Feb 27 2026

Tantalizing Tales — February 2026 — Part Four

February is drawing to a close, the weather is getting nicer, and hopefully I will soon stop feeling ill so much of the time! In other cheery news, I have a slew of great books for you this week, beginning with Amara Lakhous’ critically acclaimed The Fertility Of Evil, translated from the original Arabic by Alexander E Elinson.

July 5th is Algerian Independence Day, a national holiday for a country still coming to terms with the insidious legacy of colonialism. Colonel Soltani of the anti-terrorist unit, however, will have to give up his day off in 2018 after his superior officer manages to track him down to his mistress’ home in the city of Oran.

A former National Liberation Front fighter and Algerian power broker has been found dead under remarkably gory circumstances. Soltani is put in charge of the case, with the clear message to close it quickly and cleanly. Despite this directive, the colonel and his team delve deep into the victim’s past, going all the way back to the 1950s in their pursuit of leads. Their investigations eventually bring them to a revolutionary cell founded long ago, whose three remaining members are all still very much viable suspects in this recent killing. Can Soltani sort through six decades of secrets and lies to uncover the truth and bring a murderer to justice?

Inspired by the author’s return to Oran after years spent living in Italy as a political refugee, this gripping novel balances psychological thriller with historical fiction. It presents a compelling portrait of post-colonial Algeria, its shadowy history and the long tail of corruption as religion and politics intertwine.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/27/tantalizing-tales-february-2026-part-four/

Feb 26 2026

Escape Room: Game Zero by Christopher Edge

Lol, idk why I didn’t realize this was part of a series when I first picked it up. I do think that this is one of those books that very much benefits from readers going in already knowing the rest of the lore, if you’re an adult. Younger readers who are more ready to accept things at face value may not mind as much (as I’ve certainly discovered when going back to read old favorites after the span of decades.)

Escape Room: Game Zero begins with Eden, a young girl who’s solved a series of online riddles and is now going in search of what’s been touted as the ultimate Escape Room. Eden loves puzzles and riddles, so is excited about getting a key to an online game known only as The Escape. Fortunately, the place she has to go to claim it in person is only a short walk away from her own home.

But the key she intends to pick up turns out to be something very different from the physical pass she expected. Instead, she’s drawn into a disorienting fantasy realm where she quickly discovers she can get badly hurt, both if she isn’t careful and if she doesn’t complete the quest to escape in time.

Both helping and hindering her is Ted, a deeply annoying kid who’s accessed The Escape via an expensive VR headset and is convinced that Eden is a mere NPC. As they explore this strange new world together, they encounter all manner of peril, even as they slowly discover that the game is much more dangerous than either of them had ever anticipated.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/26/escape-room-game-zero-by-christopher-edge/

Feb 25 2026

Pop Manga Paint And Ink Coloring Book by Camilla d’Errico

I cover quite a few coloring books here at The Frumious Consortium, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen a mass market volume specifically designed for watercolor and ink. I hope it’s not the last tho because this is genuinely a superlative product for anyone looking to paint some adorable manga-inspired scenes.

There are 24 such illustrations in this volume, of cozy fantasy characters that wouldn’t look at all out of place inside a Studio Ghibli or Toei Animation production. All of the line drawings come, however, from the world of acclaimed Italian Canadian pop-surrealist Camilla d’Errico. Some of the illustrations here are original to the book, while others are established favorites from her repertoire. The general theme is one of whimsy, tho if you look hard enough, you can see that these aren’t necessarily the uniformly inoffensive pieces one would expect from a commercial artist. Ms d’Errico’s artistic edges are not sanded off in this wild and wonderful collection.

As with other coloring books featuring fine art, the pages in this are perforated, making it easy not only to pull out individual pieces to work on, but also to frame, should you be so inclined. Each drawing is on one side of a page, with the other intentionally left blank or featuring non-art text.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/25/pop-manga-paint-and-ink-coloring-book-by-camilla-derrico/

Feb 24 2026

Side Hustle by Wendy Gee (EXCERPT)

Hello, dear readers! We have a treat for you today with the latest thrilling novel by Wendy Gee, the second in her Caroline Crossfire mystery series!

Plucky TV reporter Sidney Quinn is back and ready to bring the hard news to viewers of Charleston, South Carolina’s Action 7 channel. Now she’s on the scene in a tony neighborhood where a hostage situation is unfolding. With her highly placed resources, she’s hoping to get inside the house and score an interview with the hostage-taker, in exchange for gathering intel for the police on the case.

She’s shocked, however, to discover that there’s a dead woman inside the home. The homeowner was an insurance executive and, more personally, a friend of Sidney’s. Confoundingly, the hostage taker, a former firefighter who blames the deceased for terminating his workman’s comp benefits, swears he didn’t kill her and that he’s being framed.

Determined to uncover the truth, Sidney follows the clues, plunging into a world of identity theft and cyber-embezzlement. Complicating matters is her own ongoing PTSD from her time embedded with Marines in Iraq. The only thing that helps her outrun her memories are increasingly risk-taking behaviors. How far will she go, however, to both chase down the truth and escape her own demons?

Check out a scene-setting excerpt depicting a routine moment in Sidney’s professional life before everything goes sideways:

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/24/side-hustle-by-wendy-gee-excerpt/

Feb 23 2026

The Spider Strikes by Michael P Spradlin

It continues to frighten and infuriate me that books like these aren’t merely a snapshot of a period in time but a very necessary and urgent warning of the road we must not presently travel.

As with the prior books in The Web of The Spider series, set during Hitler’s rise to power in 1930s Germany, we have a different narrator, one of a group of young friends. Joshua Greenburg hasn’t always been aware of antisemitism, growing up in the small town of Heroldsberg. But with Hitler Youth coming to town and the German economy crumbling, it’s nigh on impossible to avoid the way that the Nazis are increasingly blaming Jews like himself for all the troubles befalling the country.

Germany has become so oppressive and awful for people who don’t sympathize with the ruling regime that Joshua’s friend Rolf and his father are planning on moving to America soon. They have family there, and hopefully distance will allow them to get over the heartbreak of losing Rolf’s older brother Romer to Hitler Youth.

Rolf and Joshua have only just helped their other friend Ansel rescue his journalist father from the Nazis. Ansel’s dad’s only crime was in reporting the truth, which has come under increasing attack from the government. It’s been a pretty awful several months for the three friends, who just want to play football, read adventure stories and brush up on their Scouting skills.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/23/the-spider-strikes-by-michael-p-spradlin/

Feb 22 2026

Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher

Nine Goblins is not just the story of nine goblins, one elf, and some weird things that happen, it’s also the origin story of T. Kingfisher. Under the author’s real name of Ursula Vernon, she had a successful and award-winning webcomic named Digger and more than a dozen published children’s books. But she had more stories that she wanted to tell and, as she relates in her author’s note “I had run headlong into the great problem of writing children’s books, which is that you are not allowed to write certain things. Arson, murder, and stacking bodies like cordwood are frowned upon.” Vernon continues, “I often say that inside every children’s author is a frustrated horror author. It’s not an exaggeration to say that T. Kingfisher was that horror author.” So she wrote Nine Goblins “based on my love of Pratchett and James Herriot … and then discovered that no one had any idea how to sell a weird goofy novella by a children’s author, particularly a novella with such a high body count.” (p. 149)

Nine Goblins by T. Kingfisher

Enter self-publishing. Despite hiccups in production and a decidedly non-systematic approach to advertising and promoting the book, Nine Goblins found an audience. As Vernon explains,

…year in and year out [the book] kept buying me groceries. It almost felt as if the goblins were taking care of me. Moreover, it was proof of concept. I could write a book for adults. Suddenly I had something to do with various stories floating around that were definitely not children’s books.
So I wrote another one. And another one. Nobody stopped me. Eventually T. Kingfisher was getting bigger royalty checks than Ursula Vernon, and T. was allowed to swear in interviews. (p. 150)

Nine Goblins is where it all began. And it begins with gruel for breakfast. The goblins of the Nineteenth Infantry begin nearly every day of the war by having some gruel to get them going. It doesn’t matter much where they’re going, or why. The Nineteenth — better known as the Whinin’ Niners — are grunts, and they know it. The higher-ups may or may not know what they’re doing, but the lower-downs know what they will be doing. Camping out, moving out, and if they are unfortunate duking it out with the enemy. In the broader sense, the goblins know why they are fighting: human expansion has pushed them almost into the sea, so there was no choice but to turn and fight. In the narrower, day-to-day sense, who really knows for sure, and anyone who does know isn’t telling the Niners.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/22/nine-goblins-by-t-kingfisher/

Feb 20 2026

Tantalizing Tales — February 2026 — Part Three

Welp, I suffered a bit of a health setback in the lead up to Ramadan, but at least I was able to make it out to rehearsal today, even if my body keeps screaming at me to rest more. Fortunately, I can rest and read at the same time! And yes, I know, the impulse to constant productivity is a curse, and definitely something I’m working on curbing this 2026.

But first up this week, we have for you the recently released English-language translation of Cho Haejin’s award-winning Simple Heart. Translated from the original Korean by Jamie Chang, this story of an adopted woman on the cusp of motherhood examines Korean history and international relations through a deeply heartfelt lens.

Nana was born in Korea but raised in France by her adoptive parents. Now she’s a playwright who’s pregnant with the child of her ex-boyfriend. When she receives a request from a Korean filmmaker who wants to shoot a documentary of her life, she impulsively makes plans to fly to Korea to explore her own murky history, even as she prepares to become a mother herself. For before she was Nana, she was a little girl named Esther Park, who grew up in a Korean orphanage after being brought in from where she was abandoned, with another name altogether, on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni station in Seoul.

This exploration of identity and belonging won Korea’s prestigious Daesan Literary Award in 2019. It’s a treat to finally have it able in English today.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/20/tantalizing-tales-february-2026-part-three/

Feb 19 2026

A Ramadan Night by Nadine Presley & Asma Enayeh

Salam Ramadan to all who celebrate! One thing I love about this month is how it highlights how different Muslim experiences are all over the world, with this book being a particularly fine example.

Based on Nadine Presley’s childhood in Damascus, Syria, this charming picture book explores the sensory experience of the fasting month, as a young boy named Sami thinks about what Ramadan nights signify to him. From the meal after dusk on the patio, to the walk to the mosque and then home again, Sami focuses on the sights, sounds, smells and feelings of nights made special by community and faith.

Illustrator Asma Enayeh also grew up in Damascus. Her background underscores the authenticity of this book, as she lovingly depicts the cityscape Sami and his Baba travel on their walk to the masjid and back. The characters are diverse in form and action, and Sami’s curiosity and openness are depicted vividly as he absorbs the world around him. It’s a colorful, transporting way to experience Damascus during a Ramadan night. The gorgeous patternwork and calligraphy are only the icing on this metaphorical cake.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/19/a-ramadan-night-by-nadine-presley-asma-enayeh/

Feb 18 2026

Space Opera series with installments coming up!

This Spring two of my favorite space opera series will be getting new books: the next book in the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and the next book set in the universe of the Imperial Radch, by Ann Leckie! For me personally, either of these is a major event, and while I’ve already read them to write this review, I look forward to rereading them when they come out, in order to share the reading experience with pals.

someone in armor floats on the cover of platform decay by martha wells Platform Decay, the eighth book in the Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells, will be released May 5th from Tor Books. In it, Murderbot is on a rescue mission, extracting a group of humans from a terrible situation on a ring-shaped station that offers a lot of peril. The group includes both people who already know Murderbot, and new humans it needs to win over – and includes children. Murderbot interacting with children is one of my favorite scenarios,  so I am super into that part.

At 256 pages, Platform Decay is technically a novel, but in pacing and scope it feels more like the novellas of the series. For me, Network Effect, the fifth book in the series, is still an outlier with its much more novelistic scope and expansive page count.

Platform Decay offers one adventure with some dips into Murderbot’s recent past to catch us up since the events of the seventh book, System Collapse. If you don’t remember what happened back in System Collapse, I suggest a quick reread before reading Platform Decay. Not because the plot or even the setting continues, but because there are casual mentions of previous events that it is nice to understand effortlessly.

Platform Decay is the first new Murderbot book since the TV show on Apple+ launched and I imagine there are now a whole slew of new fans of Alexander Skarsbot who are curious about the books. To you, new fans, I say: read the books in order! They are all very good and you will appreciate the context as you go forward.

And then a week later, we get Radiant Star by Ann Leckie!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/18/space-opera-series-with-installments-coming-up/

Feb 17 2026

Steep by Craig Yorke

Originally begun as a letter to his sons, Craig Yorke’s deeply thoughtful autobiography is a startlingly honest look at what it was like to grow up as a Black man of whom much was expected in the 20th century.

Subtitled A Black Neurosurgeon’s Story, this is a book that advertises from the start that it’s the tale of a high achiever. But it’s also the story of someone who, as he writes in his reader’s note at the beginning, seeks a friendship with his past in order to make space for his future. It’s a perhaps deeply unfashionable approach to the idea of truth and reconciliation — restorative justice is much messier than retributive justice, after all — but it works really well at an individual level. The author not only makes sense of his own life and purpose using this lens, but can translate his experiences into an inspirational story for the reader. And I’m not talking about the usual “up by his bootstraps despite poverty and racism” memoir, tho there are certainly elements of that. This is more of a “how do I reconcile my achievements with what I was forced to give up, in a way that allows me to embrace joy while still satisfying the doubts that haunt me?”

If you don’t have any idea what that means, then count yourself blessed. If you want to know what it’s like tho, to have grown up this way and to have come out of it with both grace and meaning, then you should definitely read this book.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/02/17/steep-by-craig-yorke/