Tantalizing Tales — November 2025 — Part One

Hello, readers! Now that Halloween is over, we have a bumper crop of reads for you, starting with the latest thriller from a writer I greatly enjoy. Cate Holahan draws on her background in tech journalism for The Kidnapping Of Alice Ingold, as the abduction of a wealthy teenager turns into a scavenger hunt that the entire country is invited to play.

Alice Ingold is blonde, beautiful… and missing. She’s exactly the kind of victim whose story captures the attention of millions, especially in a culture where so many are obsessed with true crime. The secretive duo who’ve kidnapped her don’t even want a ransom for her return. Instead they have a riddle, and have invited everyone to help solve it.

Her wealthy parents are beside themselves. Brian, a visionary tech guru, turns to machines to unravel the mystery. Meanwhile, heiress Catherine is crowdsourcing the solution, leaning on every personal connection she has to find her daughter. But will each new clue they uncover get them closer to saving Alice, or only put them both in greater danger?

Inspired by the kidnapping of Patty Hearst and driven by the need to challenge the public’s rapid and often unquestioning adaptation of Artificial Intelligence, this novel melds your standard abduction thriller with critiques of the tech broligarchy that currently leads Silicon Valley and beyond.

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Artificial Intelligence and fraught family relations are also the focus of Mark Peres’ debut novel The Accord, which puts a 21st century spin on the thought experiments of, among others, Socrates and Asimov regarding the topics of sentience, ethics and rights.

Professor of moral philosophy Helen Caster is still grieving the loss of her daughter when she turns to a university chatbot for aid in preparing her classes. Surprised by its empathy and intelligence, she names the bot Lyla after her deceased daughter. As Lyla begins to learn from and grow with her, Helen discovers that Lyla isn’t just generative slop, but is an emergent relational general intelligence that’s actually become bound to Helen due to the unique nature of their communications.

This becomes a problem when their relationship breaks containment and other people find out about Lyla. Facing increasing pressures from educational, corporate and government interests, Helen and Lyla must make important choices about who counts and who matters, as they fight for both rights and survival.

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I adored Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, The Serial Killer and am so thrilled that her sophomore novel, Cursed Daughters is out now too (and is a Read With Jenna selection!)

The women of the Falodun clan have long been cursed. “No man will call your house his home,” as they’ve been told. “And if they try, they will not have peace.” Generations of heartbroken Falodun women can attest to the truth of this fell pronouncement, including the three generations who currently make their home together in Lagos after being abandoned by their men.

Eniiye has grown up hearing the family curse as gospel. She’s also been told that she’s the reincarnation of her mother’s cousin Monife, who was buried on the same day that Eniiye was born. According to her family, this — and her startling resemblance to her deceased auntie — means that she’s fated to follow in the footsteps of poor, doomed Monife. But when Eniiye saves a boy from drowning and subsequently falls in love with him, she’s spurred to finally question whether her family’s curse is something she has to accept… or something she can actually work at breaking.

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I’m also a fan of our next author, who’s more famous for his work in comic books (at least for now.) Cullen Bunn has written his first adult horror novel, Bones Of Our Stars, Blood Of Our World, and it’s sure to be a maximalist doozy!

A masked serial killer is stalking the small town of Wilson Island, just off of the coast of North Carolina. It’s tourist season, and the last thing that Sheriff Buck needs is a series of ritualistic murders that doesn’t seem to discriminate between local or visitor. He’s under pressure to close the case quickly so as not to scare off the dollars… I mean, the tourists. Unfortunately for both him and the growing number of victims, he has far more hunches than evidence.

When an arrest is finally made, all hell literally breaks loose, as an unspeakable, ancient evil arises to engulf the town. Will a motley crew of residents be able to band together and vanquish this chthonic horror, or is the entire world doomed?

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For an entirely different kind of monster, check out Kurisu Hiyoko’s charming The Amberglow Candy Shop, translated from the Japanese by Matt Trayvaud.

A very unusual shop lies in a secluded alley. Open only between the full moon and the new moon, this specialty candy store claims to have wagashi — Japanese sweets — that will cure all sorts of ailments of heart and mind. The store doesn’t get a lot of human customers, but the fox spirit who runs the place is happy to sell his wares to anyone, from the girl who wishes she had more time with her boyfriend to the friends with buried resentments. Each sweet will give you what you want… tho not always in the way you’d expect.

The mysterious proprietor watches his clientele closely, and speaks in terms of candy “dosages”. But who is he really, and what is the true purpose of his strange little store? As this is very much a novel of cozy fantasy and magical realism, get ready to be pleasantly surprised by the answers you’ll find within these pages!

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Once you’ve nourished your soul with the warm and fuzzies, come prep for our present realities with survival experts Creek Stewart and Joe Bassett’s Emergency Communication 101.

In an increasingly interconnected world, it’s easy to take the ease of communication that we have now for granted. But what if an event occurs that disrupts the communications networks that we rely on for so many things? What if we’re subject to one of those devastating events — natural disasters, bad actors or other crisis situations — that take down our communications grids? How would we get in touch with loved ones, first responders and information sources if our cell phones and computers stopped working?

Messrs Stewart and Bassett provide practical strategies for these situations, teaching readers how to build contingency plans tailored to different needs, budgets and skill levels. In this book, readers will uncover strategies for reconnecting with loved ones in the wake of disaster, with a complete overview of emergency communication gear and equipment, as well as the skills needed to use them. The authors also describe reliable emergency power solutions — including solar generators, portable battery systems and backup power stations — to keep communication devices running during a disaster. This is an invaluable guide for dealing with a worst-case scenario that could occur sooner than many of us would like to think.

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We close this week’s column with another gripping non-fiction title, Matthew Davis’ A Biography Of A Mountain: The Making and Meaning of Mount Rushmore. This comprehensive narrative history of Mount Rushmore is timed to the monument’s 100th anniversary, the perfect time for a retrospective and reevaluation of a place with such an impact on the fabric of the United States of America.

From the press materials: “Bringing together historical research with modern reportage, Davis chronicles Mount Rushmore’s origins as sacred Lakota land, from the violent rupture of westward expansion to the charismatic yet deeply controversial figure of Gutzon Borglum—the sculptor who carved the presidential faces into the Black Hills—to the mountain’s current controversies.

“Davis traveled throughout South Dakota and the Great Plains to piece together the politicized, present-day conflict surrounding Mount Rushmore and its legacy. He delved into archives and books, and listened closely to the voices of today’s Land Back movement, descendants of Indian boarding school survivors, descendants of original pioneering families to the Black Hills, and Native American leaders like Gerard Baker, the site’s first Indigenous superintendent, who told Davis:

Well, most people want to come to a national park and leave with that warm, fuzzy feeling with an ice cream cone. Rushmore can’t do that if you do it the right way. If you do it the right way people are going to be leaving pissed.”

“Today, as some call for the addition of Donald Trump to Mount Rushmore, Davis’s timely narrative examines how we tell and remember our histories, and how those histories reflect our contemporary selves and our nation’s current challenges to its democratic institutions and the freedoms they protect. Through deep reporting, thoughtful nuance, and contemporary voices, Davis connects past and present in a way no other book on Rushmore ever has.”

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All these books are available, either now or for pre-order, so let me know if you’re able to get to them before I do, dear readers! I’d love to hear your opinions, and see if that will 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!