Sep 11 2026

Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! I got my flu shot yesterday and have been struggling a wee bit more than usual ever since, so all I want to do is climb back into bed with a book. The question, ofc, is which one? A strong contender is definitely Freya Marske’s Bodies Of Magic, publishing next week!

Medical school meets dark academia in the hallowed halls of the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr. Mages with the healer’s gift are given five grueling years in which to master their powers. At the end of that time, they’re subjected to the Grand Exam, which will determine the course of the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately for the overachievers among them, the Grand Exam is also a group project. Candidates are only told five days in advance who their randomly selected teammates will be. Together, the team will have to successfully complete five practical cases. They will either all pass together or all fail together.

Academie students Estiene, Alys, Moyna, Jehane and Clement are all aware of this, and have all prepared themselves as best they can for the attempt. There’s no preparing, however, for their discovery of the corpse of Ysabel Caudotte, the school’s best student. All five of them have a connection to Ysabel and know that they have to solve her murder, even if some people would rather her death be considered a suicide. The students only have five days to figure out whodunnit tho, or risk jeopardizing their entire futures.

I fell in love with Ms Marske’s writing while reading the inventive and unapologetically horny Cinder House — it was actually my first choice for Best Novella for the 2026 Hugo Awards — so can’t wait to experience her take on a dark academia murder mystery here!

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Sep 10 2026

Piggy by Ann Hood & Anna Quaranta

Sweet but slight, almost like a condensed version of the Toy Story movies but with a lot less action.

Piggy has belonged to their human ever since the little girl was a baby. Once upon a time, Piggy was pink, pristine and perky: the very epitome of a huggable, loveable stuffed animal. But being a child’s constant companion, indoors and out, takes a toll on cleanliness, so into the wash Piggy must eventually go. As time goes on and washes increase, Piggy starts losing their fabulousness. What, however, are they gaining instead?

I was honestly a little surprised that the book ended as it did! I think that is more the result of me centering myself as an adult reader instead of thinking solely as the intended child audience tho. Children don’t need a whole bunch of morals to be strung together in order to learn something: the lesson here about relative value is already important enough to stand on its own, especially if the young child is learning how to read independently. The language is spare but concise, making this book a good choice for learners.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/10/piggy-by-ann-hood-anna-quaranta/

Sep 09 2026

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This was the only Hugo Awards 2026 nominee for Best Novel that didn’t come in the Voter’s Packet, so I got on the waitlist for it at the library, thereby ensuring that I’d actually read the book this year, lol. So on the one hand, I was unsurprised that not being in the packet meant that this novel polled last in the Hugos voting: we voters are nothing if not conscientious about voting only on what we’ve actually been able to experience! But that’s also a shame, because this was definitely one of 2025’s best novels of both sci-fi and horror.

The titular Shroud is the nickname given to a moon wreathed in a perpetual darkness that’s nearly impenetrable to most, if not all, contemporary sensors. Lacking in oxygen and possessing a higher gravity than humans can function in without significant augmentation, it’s not the kind of place that’s hospitable to human life.

That won’t stop capitalism tho! When the crew sent by the corporation to assess Shroud for asset stripping comes into orbit, we get a glimpse of the depressingly likely dystopia that far-future society in the stars has become, with corporate citizens being sent in and out of hibernation depending on their perceived utility to the company. (Also, please forgive me for the paucity of proper names in this review: I won Library Loan chicken but do not now have a copy of the book to reference as I type, alas. There were unsurprisingly a lot of people who were interested in reading this after me!)

Anyway, Juna and Mai are two members of a six-person team assigned to evaluating Shroud via mechanical solutions. Mai is a grumpy, big-brained engineer and Juna is essentially the administrative assistant who has to know how to do at least a little of everybody else’s job. A freak accident to their orbital station sees them shunted into an exploratory pod Mai had built, then plunged directly down to Shroud’s inhospitable surface. As they figure out how to survive the planet and get back to the only known point where they might still be able to contact what (hopefully) remains of the orbital, they run into local fauna, and have to figure out whether these strange new lifeforms are friend or foe.

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Sep 08 2026

Art Attack (The Sherlock Society #3) by James Ponti

with a special shout-out to Yaoyao Ma Van As, who’s done an even better than usual job on the terrific cover.

Young sleuth Alex Sherlock is absolutely stunned when one of the most popular girls in school sits down next to him and his best friend Yadi while they’re having lunch one day. He’s crestfallen when his older sister Zoe almost immediately chases her away, but Zoe has arrived with both Lina, the last member of their detecting club, and some exciting news. The website that The Sherlock Society set up to receive inquiries has finally landed a credible and potentially profitable case. The siblings’ Grandpa, former investigative reporter and current honorary member of TSS, will arrive after school to pick them up and chaperone their appointment.

Bennett Turner is a property developer who wants to attract a young, hip crowd to his most recent property, the luxurious but also eco-friendly and socially responsible Grove Bohemia. After reading about TSS’s success in solving a case that had baffled detectives for years, he decides that they’re perfect for a somewhat delicate business matter of his that requires investigation. The Miami graffiti artist known only as Funky Munky has recently ascended to near-Banksy levels of fame, and Turner wants to hire them to paint a buzzworthy ten-storey mural for the Grove Bohemia. He’s willing to pay FM two hundred thousand dollars — and TSS a ten percent finder’s fee — but has no way of making contact with the deliberately elusive art provocateur, whose graffiti is not always legal nor welcome by the powers that be.

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Sep 04 2026

Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part One

Happy September, everybody! I genuinely don’t understand how this year has simultaneously felt so protracted yet also seemed to pass by in the blink of an eye. I’d put it down to my mystery illness but apparently, I’m not the only person I know who feels like this, so.

If you’d like a less baffling way to marvel at the passage of time, check out the most exciting debut of the coming week, Gigi Waldorf’s Murder On The Upper East Side. Yes, that’s a pseudonym (of bestselling author Kit Frick) that, with the cover text, absolutely evokes the beloved original Gossip Girl series by Cecily von Ziegesar. I am, ofc, Team Blair forever!

In this homage, Hannah Miller is a journalist who finds herself at a glittering charity gala attended by many of the people she went to school with at the ultra-prestigious Prescott Academy of New York a decade ago. As a scholarship student, she’d felt like an outsider, and hoped that she could finish her senior year by flying under the radar and avoiding the sting of Queen Bees Madison DuPont and Elle Harrington. Alas, things did not go quite as she’d planned.

Ten years later, Madison DuPont is still Queen Bee. Her big welcoming speech at the gala is, however, punctuated by her extremely unexpected death soon after. Fingers quickly point to Hannah, who was seen talking to Madison mere moments before she died. In order to clear her name, Hannah will have to get close to her former classmates once more, unearthing all their secrets to find the one person who hated Madison enough to want her dead. Trouble is, there are more than a few people at the gala with secrets that they’d kill to keep concealed…

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/04/tantalizing-tales-september-2026-part-one/

Sep 03 2026

Books, Iced Coffee & A Side Of Dragons by Amanda Lovelace & Raquel Trave

Sometimes, a sugar rush is exactly what you need to get you through the day.

Books, Iced Coffee & A Side Of Dragons is the graphic novel equivalent of a fully loaded iced coffee that you know probably isn’t the healthiest choice for you but is, at least in the moment, a much-needed bit of self-care. It’s a gentle romance presented in vignettes, where the stakes never seem very high because you already know that everything will work out in the end. The most fantastical element here tho are the presence of small dragons, which are treated as household pets and occasional helpers, depending on their attributes and abilities. That aside, this story is very much based on our world, down to the discriminatory politics and health care policies.

Anyway, Luci has recently opened a bookstore on the Jersey Shore that features, among other titles, plenty of LGBTQIA+ representation. Business is slow, but her cheerful assistant August is always ready with a pep talk, whether it comes to running the book store or chatting up Aster, the friendly coffee shop owner next door whom Luci has a crush on. But Luci is shy, and therefore stunned when Aster gives her her number on a coffee cup sleeve. Luci is too afraid to call… until she finds a dragon stuck up a tree and needs help fast. Aster practically flies to the rescue, kicking off a charming romance that is not, however, without its share of obstacles.

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Sep 02 2026

Pop Manga Myths And Monsters Coloring Book by Camilla d’Errico

I have really been in the mood to make low-commitment art lately, so what a pleasure it was to finally crack open this coloring book and give it a whirl!

Camilla d’Errico is a fine artist globally renowned for her pop-surrealist oeuvre. Her vision translates beautifully to coloring books, of which this is her latest (I want to say tenth.) I had the privilege of reviewing her Pop Manga Paint And Ink Coloring Book earlier this year and adored it, so was very excited to try out a more industry-standard version of her work, printed on the more usual non-watercolor-friendly paper.

The art, ofc, continues in the same fantastical genre, tho focusing more specifically on the titular myths and monsters. These are absolutely not coloring books for young children, btw, as some of the art leans heavily into the scary side of the latter. But anyone who can handle PG-13 monstrosities will be delighted at the variety of manga-esque mythic art available here, of which a half-colored sample graces the front and back covers.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/02/pop-manga-myths-and-monsters-coloring-book-by-camilla-derrico/

Sep 01 2026

As If by Isabel Waidner

Compellingly written but also so set on not being too weird — or, perhaps, in being decidedly ambiguous — that it feels oddly unsatisfying, especially to a genre enthusiast like myself.

Aubrey Lewis is a forty-six year-old actor who’s sunk into a depression following the death of his wife Laurie. He subleases an apartment filled with someone else’s things, and listlessly considers getting back into acting again, following a chance meeting with a former co-worker who thinks he’d be great for a reboot she’s been working on.

When Lindsey Korine walks into Lewis’ apartment and starts making himself at home, Lewis doesn’t even dispute the other man’s right to be there. Korine has just walked out on his own wife Laurie, who survived the disease that killed Lewis’ spouse. Korine has never had much of a career, but he’s interested in acting. The two men are physically alike enough that when Korine decides to take Lewis’ spot at the audition, no one seems to notice the difference.

Lewis, meanwhile, has been co-opted by the living Laurie to take Korine’s place, for the benefit of their son. The more he gets comfortable playing the part of Korine, the less he wants to go back to his old life. As the two men gradually begin to confront the results of their choices, they begin to wonder whether the road not taken was the road they should have been on all along, and what they should do about it now that they have.

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Aug 31 2026

The Ghost In Cabin 13 by J.C. Phillipps

Is it just me or is the horror genre having a major resurgence this year? Perhaps it’s related to the growing phenomenon of Summerween and the accompanying marketing opportunities: it just feels like horror titles are making a bigger splash than usual lately. I, personally, have mixed feelings on the genre, even as I acknowledge that I’ve very much enjoyed most of the recent titles I’ve read that fall more squarely under the label than into my general preferences of mystery and sci-fi/fantasy. I think it’s fair to say that horror has done a terrific job of incorporating more of those other genres lately, with an accompanying improvement in literary quality (see also the growth of the term “speculative fiction” to encompass the blurring of the lines between sci-fi, fantasy and horror.)

This improvement is exemplified in JC Phillipps’ recently published Middle Grade graphic novel, The Ghost In Cabin 13. It’s a sweet and funny coming-of-age tale with a seriously scary backbone. Essentially, twelve and a half year-old Leah is being sent to sleepaway camp for a week. Her parents have asked for her to be roomed with slightly older teenagers, in large part due to wanting her to set aside childish things (e.g. her doll Beverly) and embrace the next step to adulthood. Parents can be so dumb sometimes, lol.

Anyway, Cabin Four isn’t super thrilled to be saddled with a twelve and a half year-old, especially one who still carries around a doll. On the first night, the oldest campers decide to have a seance at the forbidden Cabin 13, a dilapidated building that Reese, the storyteller, insists is haunted by the ghost of a dead woman. When Reese discovers that Leah snuck Beverly into the proceedings, Reese makes fun of the younger girl… until the doll is snatched out of her hands by unseen forces. The rest of the campers panic and flee, but Leah scrambles to recover her doll before she leaves. Unsurprisingly, she gets lost on the way back to Cabin Four, and spills the beans to the counsellor she finally comes across. Even tho Reese convinces Connie that Leah was just having a bad dream, thus allowing the older girls to escape any punishment, Cabin 4 unsurprisingly turns against Leah for being a snitch.

Crushed, Leah decides to just have fun by herself with Beverly. But when she discovers that the ghost in Cabin 13 is very real, and that the ghost has more than a passing interest in Beverly, everything changes. Will her strange experiences at camp finally help Leah embrace growing up and allow her to leave her doll behind? Or will her haunted doll have very different plans for both their futures?

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Aug 30 2026

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson

As a relatively uninformed reader of The Odyssey — one trip through it unaccompanied while traveling across Central Europe in the mid-1990s; I don’t even remember which translation I read, only that I was mesmerized — I was happy to read all of Emily Wilson’s introductory material before embarking on the poem itself. What is known about Homer, and the poetic tradition from which the two Homeric epics emerged? What are contemporary discussions concerned with when they take on the intersection of archeology, linguistics and literature that The Odyssey presents? I was glad to have her set the scene and sketch the surroundings, and to state up front what her main decisions about translating the epic would be: all in iambic pentameter, as the natural meter of English epic verse, and the same number of lines as Homer’s Odyssey. This was all in 2022, well before this summer’s movie version was even a gleam in Christopher Nolan’s scriptwriting eye. Her Iliad was also the first one that I found I could read. I had bounced off of several others through the years, and I read hers in about three weeks.

Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea by Emily Wilson

All of which piqued my interest in Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea, a collection of essays about translating and classical literature. The book contains 13 essays — seven of which were published elsewhere, as far as I can tell — along with an introduction, an afterword, and suggestions for further reading. Wilson writes in her introduction that all were thoroughly revised and reworked for this publication. I do wish that Wilson and her publisher had included the information about original publication with the essays themselves, instead of burying them on the copyright page, because when she writes something like “Stoicism is having a moment” (p. 132), I would like to know when in the twenty-year period of writing that moment was had, or whether I should presume it includes the 2026 moment of publication. The fine print reveals that “Chill Out with the Stoics” was first published in The New Republic in 2010. The essay’s second sentence mentions a book that was published in 2016, so its inclusion was clearly part of the revision process, and the moment has apparently lasted more than a decade and a half, which seems to me a bit long for a moment, but maybe a classicist sees things differently.

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