Jan 13 2026

Ghost Town by James R Gregory (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! Today we have a charming excerpt for you from a historical novel. While James R Gregory’s Ghost Town is billed as a psychological thriller, at its heart, it’s a story about leadership, love and connection, as ambition clashes with isolation to potentially devastating result.

In the late 1800s, the small town of Sulphur Creek is experiencing a coal mining boom. Sammy Murphy was born into solitude, and is more familiar with shadowy tunnels than open streets, and with hiding secrets than with making friends. But as he begins to engage with the inescapable pulse of industry, he searches for the kind of meaningful connection all people desire.

Barry Bacon is the kind of ambitious industrialist who considers Andrew Carnegie a peer, however tenuously that belief is rooted in reality. His plans for the future stretch far beyond Sulfur Creek, but will his arrogance prove his downfall?

As Sammy falls in love and finds an unexpected awakening, Barry must fight to save his empire from collapse. Both men learn important lessons about the kinds of truth that transcend time, against the backdrop of the United States of America’s industrial ascent. Based on historical events like the Johnstown flood, this book serves as a reminder of the human cost of unchecked ambition.

Read on for a perhaps surprisingly gallant look at Sammy’s courtship of the woman he loves:

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/13/ghost-town-by-james-r-gregory-excerpt/

Jan 12 2026

Trans History by Alex L Combs & Andrew Eakett

subtitled From Ancient Times To The Present Day. Because no, being trans is not a new thing, and it’s important that we not pretend that it is.

Y’all, I’m tired. Twelve days into the new year and I’m at the point where I can never know what new horrors to expect from this administration and the assholes who support them. I chase down news via BlueSky, one of the few social media sites that doesn’t discourage linking out to actual, credible sources (and that isn’t flooded with misinformation, yet and knock on wood.) I’ve built a reliable, manageable feed since moving there in late 2024, but lately it feels like a physical task just to open the app and catch up on the day’s events. I used to spend maybe twenty non-continuous minutes a day there, more if Arsenal was playing. That amount has increased significantly since January 3rd.

But I can’t not check in, because I don’t have the luxury right now of not paying close attention to the news. My country and the promises it stands for, the good things we do and the progress that we’ve made and continue to make, are in danger from the fascists in power. They’ve done so many awful and outright reprehensible things designed to make normal, decent people feel exponentially more powerless and scared than we did before. Instead of being able to just live my life, do my job, enjoy my hobbies and cherish my loved ones, I now have to do all of that IN SPITE of the ramped up climate of terror around me. It’s exhausting. I’m exhausted, and I’ll bet that, if you’re reading this, you are, too.

Which is why it’s so important to me to make sure I read books like this and talk about them, because the values of truth and diversity and inclusiveness are needed even more now than ever. Right-wing commentators will lie to you about trans people, they’ll lie to you about colonization, they’ll lie to you about the law, they’ll justify any cruelty to others, all to keep themselves feeling secure and in control. It’s more important then ever that we shore ourselves up with the truth, and the strength that that gives us to stand up for who we are and to push back against the people who want us dead because of how we look or who we consensually love.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/12/trans-history-by-alex-l-combs-andrew-eakett/

Jan 09 2026

Tantalizing Tales — January 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear reader! This week, we’re featuring one upcoming book and five backlist titles, beginning with a collaboration involving one of my favorite authors of contemporary speculative fiction. Rob Hart teams up with Jeff Rake for Detour, a high stakes sci-fi thriller with a Planet Of The Apes-like twist.

It’s all in a day’s work when police officer and devoted family man Ryan Crane thwarts an assassination attempt on a billionaire with presidential aspirations. A grateful John Ward offers Ryan the chance of a lifetime: a seat as one of a handful of civilians joining three astronauts on the first manned mission to Titan, Saturn’s moon. Ryan is understandably hesitant. He doesn’t have the training and doesn’t want to leave his family for such a long period of time, even if the experimental spacecraft can condense the journey to a “mere” two-year expedition. Ward, however, dangles the extra incentive of a paycheck that will take care of Ryan’s family for life. With his wife urging him on, Ryan takes off for Titan, and returns two years later a hero.

But something is different now. As Ryan and the other civilian astronauts discover that the Earth they’ve returned to isn’t the home they left behind, they begin to question everything and everyone they know. The crew must uncover what happened during their journey, and decide how far they’re willing to go to return to their normal lives.

Mr Hart earned my admiration with the wonderfully prescient The Warehouse, and has gone on to write other entertaining, if more mainstream thrillers in his Assassins Anonymous series (I am once again blurbed without a byline for that latter on Bookshop, lol.) I really wish I had the time to read this novel in a timely manner too, so let me know if you do!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/09/tantalizing-tales-january-2026-part-two/

Jan 08 2026

City Of All Seasons by Oliver K Langmead & Aliya Whiteley

Jamie lives in a city of perpetual winter. Snow and ice blanket the island of Fairharbour, where he survives by scavenging for materials that he can use to make pretty trinkets he can subsequently trade for food and fuel. But when he puts together a kaleidoscope and tests it out, he catches an impossible glimpse of summer.

Esther lives in a city of sweltering heat. When she finds a kaleidoscope in one of the few pockets of cold in the city, she’s intrigued, not only by what it shows her but by the fact that it reminds her very much of the handiwork of her craftsman stepfather Pawel. As far as she knows, it’s been years since a weatherbomb trapped Fairharbour in endless summer. Is the kaleidoscope showing her a way out?

As Jamie and Esther figure out how to communicate and connect, they’ll unravel the mystery of their city, even as they unearth the terrible secrets of their shared history. But will their efforts be enough for them to save two cities on the verge of disaster?

This fascinating sci-fi novel starts out seeming like climate fiction before turning into a puzzle box that gets to the heart of why environmental disasters happen: greed and selfishness. What I thought most interesting was the way in which the prime instigator was not left blameless, tho I can’t say more for fear of spoilers. It would have been understandable to mythologize that figure, but the writers chose to make it clear instead that flawed people don’t emerge from a vacuum. It’s a fitting approach in a book about learning connection after forced division.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/08/city-of-all-seasons-by-oliver-k-langmead-aliya-whiteley/

Jan 07 2026

Steeple, Volumes 1, 2 & 3 by John Allison

For quite a long time there, I’d treat myself every Christmas by reading a new volume of John Allison’s Bad Machinery while the kids played with their new toys. I eventually ran out of volumes (there are only ten, after all) so decided to go ahead and read all three books of the Steeple series this past holiday season as a sort of consolation. It probably helps that I do have at least nine volumes of Mr Allison’s other works still waiting unread on my shelves, in addition to the others I haven’t yet bought. Anyway, I’m doing my part to make sure my favorite cartoonist is able to live comfortably and continue making the books I adore.

To which cohort we can safely add the Steeple books! I wasn’t sure if I’d love anything outside of the Bad Machinery comics: I’d tried some of the Scary-Go-Round strips a few years back and bounced firmly off them. But Mr Allison does probably some of his most thoughtful, self-assured work to date here with Steeple, in books that aren’t afraid to tackle morality, religion and the power of true kindness.

Vol 1, collecting issues #1-5, has colors by Sarah Stern and letters by Jim Campbell. It introduces our main characters, beginning with priest-in-training Billie Baker. She’s very much the can-do, organizing type without whom most communities would collapse, despite her work being little appreciated, if not outright disdained. She’s sweet and chirpy and more than ready to tackle her newest assignment as curate to the Church of England parish in the small coastal town of Tredregyn in Cornwall.

What she doesn’t know, however, is that the current priest, Reverend David Penrose, is on a one-man mission to fight back the abominations that slither out of the sea and threaten the people of Tredregyn (with the support of his crotchety housekeeper, Mrs Clovis.) He sees his battle as a holy war. Billie initially thinks he’s nuts, but when she encounters one of the sea creatures herself, she realizes that far greater challenges lie in store for her in this parish than she’d ever expected.

(Since I’m discussing all three books in the series, there will be mild spoilers ahead, so I do recommend reading these brilliant books first if you’d like to remain completely unsurprised by all the terrific plot twists.)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/07/steeple-volumes-1-2-3-by-john-allison/

Jan 06 2026

Looking Back On 2025

Y’all, I read my Looking Back On 2024 column in preparation for writing this one and have never been more depressingly reminded of the French aphorism “Plus ce change, plus c’est la meme chose” or as we say in English “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

Ofc, not everything has been the same. Some things have gotten worse! All my personal accomplishments this past year — with the absolute pinnacle being that I was a contestant on Jeopardy!, and a darned good one, too! — feel so small in the face of the horrors generated by this US administration, their cronies and the tech broligarchy all coming together to burn down the planet in order to line their own coffers. So while I did hit my stated goal of reading fewer books this year than last, I don’t feel like that was due to a corresponding increase in my sense of either mindfulness or rest. Instead, I’ve had to pay too much attention to a world on fire, with headlines almost daily sapping me of my energy as I try to make sense of the real world in addition to the ones between the covers of the books I (too often have to) read.

Which, according to Goodreads, totaled 270 in 2025. I’m just gonna say it: I feel like I read a lot more dreck this year than in previous. Part of it is due to the fact that I’ve developed a reputation for being fair in my reviews and championing lesser-known/offbeat titles that have important things to say about self-acceptance, self-examination and empathy. I think a lot of publicists just send me their quirkier babies and hope for the best.

And a lot of times that works out! But there are also way too many books which have felt like a slog this year, and others which remind me how desperately the publishing industry needs to hire more editors and pay them all a living wage. There are so many enjoyable books out there, and even more that have potential, but the editors I know are under so much pressure to produce that they don’t have the time to sit an author down and tell them “hey, this needs a lot of work, let’s get started.” Instead, books are tossed into the market before they’re probably ready, in hopes they’ll turn into the latest inexplicable success story. And don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve read around 400 pages of a novel and thought it would have been so much better with about 100 fewer. Idk why people feel the need to pad their volumes — especially when they do the dreaded detail-by-detail retelling of actions we already read about earlier in the book — but it is aggravating, to the point where I will happily decline any book I’m on the fence about nowadays if it’s longer than 400 pages.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/06/looking-back-on-2025/

Jan 05 2026

Winnie-The-Pooh, 100th Anniversary Edition by A. A. Milne & Ernest H. Shepard

collecting both the original Winnie-the-Pooh short story collection as well as its follow-up, The House At Pooh Corner, in one delightfully velour-covered volume reminiscent of a particularly huggable (and decidedly yellow) stuffed animal friend.

I did not, unfortunately, have a Winnie the Pooh childhood. I only really came to the property in my adolescence, after reading some A A Milne at my best friend’s house (she absolutely had a WtP childhood) and being affected by my younger sister’s obsession with cute tchotchkes, driven by the marketing of global corporations like McDonald’s. For a time in my mid to late teens, I even had the cutest backpack that looked like Pooh Bear clinging cozily from my shoulders.

But, like many others worldwide, I hadn’t actually read all the books in the series. I’d read the first book and one (or both, my memory is hazy) of the poetry volumes, courtesy of the friend I mentioned earlier. I don’t think I’d ever had the opportunity to read The House At Pooh Corner, with its surprisingly moving ending. I suppose the bittersweet conclusion is a metaphor for childhood’s end but, as someone who was shipped off to boarding school myself, I can see where the ending is less a gift to the actual Christopher Robin and more an attempt to assuage the author’s own guilt at being the herald, if not outright engineer, of same.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/05/winnie-the-pooh-100th-anniversary-edition-by-a-a-milne-ernest-h-shepard/

Jan 04 2026

Taking Stock of 2025

2025 turned out to be a year of reading easily. I remember thinking at the end of 2024 that I was going to make sure I read for enjoyment at least as much as for satisfaction or a sense of accomplishment. My reading, especially in the first half of the year, reflected that desire. I only finished five books of non-fiction all year, though Portrait with Keys mostly uses the techniques of fiction, so that number may be debatable. I only finished three books in February, and then two in April. I am sure that horror and exasperation at another round of Trump in the White House played a role in my pace and choices.

One of the delights of this year just past has been diving into the work of T. Kingfisher. I read six of her works in 2025, and I bought a bunch more. I’m not sure that 2026 will see me joining the Kingfisher of the Month Club, but it will be close. I love her no-nonsense women, her dark hilarity, how readily she keeps her authorial promises. Her UK publisher is bringing out new editions of older work, and I am happily snapping them up. She’s wonderfully prolific, and prolifically wonderful.

Other authors I read more than one book from included Alexander McCall Smith, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ben Aaronovitch, Chinua Achebe and Nghi Vo. Most of them are writers whose series I’m either keeping up with or catching up on. I’ve read all but one of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books, somewhere near half of the Vorkosigan Saga, all of Rivers of London except for the graphic novels, and almost all of the Singing Hills novellas that have been published to date. The others from Vo are on back order. I started reading them in the Hugo Award readers’ packets, but decided to wish for paper copies this past Christmas because I wanted to have the whole set at hand. Plus they’re pretty.

I read all of five translations this past year: one from French to German, one from Japanese, two from Hungarian, and one from Dutch to German. Three of five were terrific, and I am looking forward to finishing Banffy’s trilogy in 2026. I didn’t get on well with this year’s Nobel winner, but at least now I know.

The only re-reading I did in 2025 was finishing up John Crowley’s lovely and monumental Little, Big. I bought the 25th anniversary edition, which was published just in time for the book’s 40th anniversary, in the summer of 2024 and finished reading in January 2025. It’s a book that reads well at a seasonal pace, especially if you have read it many times before. I did not read any full volumes of poetry this year. That happens sometimes.

I read 26 books that were written by men; I read 29 books that were written by women; if any of the authors listed below are non-binary, I am happy to be corrected. Two books have co-authors, and in both cases one is a man and one is a woman. I did not count the one book that I listed but did not finish. This is the first year since I started counting that the number of books by women has exceeded the number of books by men. Thanks, T. Kingfisher!

In good years for reading in German, about 10 percent of the books that I read are in that language. Last year I read three, down from 13 in 2024. One classic from the early 20th century, which I probably should have read as part of my undergraduate degree lo these many years ago. One classic of East German literature. And one translation from Dutch that’s part of the Süddeutsche series about great cities. I’d like to read a bit more in German in 2026, there’s some neat history by Karl Schlögel on my shelf, along with some more contemporary reporting by Michael Thumann, plus the variety in the Süddeutsche books mean that I have a lot to look forward to.

I tried 18 authors whose works were new to me. That’s up from 10 in 2024, the first year I counted.

Best explanation of why people will not be settling Mars any time soon: A City on Mars by Kelly and Zach Wintersmith. Best meditative account of how people are actually living in space now: Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Best telling of the advent of modernity: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Best third book that made me re-think the whole trilogy: The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison. Best book to make a reader re-think the whole magical school subgenre: The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. Best and funniest romances with swords and suchlike: Paladin’s Grace and Swordheart by T. Kingfisher.

The full list, roughly in order read, is under the fold with links to my reviews and other writing about the authors here at Frumious.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/04/taking-stock-of-2025/

Jan 02 2026

Tantalizing Tales — January 2026 — Part One

Happy New Year, readers! I hope you had a delightful celebration ringing in a year that is hopefully no worse than the last… tho given the state of the country I live in and the absolutely infuriating refusal of large swathes of it to take note of history’s lessons, who even knows any more.

Apologies for being so glum. Let’s cheer ourselves up not only by looking forward to some excellent books coming out soon, but also, ahem, going over some of the 2025 novels that I still haven’t had time to cover (I got SO MANY books last year, y’all, and feel like I only really figured out how to properly run this column a few months into it.)

First up is definitely my most anticipated read this introductory week of January, Maude Royer’s The Bloody Brick Road. Originally written in French by its Quebecois author, this installment of the Forbidden Tales series is a retelling of The Wizard Of Oz. And hey, did you know that Frank Baum’s original fairytale is often considered a subtle critique of the US politics of the time? Ms Royer switches the setting to turn-of-the-21st-century Montreal, for her impactful dystopian thriller.

1994: Dorothy Noroit is 19, pregnant and on top of the world. Her boyfriend is hard-working, her home is beautiful and she gets to work with her best friend. But a seemingly freak accident puts Dorothy — and five other mothers-to-be — in the hospital. When she leaves days later, she no longer has a boyfriend, job or golden path laid before her.

Twenty-four years later and Montreal is plagued by an extremist group called The Winged Monkeys. Lieutenant Henri Duhaime and his partner Detective Emilianne St. Gelais are investigating the gruesome murder of a young man when the killer strikes again, leaving desecrated corpses and organs scattered around their city. The investigators must race against time to find and stop a brutal serial killer, in this homage to an Oz that’s been twisted and soaked in blood.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/01/02/tantalizing-tales-january-2026-part-one/

Dec 31 2025

Vera Wong’s Guide To Snooping (On A Dead Man) by Jesse Q Sutanto

At the end of 2025, I hit pause on my overloaded schedule to try to get to books I’d been greatly anticipating this year that I just didn’t have the time for before this. So yeah, I basically used my industry-wide two-week end of year break to do more work but oh wow, was that worth it for this novel!

When I read the first book in this series back in 2023, it quickly became one of my favorite books of the year, and definitely my favorite book of Jesse Q Sutanto’s so far. Before then, she had two distinct writing sides when it came to her adult fiction: the zany fluff of her Aunties series, and the dark social commentary of her standalone psychological thrillers. She combined the best of both worlds in Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice For Murderers, and is back for more of that winning formula in the sequel.

And look, when I say formula, I mean it, and not at all in a bad way. As in the first book, our title heroine falls into a mystery, collects the people around it, and mothers them with kindness and kepo (the Malay language equivalent for busybody) until she not only improves everybody’s lives, but solves the crime to boot. This time, however, Ms Sutanto adds a diabolical and highly relevant modern day twist, in the form of a criminal issue that desperately needs more coverage in media outside of the Southeast Asia beat.

Obviously, I’m not going to go into greater detail, because part of the impact of the story depends on the mystery at its heart. And that has to do with a young man named Xander Lin, an up-and-coming social media star, who apparently committed suicide. His roommate Milly refuses to believe it, but has to admit that she didn’t even know he was such a big deal online. In fact, she’d been torn as to whether to report him missing to the police at all… until Vera encounters the young woman outside the police station where Vera was bringing food to her future daughter-in-law. Vera immediately senses that Milly needs a friend, and proceeds to involve herself in both Milly’s life and the mystery of Xander’s death. And what a gut-wrenching mystery it is!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/12/31/vera-wongs-guide-to-snooping-on-a-dead-man-by-jesse-q-sutanto/