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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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/10/20/we-are-the-keystones-by-katy-s-duffield-hannah-salyer/

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/

Oct 14 2026

Bawk To The Future by Kaz Windness

This adorable graphic novel chapter book is the first in a new Time-Traveling Chickens series for advancing readers!

Nugget and Tenders are two chickens kept in a super secret lab who’ve been accidentally fed a Super-Smart potion instead of the Super-Big potion Dr Dipping-Sauce thought she was giving them, as part of the shadowy Big Chicken cabal’s Secret Plan For World Domination. Mysteriously, the Super-Big potion has been accidentally fed to the rats instead, causing havoc in the building. Amidst all the chaos, Nugget and Tenders make a break for it, only to find themselves accidentally sucked back in time due to the machinations of the Time-Travel Lab.

When our plucky (heh) chickens are finally able to peek out of the bucket they’d been flung through time in, they discover that they’ve been shunted back to the late Cretaceous period. Worse, they’ve landed right in the middle of a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s nest. With the help of some new friends, will they be able to escape the T-Rex and find a way… Bawk To The Future?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/10/14/bawk-to-the-future-by-kaz-windness/

Oct 13 2026

Deepa, M.D. by Priya Swaminathan

I kept having to put this Middle Grade novel off but am so glad I could finally make the time for it!

Deepa is a precocious 12 year-old who missed out on her entire first year of middle school while she was being treated for leukemia. Now she’s determined to get back to being a regular middle schooler, and that means not letting anyone treat her like the “sick kid.”

Unfortunately, her parents have other ideas. Their rules and restrictions feel both stifling and embarrassing. Her best friend Renee tries to help, but already seems to have a whole other life separate from what they shared in elementary school. Renee’s new friend Lola is a mean girl who doesn’t seem to like Deepa, who’s already having trouble adjusting.

At least her life outside of school provides challenges that are more interesting than demoralizing. After getting roped into riding along on a house call with her physician Uncle Jai, Deepa becomes his partner in investigating the mysterious medical ailments of his patients. Uncle Jai is brilliant but not great with people, which is where Deepa steps in. She knows exactly what it feels like to be ill and at the mercy of doctors. Between the two of them, will they be able to not only help and heal others but also figure out how to make Deepa feel like she finally fits in at school?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/10/13/deepa-m-d-by-priya-swaminathan/

Oct 12 2026

What Work Is by Philip Levine

What Work Is was my introduction to Philip Levine, back in 1991 when it was new and I was working at the late and lamented Oxford Books of Atlanta, Georgia. Oxford was the largest independent bookstore in the Southeast, and something of a pioneer of the superstore model, bookstores that kept 100,000 or more titles on hand. It was also about 50 yards from my first apartment in Atlanta, and as soon as I moved in I knew that I could either work there or be resigned to spending most of my paycheck there. (Or possibly both.) So I was a graphic designer by day and a sales clerk by night, because Oxford stayed up until quite late. There was also a distinct wave of customers who came in after 10pm and made the night hours interesting.

What Work Is by Philip Levine

My work was different from a lot of the work that Levine writes about in this volume. He was a good forty years older than me, and his milieu is mid-century Detroit, a world of assembly lines, tight budgets, bad housing, cold winds, and maybe camaraderie if you are lucky. Those jobs are valorized now but Levine lived some of that life himself — he was working in auto factories when he was just 14 — and people all around him worked those jobs much longer. Levine writes about how the work sites were loud, dirty and dangers; how the work would physically break you if you did it long enough, even if you avoided accidents on the job. He writes about how mind-numbingly boring it was doing the same limited set of physical motions hour after hour, shift after shift, year after year. The bosses would try to take what little autonomy you had. They would try to speed up the work. They tried to make sure you knew your place, and that place was under their thumb.

Yet Levine does not write litanies of misery, and neither does he write Socialist Realist paeans to Stakhanovite labor achievements. Instead he captures the inescapable human moments, the times that show that even on the assembly line these are people not machines. He writes about the communities outside of the workplaces, and little moments in life that mean the world. Here’s a bit from “Soloing,” in which his mother has dreamt of John Coltrane playing, and Levine has driven hours through the night to see her:

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/10/12/what-work-is-by-philip-levine-2/

Oct 11 2026

Hänschen klein, ging allein by Hans J. Massaquoi

Hans-Jürgen Massaquoi was born in Hamburg in 1926, son of a working-class German woman and a son of the Liberian consul general in the city. The liaison that produced him did not last — both mother and father were young to be parents, and his father returned to Ireland to continue his studies in law — though the connection to Liberia did. Hans’ grandfather, the consul, took them in to live at the consulate. Eventually he was recalled to Liberia; Hans and his mother remained in Hamburg. They lived in Barmbek, a working-class district of close quarters, small shops and businesses, and tight community. Hans always stood out because he was Black, the only Black child he knew of in Hamburg. That also meant that he grew up as a German kid among other German kids; there could be no question of a separate community for him because there simply wasn’t anyone else.

Hänschen klein ging allein by Hans J. Massaquoi

When he was seven, the Nazis came to national power. He remembers being disappointed about not being allowed to join the Hitler Youth, which from his perspective looked like a fun organization with cool uniforms. He also remembers a PE teacher from elementary school who kept moving the goals to ensure that he would never be able to meet them. Decades later when he wrote his memoirs the shame and the unfairness still hurt. Nazi regulations also meant that he was forbidden higher education and was tracked into vocational schooling followed by an apprenticeship. The close-knit nature of Barmbek sometimes worked in his favor. One night when he was stopped by an SS member and taken to the local police station as a loiterer and a hoodlum, the officer on duty recognized him as an apprentice at the same firm as another policeman’s son and closed the case with no further actions taken. It was of course just one of many reminders of his unequal status in the society of his birth, and the ways that arbitrary state power could change his life instantly, or even end it.

Ironically, Nazi racial laws may have kept him alive by barring his entry into the army. Many, many years later he learned more about what became of his school classmates, and the share of male classmates who died in the war was not small. Eventually, it was not just Germans who went to war; in due course the war came to Germany. Nearly all of Hans’ neighborhood was destroyed by Allied bombing. He and his mother relocated to a basement dwelling they found with help from Hans’ friend Ralph Giordano, who was half-Jewish and whose family survived the war in hiding.

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