lot of prejudice against both Mexican Americans and gay people, but takes comfort in the fact that he’s surrounded by love, acceptance, and the peace and happiness that come from both.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/10/15/when-the-world-was-happy-by-benjamin-alire-saenz/