Tantalizing Tales — July 2025 — Part Four

This is the first time I’ve had to write a Tantalizing Tales Part Four, dear readers! I did confirm with a publicist friend that it has been an unusually busy summer this year, though neither we nor the BlueSky brain trust could figure out why. Very happy to hear your theories, if you have them!

First up for our roundup column is the book with my favorite cover this week, Rebecca Danzenbaker’s Soulmatch. In a world where your past lives determine your future, a sharp-witted girl confronts a major twist of destiny, embroiling her in a high-stakes game of danger, corruption and heartbreak.

Two hundred years after World War III, the world is at peace, all thanks to the soul-identification system. Every eighteen-year-old must report to the government to learn about their past lives, in a terrifying process known as kirling. Good souls leave the institute with their inheritance, a career path and, if they’re lucky, a soulmate. Bad souls leave in handcuffs.

It’s a nerve-wracking ordeal for Sivon who, given her uncanny ability to win every chess match, already suspects that her soul isn’t normal. Turns out that she was right to worry. Sivon’s results stun not only her but the entire world, making her the object of public scrutiny and anonymous threats.

Saddled with an infuriating and off-limits bodyguard, Sivon is thrust into a high-stakes game where souls are pawns and rules don’t exist. As the deaths keep mounting, Sivon must decipher friend from foe while protecting her heart against impossible odds. One wrong move could destroy the future lives of everyone Sivon loves. She can’t let that happen, even if they’ll never love her back.

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Next up, we have the meaty latest entry from one of my favorite YA writers. Liselle Sambury’s Mastery Of Monsters is the first in a dark academia fantasy series about a teen who’s willing to do anything to find her brother — even infiltrate a secret society full of monsters.

When August’s brother disappears before his sophomore semester, everyone thinks that the stress of college finally got to him. But August knows that her brother would never have left her voluntarily, especially not after their mother so recently went missing too. The only clue he left behind was a note telling her to stay safe and to protect their remaining family.

But after August is attacked by a ten-foot-tall creature with fur and claws, she realizes that her brother might be in more danger than she could have ever imagined. Unfortunately for her, the only person with a connection to the mysterious creature is the bookish Virgil Hawthorne… and he knows about them because he is one of them.

Virgil has his own problems. If he doesn’t find a partner to help control his true nature, he’ll lose his humanity and become a mindless beast — exactly what the secret society he’s grown up in would love, in order to finally have an excuse to put him down for good.

Virgil makes August a proposition: if she’ll join his society and partner with him, he’ll help her find her brother in return. And so August is plunged into a deadly competition to win one of the few coveted candidate spots, all while trying to accept a frightening reality: monsters are real, and she’ll have to learn to master them if she’s to have any hope of saving her brother.

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Our next selection is Daniel Kraus’ Angel Down, a haunting, genre-bending tale of war, morality and supernatural wonder set during the First World War.

Private Cyril Bagger has managed to survive the unspeakable horrors of the Great War through his wits and deception, swindling fellow soldiers at every opportunity. But his survival instincts are put to the ultimate test when he and four other grunts are given a deadly mission: venture into the perilous No Man’s Land to euthanize a wounded comrade.

What they find amid the ruined battlefield, however, is not a man in need of mercy but a fallen angel, seemingly struck down by artillery fire. This celestial being may hold the key to ending the brutal conflict, but only if the soldiers can suppress their individual desires and work together. As jealousy, greed, and paranoia take hold, the group is torn apart by their inner demons, threatening to turn their angelic encounter into a descent into hell.

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Another historical mystery is the latest in Heather Redmond’s Mary Shelley mystery series, Death And The Runaways. Two years before she would conceive of Frankenstein, sixteen-year-old Mary Godwin becomes captivated by the unfortunate death of a pregnant shopgirl and its relationship to the disappearance of Mary’s own stepbrother. With her stepsister Jane “Claire” Clairmont and the seductive poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, she’ll risk her life to solve this mystery.

London, June 1814: On a day out in Hyde Park to celebrate the peace treaty with France, Mary and Jane are less than charmed by their brother Charles’s courtship with a girl from the local cheese shop. When Miss Winnet Davies is not swooning from the heat, she’s imploring Charles to buy her a pretty dress. But he hasn’t a tuppence — nor have they, as their father, philosopher William Godwin, is facing the prospect of debtor’s prison.

When a constable arrives at the Godwin home the following day in search of Charles, Mary and Jane learn that the lifeless body of Miss Davies was found hanging from a tree branch. An examination revealed that she was with child. Now their stepbrother has gone missing, and is suspected of “helping” Miss Davies to her death.

Inclined toward morbidity, Mary assumes that Charles too is dead. Her stepmother admonishes her and insists that the sisters, who’ve already proven their talent for solving mysteries, find their brother. Before they can search, however, a terrifying Bow Street Runner named Fisher calls and announces his intention to court Mary. Even if she wasn’t passionately infatuated with the married poet and radical Percy Shelley, she is horrified by the Bow Street Runner’s plan.

Despite this, to find their brother and clear his name, Mary and Jane alternately enlist the help of the experienced and intimidating Fisher and of Shelley himself, who is as enticed by the opportunity to be close to Mary as he is intrigued by the mystery. But the unfortunate shopgirl is only the first to die. Soon, the sisters and Shelley face a merciless quarry who will do anything to silence them…

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We travel to Osaka, Japan for our next historical mystery selection. Taku Ashibe’s Murder In The House Of Omari (translated into English from the original Japanese by Bryan Karetnyk) spans the first half of the 20th century as dark secrets haunt a wealthy merchant family.

In 1906, the young heir to the Omari family business climbs to the top of a Panorama and vanishes.

In 1914, a fight between two mysterious figures on a bridge tragically ends with one falling to their death.

In 1943, as war rages on, the once illustrious family has fallen. Both potential heirs have been drafted into war, and a string of strange and violent happenings has beset the house of Omari.

This honkaku (or Fair Play) mystery is filled with twists and red herrings, as readers are invited to solve the case themselves, in this winner of the Japan Mystery Writers’ Prize.

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Finally, we have a far more contemporary mystery — tho it too has roots in the past — in Lisa Childs’ Only The Dead Within. The town of Gold Creek, Michigan, has a grim reputation for mysterious missing persons cases, unsolved murders and, allegedly behind it all, the eternally bloodthirsty ghost of a grave digger.

When yet another teen goes missing after last being seen in the Gold Memorial Gardens, Child Protective Services Investigator Claire Underwood is determined not to give up until she finds him. For Claire, solving the case is more than just work. Years ago, she lost a friend in that cemetery too.

Over time, the authorities deemed all the disappeared teens runaways. Claire, however, has always suspected the involvement of the wealthy, ruthless Gold family, who run the local funeral home and cemetery. She went to high school with Noah Gold. He was very quiet and very intense, like someone with something to hide.

A grown-up Noah, however, is sick of being cast in the same light as the rest of his conniving, money-hungry family. He’s still a bit anti-social, but he’s just as determined as Claire is to unearth the truth and finally bury the legend of the grave digger. With a common goal, he and Claire join forces on a quest that will soon put them both in mortal danger. Only with the help of the local sheriff — whose own brother vanished years ago — do they stand a chance of surviving. Yet the truth that awaits them is more terrifying than any ghost…

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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 in my Bookshop storefront linked below!