Tantalizing Tales — November 2024 — Part Three

Three, three fortnightly roundups for the month of November, ah-ah-ah! (That last bit was meant to be laughed a la Sesame Street’s The Count.) And what a coincidence, today’s post falls on Black Friday too! Let’s take a look at some of the delicious books I haven’t yet had a chance to get to reading these past two weeks, if not longer, shall we?

First up is a time travel YA heist, Tilia Klebenov Jacobs and Norman Birnbach’s Stealing Time. Tori lives in 2020 and her parents are getting divorced. Bobby lives in 1980 and his family is about to fall apart. But when Tori finds herself stranded in Bobby’s time, the two must join forces and prevent a crime that could destroy everyone they care about.

Simultaneously home and not home, Tori finds herself in a gritty New York just beginning to claw its way out of bankruptcy. Pollution and crime are rampant, graffiti is everywhere, and cell phones and the Internet don’t exist. Can two teenagers stop the jewelry theft of the decade? Will Tori ever get back to her own day and age? And how will Bobby react when she tells him that she’s both an accidental time-traveler and his daughter?

~~~~~~~

Our next title is the latest in a series I adore but have woefully fallen behind on. Angela M Sanders’ The Witch Way Librarian mystery series returns with its sixth installment, The Witch Is Back, starring biblio-witch Josie Way.

Surprised by an unexpected visit from her oddly pensive mother, Josie hopes to distract her mom with a visit to the Aerie, the clifftop manor where the recently passed Reverend Clarence Duffy lived. Inside, however, Josie hears hissed warnings from boxes of the preacher’s old books — and once home, from the town library’s detective novels. When fellow residents of the Oregon small-town of Wilfred start to receive threatening letters the next day, the witch-in-training is determined to uncover the missives’ author. Her plans are derailed, however, by the discovery of one of the reverend’s sons, dead at the bottom of a cliff.

Unsettled by the Wilfred residents’ crumbling friendships — and by her mother’s finally admitted reason for visiting — Josie has her hands full of dilemmas. Sheriff Sam is no help: he just laughs off the letter he receives. Then Josie finds one addressed to her, stating that the author “knows her secret.” Josie must trust her fledgling sorcery — as well as a bit of magic from a surprising source — to uncover the poison pen author before anyone else receives a deadly delivery.

~~~~~~~

Next up, we have acclaimed thriller writer Rachel Hawkins’ The Heiress, which came out earlier this year and which I’ve been eyeballing ever since. When Ruby McTavish Callahan Woodward Miller Kenmore dies, she’s not only North Carolina’s richest woman but also its most notorious. The victim of a famous kidnapping as a child as well as a widow four times over, Ruby ruled the tiny town of Tavistock from Ashby House, her family’s estate high in the Blue Ridge mountains. In the aftermath of her death, that estate, along with a nine-figure fortune and the complicated legacy of being a McTavish, pass on to her adopted son, Camden.

To everyone’s surprise, Cam wants little to do with the house or the money, and even less to do with the surviving McTavishes. Rejecting his inheritance, Cam settles into a normal life as an English teacher in Colorado and marries Jules, a woman just as eager to escape her own messy past.

Ten years on, Cam is a McTavish in name only. A summons in the wake of his uncle’s death brings him and Jules back into the family fold at Ashby House. Its views are just as stunning as ever and its rooms just as elegant, but coming home reminds Cam of why he was so quick to leave in the first place.

Jules, however, has other ideas. The more she learns about Cam’s estranged family and their twisted secrets, the more determined she is for her husband to claim everything Ruby once intended for him to have. But Ruby’s plans were always more complicated than they appeared. As Ashby House tightens its grip on Jules and Camden, questions about the infamous heiress come to light. Was there any truth to the persistent rumors following her disappearance as a girl? What really happened to those four husbands, who all died under mysterious circumstances? And why did she adopt Cam in the first place? Soon, Jules and Cam realize that an inheritance can entail far more than what’s written in a will and that the bonds of family stretch far beyond the grave.

~~~~~~~

Our next selection, Shubnum Khan’s debut novel The Djinn Waits A Hundred Years defies genre expectations, seamlessly blending gothic romance with mystery and fantasy.

Off of the coast of South Africa, a mysterious estate lies in ruins. One hundred years ago, Akbar Manzil was the home of Meena, a woman with a fierce spirit and a tragic love who died under mysterious circumstances. Now reduced to an isolated, dilapidated boarding house, it seems like Akbar Manzil can’t help but attract lost souls, including Sana, a fifteen-year-old girl who moves there with her father after suffering a devastating loss.

Sana’s curiosity draws her to the mansion’s unsettling qualities: a figure seen to move around at night, a garden full of bones, and the eerie and forgotten East Wing, home to a clutter of abandoned objects and a locked door, unopened for decades. Behind it, Sana finds photographs of a couple in love and a worn diary that whispers of a dark past.

What happened here one hundred years ago? How did Meena die? And who is the grieving djinn who has haunted the mansion ever since? As Sana digs into the past like fingers into a wound, she will awaken sinister memories of the house itself, and dredge up old and terrible secrets.

~~~~~~~

Another debut comes from novelist Abbott Kahler with Where You End, a creepy thriller of invention and intrigue set in the 1970s. When Kat Bird wakes up from a coma, she sees her mirror image: Jude, her twin sister. Jude’s face and name are the only memories Kat has from before her accident. As Kat tries to make sense of things, she believes Jude will provide all the answers to her most pressing questions: What happened? Where am I? Who am I?

But Jude sees an irresistible opportunity born from the ashes of Kat’s tragedy. Now she can give her sister a brand-new past, one worlds away from the lives they really led. She spins tales of an idyllic childhood, exotic travels and a bright future.

If everything was so perfect tho, who are the mysterious people following Kat around? And what explains her uncontrollable flashes of violent anger, which begin to jeopardize a sweet new romance?

Duped by the one person she trusted, Kat must try to untangle fact from fiction. Yet as she pulls at the threads of Jude’s elaborate tapestry, she has no idea of the catastrophe she’s inviting.

~~~~~~~

Finally, we have Edwin Hill’s domestic suspense thriller, Who To Believe. The Massachusetts town of Monreith was once a small community of whalers and farmers. These days it’s a well-to-do town filled with commuters drawn to its rugged coastline and country roads. It’s a peaceful, predictable place — until popular restaurateur Laurel Thibodeau is found brutally murdered in her own home. Suspicion naturally falls on Laurel’s husband Simon, who had gambling debts that only her life insurance policy could fix. But there are other rumors too…

Among the group of six friends gathered for Alice Stone’s fortieth birthday, theories abound concerning Laurel’s death. Police chief Max Barbosa has heard plenty of them, as has his longtime friend, Unitarian minister Georgia Fitzhugh. Local psychiatrist Farley Drake is privy to even more, gleaning snippets of gossip and information from his patients while closely guarding his own past.

But maybe everyone in Monreith has something to hide. Before this late-summer evening has come to a close, one of these six will be dead. And as jealousy, revenge, adultery and greed converge, the question becomes not who among these friends might be capable of such a thing, but which one of them isn’t.

~~~~~~~

Let me know if you’re able to get to any of these books before I do, dear readers! I’d love to hear your opinions, and see if that will help spur me to push any of them higher up the mountain range that is my To Be Read pile.

And, as always, you can check out the list of my favorite books this year so far in my Bookshop storefront linked below!