Tantalizing Tales — August 2025 — Part Two

Hello, readers! I am having a bit of a ghastly day health-wise but am super looking forward to climbing back into bed soon, preferably with a good book! Top of my list is Elaine U Cho’s Teo’s Durumi, the heart-pounding conclusion to the exciting Korean space opera duology she began with her debut novel Ocean’s Godori.

Ocean Yoon and her ragtag crew must escape lethal space outlaws and defy the all-powerful Korean Alliance that rules the solar system, in order to prove the innocence of Ocean’s best friend Teo Anand. Widely believed to have been responsible for the murder of his parents, the former playboy must confront his own complicity in his family legacy: one of incredible power and success at the helm of behemoth tech corporation Anand Corp, but also one of great atrocities and injustices.

Teo’s quest forces him into a tentative alliance with Phoenix, the famed space raider who is dripping in charm and secret empathy. And while Ocean remains unfailingly loyal to Teo, she finds herself growing closer to Haven, the brooding medic who dares to challenge Ocean’s hard exterior.

Meanwhile, the true perpetrator of the Anand murders lurks in the shadows, wreaking havoc on planet Earth and cooking up a plan for system-wide atrocities. When Ocean, Teo, and their friends and allies finally confront this shadowy villain, they must hold onto what truly matters and stand strong against an array of mind-warping weapons.

This latest offering from one of my favorite new publishing imprints, Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Books, is action-packed, with steamy romances, heartwarming friendships, and delicious depictions of food and planetary beauty, punctuated by epic fight sequences. The entire duology is perfect for modern readers looking for an update on the space opera genre!

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Another terrific book that’s only recently been published is Claire Douglas’ sensational new thriller The Wrong Sister, in which two women discover that the secrets they’ve been keeping from one another could get them both killed.

Tasha and her older sister Alice may look alike but couldn’t be more different. Tasha is married with two children and still lives in their hometown near Bristol. Alice is a high-flying scientist who travels the world with her equally successful husband. Yet each sister would trust the other with her life.

When Tasha and her husband Aaron need a break from parenting, Alice offers to not only swap homes but to look after the kids as well. Tasha is relieved and grateful, knowing that her family is in safe hands while she and Aaron head abroad.

She couldn’t be more wrong.

The call from home is devastating. Alice and her husband Kyle have been attacked, leaving Kyle dead and Alice in intensive care. Rushing to the hospital, Tasha finds the police trying to piece events together. She can’t think why anyone would attack her sister. Then the note arrives, addressed to Tasha, saying, “It was supposed to be you…”

Every family has secrets, some more deadly than others. Will Tasha be able to confront hers before anyone else gets hurt?

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Our next thriller selection is Scott Carson’s Departure 37, an inventive examination of conspiracy theories, government spin and media manipulation, told via dual timelines and multiple viewpoints.

On a clear October day, American skies empty after hundreds of pilots refuse to fly, triggering a complete ground stop. The authorities search for an explanation for this baffling act of coordination that the pilots insist was anything but planned. All of these pilots received disturbing, middle-of-the-night phone calls from their mothers. Each mom had a simple and urgent request: do not fly today.

Thing is, none of the mothers remember making these calls — and some of these mothers aren’t even alive any more. While the nation’s military chiefs and artificial intelligence experts mobilize in search of answers, a sixteen year-old girl named Charlie watches a strange, silvery balloon drift across the water from the Maine coast and toward her home, a place she loathes. Her father’s dream of opening a craft brewery on the old airfield there has been a disaster, and all she wants is to escape back to Brooklyn.

She’s about to get much more than she anticipated, however, when her new home turns into ground zero for a story that begins at a remote naval base in Indiana during the winter of 1962. A physicist named Martin Hazelton has discovered something extraordinary… and deadly. All Hazelton wants is time to seek an explanation for what he’s found. But pressure from both American and Russian actors will force him into a perilous race that will have unexpected consequences decades in the future, both for a disaffected young woman and, potentially, the world.

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Secrets of a different kind lie at the heart of Katarina Bivald’s latest murder mystery, Just Another Dead Author. Readers are invited to peek behind the scenes at a book industry world of backstabbing publishing professionals and authors who are perhaps just a little too nosy for their own good.

At a writer’s retreat in a cozy French castle, surrounded by the spirited company of his much less famous peers, the once-in-a-generation writer John Wright has been marked for death. After delivering his final, charming words of inspiration — You won’t succeed — to the twenty wannabe authors assembled there, Mr. Wright moves silently onto his last page of life, thanks to a sneaky dose of hemlock.

When Inspector Roche arrives on the scene, it’s clear that bestselling author and known opportunist Berit Gardner is not the only writer getting a little too close to the case in search of inspiration. When a second murder is committed, Roche must reluctantly seek Berit’s help in order to sort out suspect from witness. Complicating matters is the presence of a journalist determined to beat both Berit and Roche to the solution, no matter the danger. Will they be able to work together to stop this murder spree before anybody else gets hurt?

This highly anticipated sequel to The Murders In Great Diddling works well as a standalone but continues the insightful, colorful adventures of Berit and her beleaguered assistant Sally Marsch.

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Another kind of bad guy gets what’s coming to him in Katie Collom’s explosive debut thriller Peter Miles Has To Die. This was irresistibly pitched to me as a novel “for the girls with a killer friend group (literally). The ride-or-dies (who, crucially, are not doing the dying) […] with a side of tequila, a lesbian love story, and a well-buried body.”

Dylan Darcy, Priya Shah and Isabel Guerrero — a bartender, a nurse and a college student — are three women on a mission. Peter Miles is a local cop who murdered their best friend and got away with it. So they make a plan to get their dead friend the justice she deserves, and they execute it perfectly.

Turns out, tho, that committing murder isn’t the hard part. Living with the consequences is.

Not even a state as large as Texas is big enough to allow the women to outrun the aftermath, as local investigators start sniffing around for a cop-killer. Worse, the three friends begin receiving death threats, even as the guilt of what they’ve done starts to eat them alive. Will they be able to figure a way out of this mess without sacrificing their friendships or each other?

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Travel a century into the past for another riveting tale of female friendship in the American Southwest, with Juliette Fay’s The Harvey Girls, named for the waitresses who served in America’s first hospitality chain on the Santa Fe railroad.

Charlotte Crowninshield and Billie MacTavish couldn’t be more different. Charlotte was born into Bostonian high society, whereas Billie is the eldest of nine children from a hardscrabble Scottish immigrant family in Nebraska. But both are desperate: Charlotte to escape her brutal husband, and Billie to keep her family afloat. Hired as Harvey Girls on the same day, they seemingly have only three other things in common: the room they’re forced to share, a hearty dislike of one another… and a devastating secret that would certainly get each of them fired.

Through twelve-hour days of training in Topeka, Kansas, they learn the fine art of service, perfecting their skills despite bouts of homesickness, fear of being discovered, and a run-in with the KKK. When they’re sent to work at the luxurious El Tovar hotel at the Grand Canyon, the challenges only grow, as Billie struggles to hide her youth from would-be suitors and Charlotte discovers the little-known dark side of the national park’s history.

Ms Fay masterfully brings the sights, sounds and challenges of 1920s America to life as she weaves together themes of resilience, friendship and reinvention, in this re-imagining of only some of the untold stories of the pioneering women who shaped the American West.

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Finally, we close with a book that came with another description I found irresistible: Jennifer’s Body but through an Asian American lens. That’s the premise of Catherine Dang’s What Hunger, her first foray into literary horror.

The summer before high school, Ronny Nguyen is restless and growing increasingly frustrated with her parents’ protective rules. She, like almost everyone else, idolizes her older brother Tommy. A popular honors student, he’s going to be the first in their family to go to college, even as she dreads what being left alone with their parents will mean without him to run interference.

Even together, the children struggle to understand Me and Ba, who rarely speak of their past lives in Vietnam except through the lens of food. The family’s meals are a tapestry of cultural memory: thick spring rolls with slim and salty nem chua, and steaming bowls of pho tái with thin, delicate slices of blood-red beef. In the aftermath of the war, their parents taught Ronny and Tommy that meat was a dangerous luxury, a symbol of survival that should never be taken for granted.

But when tragedy strikes, Ronny’s entire world is upended. Still grieving, she attends her first ever party. A boy there crosses a line, and Ronny finds herself suddenly overcome by an insatiable craving for raw meat. Like any weapon, her ferocious hunger becomes a source of both self-preservation and danger, as she and what’s left of her family come to grips with their new reality.

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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!