Apr 03 2025

A Year of Diana Wynne Jones: The late 1990s!

In my quest to read all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books in one year, this month I read Deep Secret, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and Puss in Boots: three titles that could all start with the word “The” and in the U.S., do not. Deep thoughts!

Deep Secret and Dark Lord of Derkholm are two of my absolute favorite books, and Puss in Boots was new to me, so it was an exciting month all around.

This custom image by Marnanel Thurman shows the dates we read this book, the book’s title and the series title, "A Year of Diana Wynne Jones," with the cover of one edition of the book. Deep Secret (1997)
A lot of Deep Secret takes place at a fan convention, and there are discussions of the hotel breakfasts, the publisher parties, the snits during panels, and the conflicts in scheduling that will resonate deeply for anyone who has been to a similar event. I reread it every year when I attend a specific academic conference, and every year as I hear people exclaiming about how confusing the hotel is, I feel like the book is taking place where I am. It’s a cozy feeling.

So when I first thought of doing this project, influenced extremely heavily by an awesome friend who’d led a group read of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books called “A Year on Discworld,” I decided to shape the year around the week I’d be rereading this book anyway. It worked great.

In Deep Secret, we meet Maree, who is studying to be a vet, and who has been crossed in love. She is extremely broke, and has to live with a vague uncle and his terrible wife. She gets along with her teen cousin, Nick, but he’s hardly a reliable ally.

We also meet Rupert, a Magid who crosses the boundaries between worlds, following orders from the well-meaning Upper Room. Their paths cross when Rupert is on a search to find the next Magid he will train. Frustrated with the search (and Maree) he tweaks the fatelines of all his prospective Magid trainees, and they all converge upon PhantasmaCon, where the shit hits the fan. Highly recommended.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/03/a-year-of-diana-wynne-jones-the-late-1990s/

Apr 02 2025

Meant For More: Following Your Heart And Finding Your Purpose by Karen Olson (EXCERPT)

In an increasingly dark sociopolitical climate, it helps to know that there are people out there who genuinely care, who don’t think that empathy is a sin, and who understand that helping others in need isn’t a huge sacrifice but an everyday thing we can all incorporate into our lives. One such person is Karen Olson, who founded Family Promise, the nation’s foremost non-profit addressing the crisis of family homelessness. Today, the organization boasts more than 200 affiliates across the country, with more than 180,0000 men, women, and children served each year.

Starting a charitable foundation was not what Ms Olson set out to do with her life. Back in the 70s and 80s, she was a successful marketing executive who, like many of her peers, sought happiness through acquiring material goods and higher status. It was a good life, even if it didn’t really leave her feeling fulfilled.

A chance encounter with an elderly homeless woman outside Grand Central Station changed everything for her. Tho she was hurrying to a business meeting, she stopped to buy the woman a sandwich and an orange juice. Perhaps more importantly, she listened to the woman’s story and learned her name: Millie. A small act of kindness to someone in need swiftly changed the trajectory of her own life, as she discovered purpose not only in helping the homeless, but in encouraging others to join her mission.

Meant For More tells her story, from tragedy in childhood to an adulthood full of compassion and service that has made her feel stronger, healthier and more fulfilled than ever before. With firsthand testimonials from Karen and other volunteers, this autobiography is also an inspiring call to action: when you reach out beyond yourself and seek to make a difference in the lives of others, happiness will catch up with you.

Read on for one of these inspiring stories!

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Apr 01 2025

Shadowplay: Midnight School by Sam Fonseca

Holy Moses, what a debut! Granted, this isn’t Sam Fonseca’s first book ever, but I genuinely can’t remember the last time I was so impressed by an English-language horror comic debut. And with a kick-ass soundtrack to boot!

But I’m getting ahead of myself, partly because it’s a bit of challenge to describe the book itself without going into spoiler territory. An unnamed young man — oh, let’s just call him Lucas, as we eventually find out his name and it doesn’t really matter in the context of the story — sits in a dreary classroom, looking out the window at the weird, disquieting scenes outside. But there are weird, disquieting scenes inside the classroom, too, as another young man stands on the chair next to Lucas’ desk, piteously begging for his mother. The dark shape at the front of the room mocks him, and the begging boy is eventually punished further.

Lucas knows that this is wrong but everyone else seems intent on just keeping their heads down and getting through the day. Another classmate, in particular — and a friendly one at that — insists to Lucas that he needs to do well in school in order to win a scholarship so that he can make something of himself. As he lists the increasingly demanding list of qualifications he needs, Lucas realizes that his classmate isn’t meant to succeed, even as he is plagued by the disembodied memories of all the pain and humiliation he’s ever undergone himself.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/01/shadowplay-midnight-school-by-sam-fonseca/

Mar 28 2025

Tantalizing Tales — March 2025 — Part Three

Hello, dear readers! It is Week Three of me turning with the equinox to talk of current and upcoming titles that have caught my eye that I can’t quite yet squeeze into my reading schedule. The first of these is Alison Gunn’s debut horror novel Nowhere.

Police chief Rachel Kennan throws herself into keeping the peace in her small Virginia town, focusing on work in order to avoid dealing with the grief of recently losing her young son. Her husband Finn, whose alcoholism led to the accident that claimed their child’s life, struggles to redeem himself. The only thing keeping them together is the existence of their two surviving daughters, girls who have enough problems without being the lynchpin of their parents’ floundering marriage.

When a disturbing crime rocks their town, Rachel gets what she wished for: a case so involved that it takes up almost all her time, as she chases down leads in a religious and tightly knit community that doesn’t take well to outsiders. But something weird is going on. An ominous force in the forest is calling out to children, spawning fear and hatred in the townspeople. As the Kennans find themselves right in the firing line, they’ll have no choice but to rely on each other, if they have any hope of surviving as a family.

A haunting family saga and a disquieting horror debut, Nowhere draws from Appalachian folklore to caution readers that true terror is what we bury in our own hearts.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/28/tantalizing-tales-march-2025-part-three/

Mar 27 2025

London Calling (City Spies #6) by James Ponti

This series continues to be an utter delight, as a global team of former orphans now working for MI6 under the guidance of the agent called Mother face a brand new set of world-threatening problems.

It’s been a minute since Mother was reunited with his actual biological son, who has since joined the City Spies and taken on the codename Cairo. Their family was split when Mother’s wife, former MI6 agent Clementine, went so deep undercover in the criminal network Umbra that she seemingly turned, taking her children with her. Cairo has since been reunited with his father, but the whereabouts of his sister Annie have been murkier… until she becomes the target of a kidnapping by persons unknown to the City Spies.

Fortunately, she escapes, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for her brother to come find her. Cairo, Mother and the two other boy agents of the team, Paris and Rio, head to Istanbul to investigate, even as Clementine keeps a weather eye on everyone from afar.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn, Kat and Sydney have been enrolled at St Margaret’s School for Girls as part of the protective detail for math teacher Sophie Weir, the soon-to-be bride of the sixth in line to the British throne. There have been credible threats of disruption to the impending wedding, so the three teenagers are an important covert aspect of her security. As it’s a day school, the girls hand off Sophie to her adult protection officers once school is over, and head back to the sprawling research location in Scotland where they live with the rest of the City Spies. Little do our team know, however, that their home has already been compromised…

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/27/london-calling-city-spies-6-by-james-ponti/

Mar 26 2025

Out Of Your Mind by Jorge Cham & Dwayne Godwin

subtitled The Biggest Mysteries of the Human Brain. And who better to tackle the subject and bring it to audiences in a highly accessible manner than Jorge Cham, creator of the comic strip PHDComics (based on his own adventures in academia while studying robotics) and co-creator of the highly-rated PBS cartoon Elinor Wonders Why, and Dwayne Godwin, a practicing neuroscientist, professor and former graduate dean?

For centuries, philosophers and biologists have pondered the role of the mind in human functioning, eventually adopting multidisciplinary efforts to better understand how the brain works and the correlation between mind, feeling and identity. Misters Cham and Godwin do a frankly amazing job of distilling what we’ve learned on this subject into one elegantly written and amusingly illustrated volume.

Each chapter title is a question that most people have asked themselves at least once in their lives. Whether it’s asking why we feel the way we feel, what our brains are capable of or the nature of consciousness, the chapters all delve into common aspects of how we think and interact with the world around us. Short interlude comics break up the longer chapters, which are themselves speckled with cartoons that humorously underscore the text. As a big fan of the exercise theory of continuing neuroplasticity, I loved the multiple ways in which the book encouraged the on-going growth of neural connections via both serious (if uncomplicated) text and light-hearted illustrations that work together to engage multiple parts of the brain.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/26/out-of-your-mind-by-jorge-cham-dwayne-godwin/

Mar 25 2025

Gothictown by Emily Carpenter (EXCERPT)

We have a publishing day treat for readers with an excerpt from Emily Carpenter’s brand new thriller Gothictown, out today from Kensington Books!

Manhattan chef Billie Hope is feeling at a loose end: her restaurant has closed and she’s feeling more than a little lonely, despite enjoying the (unfortunately) abundant free time she now has to spend with her husband Peter and daughter Meredith. So when she gets an email from the small Georgia town of Juliana, incentivizing new residents to move in with promises of affordable living, ample job opportunities and a welcoming community for all, it’s a siren song that neither she nor her family can resist.

At first, Juliana seems as amazing as advertised. But soon after settling in, Billie begins to sense that something deeply unsettling is lurking beneath the town’s genteel surface. The three founding families known as The Old Guard seem a little too invested in the town’s well-being, to the point that they’ll sweep anything that could mar Juliana’s perfect image — unpaid taxes, disappearances, even death — under the rug.

As the Hope family begins to experience unusual new physical and emotional symptoms, Billie makes a horrifying discovery that will set her on a collision course with the truth about Juliana’s secret past — and with the Old Guard who will do whatever it takes to not only keep their secrets buried, but also keep Billie a part of their idea of Juliana forever.

Read on for a seductively written excerpt that almost had me ready to pack up my family and head down to Georgia myself!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/25/gothictown-by-emily-carpenter-excerpt/

Mar 24 2025

Monti And Leo: A Mystery In Pocketville by Sylvie Kantorovitz

This second Monti & Leo book finds the two best friends embroiled in a series of conundrums, one light-hearted but one decidedly serious, as collecting mania comes to Pocketville!

Mrs Sheep has generously allowed her collection of figurines to be displayed at the local library. As the Pocketvillians ooh and aah over the scope of her collection, many express an interest in starting up collections of their own. Not of dolls, necessarily, as everyone has their own interests. Leo, for one, already has a collection of neat rocks that he’s proud to show off to Monti.

Everyone is enthusiastically discussing what they intend to collect and sharing their finds with their friends… all except Monti, who can’t seem to decide what interests him the most. But bigger worries are on the horizon for him, when the prize figurine in Mrs Sheep’s collection goes missing. Monti, who’d loudly admired the doll, becomes prime suspect in its disappearance.

Leo is aghast, not only at the aspersions cast on his poor friend but at the doubts that come crowding into his head as a result of Mrs Sheep’s accusations. Determined to quiet all the voices, he sets out to investigate who might have stolen the figurine and why. The path to the truth isn’t straightforward, especially when the figurine seems to be only the first in a series of items missing from the collections of Pocketvillians. Will Leo be able to get to the bottom of things? Will Monti finally be able to figure out what he wants to collect?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/24/monti-and-leo-a-mystery-in-pocketville-by-sylvie-kantorovitz/

Mar 23 2025

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

In some distant and ultimately irrelevant future, humanity has mastered time travel and discovered not a single causal chain through the unity of time and space, but a vast multitude of timelines. They cluster in groups of similar development. In some, humanity spreads to the stars; in others, humanity remains more tightly tied to its origins. Perhaps inevitably, strife follows humans not only to the stars but throughout all of accessible time. The book does not say how the two factions — Garden and Agency — came to be, nor which, if either of the two, discovered time travel.

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El_Mohtar and Max Gladstone

As the book opens, the two sides are at war and have been for an immeasurable span of time. They have incompatible visions of the future, and of the past and present for that matter. They represent different modes of living, of development. Garden is all about growing and cultivating, though of course they keep the technology required for travel through time and space. The Agency is a more mechanized future, where devices serve humanity and support civilization. If sometimes the line between people and machines blur, well, it has been that way at least since the first glass sphere purported to replace an eye. And the people that Garden grows in pods, well, humanity was tied to cultivation before history began.

But This Is How You Lose the Time War is about neither the technology and paradoxes of time travel, nor the two visions and factions that define time-traveling humanity. It is a love story.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/23/this-is-how-you-lose-the-time-war-by-amal-el-mohtar-and-max-gladstone/

Mar 21 2025

Tantalizing Tales — March 2025 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! With the advent of the spring equinox, I’m going to pivot towards spotlighting upcoming books in this column and not just ones that have recently published that I’m super excited to get to. So here’s a bonus column rounding up some of those latter, beginning with the third and latest installment of the bestselling The Kindred’s Curse Sage, Penn Cole’s Heat Of The Everflame.

After her disastrous coronation, Diem finds herself at the center of the conflict between the Descended and the Guardians. With her newfound friends and the man she’s falling for on one side, and the mortals she has vowed to protect on the other, Diem must walk a careful line to save the people she loves… even that means saving them from each other.

When the mystery of her unusual heritage begins to unravel, it sends Diem and Luther on an unexpected journey across the realms. The answers they seek may hold the key to winning the war, but finding these answers will require Diem to face painful truths about her mother, her bloodline and her very fate.

Meanwhile, the Crowns have set Diem in their sights. Some of them could be her greatest allies, while others want her dead. In order to end their oppressive reign, Diem must sort friend from foe and risk it all to build an army of her own. But a powerful figure in the north has plans that could change everything…

The collectible hardcover edition also includes gorgeous full-color endpapers, an exclusive hardcover case and a never-before-seen bonus chapter written from Luther’s point of view. Get it while it’s still in stores!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/21/tantalizing-tales-march-2025-part-two/