Aug 14 2026

Tantalizing Tales — August 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! August has so far been less brutal for me than the past few months, and will hopefully keep going that way, knock on wood. I hope you’ve all been having a nice month of it, too!

First up of books we have to look forward to is the latest from the author of the stunning Salt Bones, set in California’s Salton Sea. In The Sleeping Sisters, Jennifer Givhan turns her attention instead to the dormant volcanic landscape outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico, to give us another searing tale of women willing to fight for and against their families, risking everything to save the ones they love.

Fortuna Miercoles thought that moving her family to a better life across the Rio Grande meant that she could also leave behind the ancestral curse that’s haunted her bloodline, ever since one of her foremothers crossed the desert with a cactus thorn splitting her throat. But her family’s legacy of violence is proving difficult to evade.

Detective Jeanette Palacio has spent decades trying to find justice for her murdered cousins, as well as for the other dead women whose ghosts continue to haunt her. When a serial killer long thought gone begins to terrorize Albuquerque once more, Jeanette is on the case, even as something in Fortuna begins to awaken. The discovery of a body in Fortuna’s backyard will force the two women’s paths to converge. They’ll have to decide how much they can trust each other in their desire to uncover the truth, while still fiercely protecting what they each value most.

Based on both true events and the urban legend of The Girl With The Green Ribbon, this is a fascinating, feral tale of murder and horror told through Ms Givhan’s poetic Chicana-Indigenous lens.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/14/tantalizing-tales-august-2026-part-two/

Aug 13 2026

Kestrel Takes Flight by Joy McCullough

I think the main thing I need to get over when reading books in verse is that the poetry is never going to grab me as art in and of itself. None of these poems stand alone, at least in my initial read of the book, but they all stand together beautifully to tell a coming-of-age tale at once spare in words yet surprisingly full in emotion.

Eleven year-old Kestrel is not happy when her mom wakes her up in the middle of the night and whisks her away for an airplane ride. Mom isn’t really the kind of adult who has her life together, so Kestrel is unsurprised that she has to be the responsible one, even as she’s contending with the unwelcome novelty of their journey. Kestrel’s never even been on a plane before but, like her namesake, she embraces flight.

What she doesn’t embrace is the unexpected departure from where she and her mom lived with her grandfather in San Diego. Mom says they’re going to be staying in Montana for the summer so that Mom can continue studying the dogs she’d been specializing in before her college career was cut short. Kestrel doesn’t understand why their leaving had to be so abrupt, or why she isn’t allowed to call Grandfather now. She doesn’t like all the changes to her normal routines, and she especially doesn’t like dogs, having had nothing but negative experiences with them growing up.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/13/kestrel-takes-flight-by-joy-mccullough/

Aug 12 2026

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

Gah, how is the second book in this series even better than the astonishing first?

Carl’s Doomsday Scenario is, granted, not a perfect book. There’s still a lot of information dumping — an almost inevitable part of the LitRPG genre — and some bits that verge on deus ex machina. It’s also unforgiving of people who haven’t come immediately from the first book, as I spent a lot of time going “who?!” in the first few pages alone. Granted, this might be a problem solely with the edition I read: later ones might have a Previously, On Dungeon Crawler Carl section? But goddamnit, Donut, this is still one of the best novels of post-apocalyptic speculative fiction I’ve ever read. It was so gripping, I finished it in less than 24 hours, laughing out loud and crying several times throughout.

Carl, Donut and Mongo have now descended to Level 3 of the televised dungeon that flattened Earth for the entertainment of billions of alien viewers. On this level, the player characters can switch their races and specialize in a class. Donut, ofc, has no interest in being anything but her perfect cat self. Mindful of the advice they received from a former player turned popular talk show host, the duo make other canny choices to help them survive further levels of the game.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/12/carls-doomsday-scenario-by-matt-dinniman/

Aug 11 2026

New and upcoming books by authors we love!

The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass, by Leslye Penelope, is out today! This August and September are both terrific months for hotly anticipated authors, with Daggerbound, T. Kingfisher’s sequel to Swordheart, coming out on August 25; Wickhills by Premee Mohamed coming out on September 8; and Velvet Knife continuing the Stevie Bell series by Maureen Johnson on September 29. Slide on into Fall with some fast-paced good times!

the cover of the inevitable undoing of zahara douglass by leslye penelope shows a person in silhoutte with the title in all capsI got excited about The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass just from the premise: a teenager sees her brilliant twin disappear into an unmarked car, and after that, no one in the world except her seems to remember her twin existed at all. Yes! That’s my jam.

It is late December in 1999 and people are worried about the Y2K bug. We follow scenes of Zahara, a professional ballet dancer now in her twenties, investigating her sister Annica’s disappearance; and those scenes are interspersed with transcripts of recorded messages from their dad who died when they were kids, computer journal and text game creations from Annica, email and forum posts, and recordings of security footage. These pieces of evidence all inform our read of what Zahara learns as she uncovers more of her family’s history. It’s a wild ride!

After reading and loving the book, I was thrilled to learn the author, Leslye Penelope has written a bunch of other stuff I now look forward to reading as well. She hadn’t been on my “hotly anticipated releases from authors we love” radar before, but she sure is now!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/11/new-and-upcoming-books-by-authors-we-love/

Aug 10 2026

Camp Catastrophe (Dante N Ferno #2) by Brian Gordon

This Diary Of A Wimpy Kid-Inferno mashup is back, as our hapless middle school demon hero takes on a new challenge: sleepaway camp!

Now that Dante has a best friend, he’s willing to do practically anything to keep their relationship strong, including going to summer camp in the woods. Angelic Virgil insists that Camp Sulphur Springs is the absolute best, and is really looking forward to going back after having had to miss it the year before. Dante just wants to hang out with the first real friend he’s ever made. Fleeing his annoying siblings is just a bonus.

Camp Sulphur Springs turns out to be very different from what Dante expected tho. While the perpetually good-natured Virgil tries to make light of things, it’s obvious that the place has fallen into disrepair. The new sasquatch owners, Donny and Alma, are doing their best, and have hired the super-charismatic Wolf to lead the camper activities. Dante, ofc, instinctively hates the guy.

His animosity is only heightened by the amount of time and attention that both Virgil and Bea — Dante’s first ever female friend — are lavishing on the counselor. His supposed friends don’t even have time to help him practice the magic tricks that he wants to perform for the camp’s Talent Show. But when Dante finds Wolf acting suspiciously, will anyone believe him or will they all think he’s just being jealous?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/10/camp-catastrophe-dante-n-ferno-2-by-brian-gordon/

Aug 07 2026

Tantalizing Tales — August 2026 — Part One

Happy August everybody! The weather in Maryland is hot and humid and gross rn, but I have several delightful reads to help give you a break from the world outside.

So one of the weirder things about being a book critic of some popularity is that I often have books land on my desk that I don’t remember requesting. But that’s alright, and exactly why I have this column: to feature outliers that I can’t quite fit into my schedule but are of high interest to myself and hopefully to you too, dear reader.

Eli Raphael’s debut coming-of age novel Night Objects is one such book. I am an absolute sucker for a boarding school murder mystery, which is exactly what our heroine Lenny Winter finds herself in the middle of after unexpected tragedy lands her at Blanchard, an exclusive academy for the Pacific Northwest’s elite.

At the heart of Blanchard lies the Pascalianum Club, a secret society that boasts the membership of the school’s best and most notorious students and alumni. Lenny wants to find a place to belong, but the more she engages with the club, the more she realizes that its dark glamour feeds off of her own vulnerabilities. When murder befalls club and campus, Lenny will have to face up to where she’s come from and who she’s now become, and what she’s willing to risk in order to become who she truly wants to be.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/07/tantalizing-tales-august-2026-part-one/

Aug 06 2026

The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor & Tana Ford

I vastly overestimated the number of books I still had to read for the 2026 Hugo for Best Graphic Story, so this is the last and, dare I say, my favorite of the slate! Full ranking at the bottom, once I’m done discussing this utterly charming graphic novel that reimagines the life of Nnedi Okorafor’s beloved cat Peri.

Peri, despite the elegant and admittedly exotic appearance of his Oriental Shorthair breed, is not your ordinary Earth cat. His father came from Neptune, so he has the ability to engineer marvels, including a liminal space in which to craft items such as the spaceship he uses to race other cats amidst the stars. One of these cats is his nemesis — one of several, tbh, including hot sauce and a particularly annoying cat toy — but all thoughts of such are temporarily shelved when his family moves to Nigeria to research a book Nnedi is writing.

As with many cats in tropical countries, Peri soon becomes an indoor-outdoor pet, and quickly learns about local superstitions via the stray cats at the nearby market (I, for one, had no idea that Nigerians view cats with such suspicion!) When a threat arrives from outer space, however, Peri will have to unite more allies than just his new friends in order to protect humanity and the world from alien invasion.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/06/the-space-cat-by-nnedi-okorafor-tana-ford/

Aug 05 2026

The Four Selves Oracle by Toni Savory & Carrie Paris

subtitled Pathways To Integrating Shadow And Light.

I had to take my time with this oracle deck, because it is genuinely so complex that I had to sit with it for quite a while in order to work out how it related to me and how I could use it with my own spiritual practices. Over the course of the past few months (yes, months,) I’ve come to the conclusion that this deck is probably too complicated for where I am in my path, but will likely appeal to others more attuned to their metaphysical needs.

That said, I think if you’re just using The Four Selves Oracle the way you use other oracle decks, tho with a focus on interiority, this could fit neatly into your collection. The cards are GORGEOUS, with Carrie Paris’ evocative artwork doing a brilliant job of visualizing the concepts of each of these 36 cards. Each card illustrates an aspect of the various parts of self and how we connect to the environment both within us and without, in an effort to help the reader integrate what can feel like conflict and chaos into a unified whole. While this is a prescriptive deck, it is not prognosticative (and if you’re looking for advice on anything but the betterment of your spirit, then this is probably not the deck to use.)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/05/the-four-selves-oracle-by-toni-savory-carrie-paris/

Aug 04 2026

A Wizard Of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel by Ursula K Le Guin, adapted by Fred Fordham

A Wizard of Earthsea — Graphic NovelThat has got to win the prize for unwieldiest title going.

But yes, I came to this graphic novel adaptation of Ursula K Le Guin’s classic because it’s been nominated for the 2026 Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story. Fred Fordham has done an incredible job here and I’m grateful that this book was nominated, even if I would never have picked it up of my own accord because, speak it softly, I never actually cared for the original.

I wish I could appreciate that prose novel more but, reading it as a teenager, I was put off not only by Ged being deeply annoying but by the weird, almost condescending attitude towards the few women in it. The only female mages in the book are either simple (derogatory) or evil (ditto, obvs,) and all the women are defined by their relationship with men. I had no idea why I was supposed to care about Ged, much less identify with his dumb ass. This was especially baffling because Ms Le Guin was touted to me as a feminist and a humanist, and her works were supposed to be an antidote to the patriarchal bent of most Western fantasy fiction of the time. This book felt, to me, no different in narrative tone from any of the books it purported not to be like, with the only marginally interesting dissimilarity being Ged’s copper-colored skin that, while a laudable attempt at diversity, did not feel like actual representation (especially if you’ve ever read any mid-century popular British literature and knew that white authors often described other white people with tans as being “brown as a berry.”)

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/04/a-wizard-of-earthsea-a-graphic-novel-by-ursula-k-le-guin-adapted-by-fred-fordham/

Aug 03 2026

Survival Show by Juno Dawson

Thank you, Juno Dawson, for ending this enthralling tale of a dystopian reality show WITHOUT a cliffhanger. Survival Show is blessedly complete unto itself but also has excellent plot hooks for future sequels that I can now look forward to reading without feeling like I’ve been cheated of an ending here. I’ve just been burned too many times by series novels that don’t end on a satisfying note (ha) to not appreciate when an author cares about writing a book strong enough to stand on its own.

It helps, ofc, that the premise slaps. In a dystopian near future, global warming has changed everyone’s lives. Seventeen year-old Taryn Beck is an English refugee in Scotland, whose family was forced to relocate to a supposedly temporary camp after their Exeter home went underwater. Her younger brother Jensen is sick and fading with each passing day, as affordable healthcare is scarce. Out of desperation, she decides to audition for Survival Show, the hit reality competition that has already launched dozens to stardom.

There is, ofc, a catch. Governments worldwide have adopted a plan called Project Population, where people voluntarily die in order to “ease the burden” on available resources. The older you are, the more money is given to your heirs. Taryn’s father is considering volunteering, in hopes that the money he “earns” will be enough to cover Jensen’s medicine, at least till Taryn can graduate from school and join her older sister Mol in the work force.

Taryn would much rather take her chances with Survival Show. Only ten contestants out of thousands worldwide even make it to the elimination rounds, and of those, only the five most popular — as decided by public voting — will be selected for a recording deal as a girl group. The other five, however, must forfeit their lives to Project Population.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/08/03/survival-show-by-juno-dawson/