Tantalizing Tales — August 2025 — Part Five

A Tantalizing Tales Part Five, dear readers! That’s a first for us over here at The Frumious Consortium, but oh what delicious books we have in store for you this week, covering tomes just published and those about to come!

First is my personal favorite of the bunch — and the one I’m hoping to love enough to get a copy of for my favorite redhead, in part to repay him for the invaluable help he gave me in training for Jeopardy! — Uncanny Ireland edited by Maria Giakaniki. Subtitled Otherworldly Tales of the Strange And Sublime, this fourth volume in the British Library’s gorgeously bound Gilded Nightmares series is a fascinating compilation of twenty short pieces from the past two centuries. The contents range from accounts of weird folklore and rare reimagined myths, to classic ghost stories and modern spectral chillers from the likes of Irish literary giants like Sheridan Le Fanu, Elizabeth Bowen, W. B. Yeats, Dorothy Macardle and more.

With the weather slowly but surely getting chillier in my neck of the woods, this is the perfect book with which to welcome in autumn and the start of spooky season! Also, that gorgeous cover with its metallic accents has to be seen to be truly believed!

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Next up is the latest thriller from Edgar Award-winning writer Joe Hart. I Become Her is a twisty look inside the mind of a woman in crisis, exploring complex topics of marriage, gender roles and the darker aspects of power dynamics as a marriage begins to fall apart.

Imogen and Lev Carmichael are on a honeymoon cruise in the Mediterranean when Imogen suspects her newlywed husband of being unfaithful. Amid the recriminations, denials and rage, Lev falls overboard into the water. It’s a miracle that he’s found alive and with no memory of what pushed him — and Imogen — over the edge.

Back home among family and friends, Imogen and Lev are finally starting to readjust. As terrified as Imogen is of Lev’s memories returning, it’s her suspicions of his infidelity that finally get the best of her. While searching for clues, she discovers the existence of a woman from Lev’s past that he’s never told her about… a woman who has been missing for years.

More alarming is that Imogen soon has reason to believe that Lev remembers much more than he’s letting on. But why would he lie? The man Imogen loved, married and trusted is a man she’s now beginning to fear. Soon, she must decide how far she’s willing to go to uncover the truth.

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Our next book is a psychological thriller with a huge supernatural twist. Peter Rosch was inspired to write What The Dead Can Do by the juxtaposition between his love for his young son and his own struggles with addiction.

When a commercial flight crashes, all one hundred and eighty-four people on board perish — with the sole exception of a two-year-old boy named Ethan, who’s entrusted to family friends Matthew and Nicole per his late parents’ wishes. From the afterlife, Ethan’s parents Tag and Amanda watch helplessly as Nicole’s secret addictions, the family’s financial struggles and the public’s fascination with their story ignite events that threaten their son’s well-being.

Soon Amanda’s grief turns into an insidious obsession, as she starts to believe that Ethan belongs with her and no one else. Thus she sets out to reunite with her son by any means possible… including killing Ethan herself. After Amanda learns how to possess the living, only Tag stands in her way. He must protect his child, even if the consequences of his actions mean that he may never see his wife or son again.

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This next novel was written by two authors whose 25-year friendship inspired them to collaborate on a stylish, provocative thriller. Christina Baker Kline and Anne Burt’s Please Don’t Lie is an immersive page-turner that delves into complex and thorny questions about trust, betrayal and the lies people tell themselves to survive.

Hayley Stone has suffered a series of devastating losses. First, her parents died in a house fire, then her sister overdosed. Newly married and deeply in love, Hayley moves with her husband to the remote mountain town of Crystal River, New York, hoping for a fresh start amidst the rugged beauty of the Adirondack Mountains.

But the idyllic town soon reveals a darker side. Hayley’s once-devoted husband grows secretive and volatile. The locals’ cryptic warnings leave her unsettled, and the free-spirited couple living on their property appears to know more than they let on. As she struggles to make sense of the increasingly suspicious behavior around her, she tries to convince herself that she’s probably just overreacting. But as winter closes in, the isolation becomes suffocating — and Hayley begins to fear that in fleeing her past, she might have stumbled into something far more dangerous.

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Fleeing the past is also a theme of our next selection, as one of my favorite authors returns with her latest exciting YA thriller centering Native American protagonists! Angeline Boulley’s Sisters In The Wind is loosely tied to her first two novels but is super easy for readers new to her work to jump in on. Established fans will also find out more about what’s been going on with Daunis and Jamie!

After Lucy Smith’s father died five years ago, “home” has been more of a concept than a place for her. She knows that being on the run is better than anything waiting for her as a ward of the state. But when sharp-eyed, kind Mr. Jameson comes looking for her, Lucy wonders if hiding from her past will ever truly keep her safe.

Five years in the foster system have taught her to be cautious and smart. But she wants to believe Mr. Jameson and his “friend-not-friend”, a tall, fierce-looking woman, when they say that they want to look after her. They also tell Lucy the truth that her father hid from her: she is Ojibwe and she has more siblings, as well as a grandmother who would look after her and a home where she would be loved.

But Lucy is being followed. The past has destroyed any chance at safety she’s had. Will the secrets she’s hiding swallow her whole and take away any hope for the future she’s always dreamed of?

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Next up, we have the UK’s fastest selling YA debut of 2024, Bill Wood’s Let’s Split Up, which is now being released in the US! Influenced by both Scream and Scooby Doo, this heart-pounding YA thriller follows four friends determined to hunt the killer ravaging their idyllic small town.

The quiet community of Sanera, California is the kind of town where nothing ever really happens, even in 2001. Their peace is shattered, however, when Brad and Shelley, the high school’s “it couple”, are found brutally murdered in a secluded mansion once owned by the town’s money-hungry pariah. Could they really have been killed by the ghost of a landowner hellbent on vengeance?

An unlikely group of friends — Cam, Jonesy, Amber and new girl Buffy — team up to dig deeper into the sinister secrets of the mansion. Every clue they uncover only seems to reinforce the supernatural rumors tho. Will they be able to stick together to figure out the truth, or will they split up to find more evidence, and potentially open themselves to far greater danger than they ever imagined?

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We close today’s column with another hotly anticipated collection of shorts, Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, Jesus Is Alive. The poet and storyteller stamps this volume with her raucous imagination and piercing cultural awareness, infusing every page of this short story collection with her dark sense of humor, complex female characters, and a willingness to play with form and genre.

Here’s a sampling of what you can find between these covers: A beheaded body interrupts a quinceañera. An obsession with her father’s bizarre video game shifts a lonely girl’s reality. A sentient tail sprouts from a hospital worker’s backside, throwing her romantic life into peril.

The stories are playful, grisly and tender, featuring women desperately seeking something to believe in, even if it kills them. They blend body horror, fabulism and humor to present a vision of contemporary life and a possible future that revels in the fine line between disgust and desire.

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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!