Tantalizing Tales — September 2025 — Part One

Happy September, friends! I’m ngl, I enjoyed summer, tho I’m certainly glad that my kids have gone back to school so I can have some peace and quiet around the house again. The difference has been, like the title of our first selection this month, Night & Day (lol, sorry, couldn’t resist.)

Acclaimed horror editor Ellen Datlow is back with a new anthology that features a delightful tete-bouche twist, as part of the Saga Doubles series! On one side of the book, you have Night — Dreadful Dark: Tales of Nighttime Horror, featuring stories about the things that haunt the darkness. On the other, you have Day — Merciless Sun: Tales of Daylight Horror, where the stories dwell on the terrors that exist in the light of day.

Each side features nine stories from writers like Pat Cadigan, Stephen Graham Jones, Eric LaRocca, Josh Malerman, Benjamin Percy and Priya Sharma (all of whom have written things I love!) I’m definitely in the mood for more short, readable horror stories as the weather cools and the sunlight wanes, so I can’t wait for the opportunity to dive into what’s sure to be an exciting, satisfying collection!

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Our next selection is from an author whom I can also rely on for page-turning thrills. Cynthia Murphy’s Keep Your Friends Close takes readers back to the dark academia world of the prestigious Morton Academy, as another set of ruthless students discover that ambition isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

Set during the 1999-2000 school year, KYFC is a love letter to the 90s and the popular horror novels that young adults devoured during that time period. Chloe Roberts has just finished her stellar first year at Morton Academy. She knows that she’s a shoo-in for both Head Girl and inclusion into the school’s secret society, Jewel And Bone. But when her supposed best friend steals both her rightful role and her boyfriend, Chloe discovers that a lot of what she’d assumed was just plain wrong.

Take, for example, her assumption that Jewel And Bone was a huge secret. Turns out that plenty of people know about it, and not very many of them like it. When Chloe stumbles across a list correlating with the sudden mysterious deaths of Jewel And Bone members, she realizes that someone has taken their dislike to lethal levels. Can Chloe figure out who the killer is before she becomes the next target?

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Turning from dark academia to actual academics, we have philosopher and psychotherapist Mark Vernon’s fascinating new book Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination. Blake may have been dead now for 200 years, but his legacy in poetry, art and thought is ongoing, and may be especially relevant for the turbulent times in which we find ourselves today.

Mr Vernon chooses to take Blake literally in this exploration of his works and life, interpreting his visions of angels as meaningful encounters with the divine. Like us, Blake “lived in a tumultuous era of war, discontent, rapid technological change, and human estrangement from nature. He exposed the dark sides of political fervour and social moralising, while unashamedly celebrating love and liberty. But he also conversed with prophets and angels, and was powerfully, if unconventionally, religious. If we take this seriously[,] then Blake can help us to unlock the transformative power of imagination.”

As someone whose first encounter with Blake was via Agatha Christie quoting Auguries Of Innocence for the title of one of her most compelling novels — and for someone who believes that spirituality can go hand in hand with modern life — this is a book I can’t wait to dive into. If we’re lucky, we’ll get an excerpt to share with you in the coming weeks too, so stay tuned!

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Speaking of Dame Christie, we have a spectacular murder mystery debut as our next pick for this week’s column. KJ Whittle’s upcoming Seven Reasons To Murder Your Dinner Guests has an intriguing premise that would surely delight the Queen Of Mystery herself.

Seven strangers with seemingly nothing to connect them are invited to a mysterious albeit decadent dinner party. Amidst a cacophony of crude and indelicate conversations, seven envelopes appear before each guest, revealing the age at which they will die. On the heels of these deadly predictions, the group unsurprisingly barrels out the door, without another thought for their anonymous host or this decidedly tasteless PR stunt.

Two weeks later, six guests gather at the funeral of their seventh dinner-goer — dead at the very age her envelope declared.

Coincidence? Surely.

Until a month later, when the group’s resident bachelor also meets a bloody end at the age predicted. Now frightened, the remaining guests must decide: succumb to their number or find a way to beat the prophecies? Chase down the identity of their party host or enjoy what life has left to offer? No matter the choice, time is ticking.

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Our next selection come from an author who’s managed the rare feat of earning critical mainstream acclaim while also going viral on TikTok. Hot Wax is ML Rio’s most personal work yet, chronicling one woman’s journey to the depths of chaos and back.

From the publisher: “Summer, 1989: ten-year-old Suzanne is drawn like a magnet to her father’s forbidden world of electric guitars and tricked-out cars. When her mother remarries, she jumps at the chance to tag along on the concert tour that just might be Gil and the Kills’ wild ride to glory. But fame has sharper fangs than anybody realized, and as the band blazes up the charts, internal power struggles set Gil and his group on a collision course destined for a bloody reckoning—one shrouded in mystery and lore for decades to come.

“The only witness to a desperate act of violence, Suzanne spends the next twenty-nine years trying to disappear. She trades the music and mayhem of her youth for the quiet of the suburbs and the company of her mild-mannered husband Rob. But when her father’s sudden death resurrects the troubled past she tried so hard to bury, she leaves it all behind and hits the road in search of answers. Hitching her fate and Gil’s beloved car to two vagabonds who call an old Airstream trailer home, she finds everything she thought she’d lost forever: desire, adventure, and the woman she once wanted to be. But Rob refuses to let her go. Determined to bring her back where she belongs, he chases her across the country—and drives her to a desperation all her own.”

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Bestselling authors Jeffrey Deaver and Isabella Maldonado are back with the second installment of their propulsive Sanchez & Heron series. Federal agent Carmen Sanchez and private security expert Jake Heron must team up once again, combining their skills and perspectives to solve a series of mysterious and horrific murders in The Grave Artist.

When a wedding reception in the Hollywood Hills ends in the tragic death of the groom, it looks like an accident. But Carmen and Jake soon realize that this is just the latest in a string of similar deaths, and conclude that someone is targeting newlyweds, not just for the thrill of the kill, but to revel in the misery left behind.

The Honeymoon Killer, as he’s soon dubbed, is a serial killer who considers shaping the grief of the survivors his own personal art form. But as his attention is drawn to Carmen and Jake themselves, he decides that he has a perfect new target from which to create his next masterpiece…

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Finally, we have Kiersten White’s triumphant return to Young Adult fiction with her latest novel, The House Of Quiet. Describes as gothic fantasy meets the X-Men (yes, yes, I know that that’s basically every 21st century reimagination of The New Mutants,) the narrative follows young Birdie as she goes in desperate search of her sister Magpie.

From the publisher: “In the middle of a deadly bog sits the House of Quiet. It’s a place for children whose Procedure triggered powers too terrible to be lived with—their last hope for treatment. But no one knows how they’re healed, or where they go afterward.

“Birdie has begged, bargained, and blackmailed her way inside as a maid, determined to find her missing sister, Magpie. But what she discovers is more mysteries. Instead of the destitute children who undergo the Procedure in hopes of social advancement, the house brims with aristocratic teens wielding strange powers they never should have been burdened with.

“Though Birdie wants to ignore them, she can’t help but be drawn to stoic and silent Forest, charmed by clever River, and concerned for the youngest residents. But with fellow maid Minnow keeping tabs on everything Birdie does, danger is everywhere.

“In her desperate search to find out where Magpie went, Birdie unearths terrifying threats and devastating truths, forcing her to confront just how much she’s willing to sacrifice to save her own sister. Because in the House of Quiet, if you find what’s lurking beneath…you lose everything.

“Unravel the mystery. Ignite the rebellion.”

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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!