Tantalizing Tales — December 2025 — Part One

Very excited to have gotten away with not publishing my first round-up post of the month till today, the twelfth of December! We have three books that have only recently published for you this week, as well as three books from earlier in the year that I’ve been meaning very much to get to but likely won’t for the foreseeable future, alas.

We start with Peg Cochran’s Where The Bodies Are Berried, which has such a beautiful, seasonally appropriate cover. I actually picked up this latest Cranberry Cove mystery thinking that there’d be recipes included, due to several misleading reviews over on NetGalley as well as the fact that all her prior books featured yummy, cranberry-themed recipes. I was thus surprised to learn that this is the first book in which she’d omitted them, meaning that I couldn’t add this to my cooking column over at Criminal Element (and definitely not to my review schedule there, which is currently booked solid through May 12th!) This did mean, however, that I could feature this book and its gorgeous cover art right here at The Frumious Consortium!

Monica Albertson and her half-brother Jeff are happy to host a fundraiser for a local animal shelter at their cranberry farm. Sassamanash Farm provides the perfect wintry backdrop for people who want to take Santa photos with their pets, for a modest fee that goes directly to the charity, ofc. The event proves popular and goes off with barely a hitch. But Monica makes a gruesome discovery shortly afterwards: the corpse of one of the shelter’s biggest donors out by the barn. In order to clear the farm’s name, Monica will have to investigate a man who’s largesse was mostly for show, and who had far more people who benefited from his death than she’d ever imagined.

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If your December thoughts would like to go from solving a single murder to contemplating how to work for justice on a greater scale, then you have to check out the new anthology We Will Rise Again. Edited by Karen Lord, Annalee Newitz and Malka Older, this volume collects speculative stories and essays on the topics of protest, resistance and hope from a dazzling array of voices.

From the press materials:

“Exploring topics ranging from disability justice and environmental activism to community care and collective worldbuilding, these imaginative pieces from writers such as NK Jemisin, Charlie Jane Anders, Alejandro Heredia, Sam J. Miller, Nisi Shawl, and Sabrina Vourvoulias center solidarity, empathy, hope, joy, and creativity.

“Each story is grounded within a broader sociopolitical framework using essays and interviews from movement leaders, including adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, charting the future history of protest, revolutions, and resistance with the same zeal for accuracy that speculative writers normally bring to science and technology. Using the vehicle of ambitious storytelling, We Will Rise Again offers effective tools for organizing, an unflinching interrogation of the status quo, and a blueprint for prefiguring a different world.”

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Next up is a story from almost a century ago that I sorely wish weren’t such crucial reading for our turbulent times. Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz’s Berlin Shuffle is translated here for the first time from the original German by Philip Boehm. Written while the author was in his early 20s, it’s a clear-eyed and prescient look at a society on the verge of catastrophe and war.

Berlin in the 1920s is the largest city in Europe. A place of dark glamour, it’s both cultural mecca and political mess. Thousands of its inhabitants are out of work following the Great War and the global economic crisis. The marginalized of society — the war-wounded, the prostitutes, the beggars and the mentally ill — find themselves drawn to the Jolly Hunstman pub, in search of an evening where they can forget about their cares, at least for a little while, in dancing, drink or other diversions.

But disaster lurks just outside the Jolly Hunstman’s doors. In the back alleys and flophouses of the city, the down and out cross paths and clash in clear precursors to the conflict that will soon set fire to so much of the known world.

Mr Boschwitz lived only five years longer than the publication of this, his debut novel. He would perish in 1942 while fleeing Germany for England, when the boat he was on was torpedoed by the Nazi regime. While his loss echoes, his books survive as an enduring legacy.

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Looking back to books from much earlier in the year, I’d like to spotlight these next three titles, starting with Sandie Jones’ I Would Die For You. I’m ngl, the name of the band here gives me strong Duran Duran vibes, which is only one reason I super want to read this novel

Set in dual timelines, the book follows Nicole, who’s living a quiet life in the coastal California town of Coronado with her husband and daughter. It’s 2011, and the last thing Nicole expects is for a journalist to show up on her doorstep, asking questions about the biggest British band of the 1980s. The reporter thinks that Nicole could provide new insight into the band’s downfall, but Nicole is highly reluctant to revisit the past.

That same day, however, Nicole’s daughter goes missing. The school claims that her aunt came by to pick her up… but Nicole knows that that’s impossible.

Twenty-five years earlier, sixteen year-old Cassie had been obsessed with London’s hottest band, Secret Oktober. Plunging into their world of hedonistic partying and willing groupies, she would do anything to gain the attention of lead singer Ben Edwards. But after Ben discovers Cassie’s older sister Nicole singing in a bar one night, Cassie’s world turns upside down, as the sisters’ relationship is tested to the breaking point.

Fast forward to the 21st century. As Nicole goes in search of her daughter, she fears that her past has returned to haunt her. Soon, she will have to decide what she’s willing to do and how much she’s willing to lose in order to protect the people she loves the most.

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I also got strong band vibes from the name and cover of this next novel, Olesya Lyuzna’s Glitter In The Dark. While the historical mystery ultimately has little to do with The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, it’s a fascinating look into Jazz Age Harlem, with a deliciously queer twist.

Ginny Dugan might be a mere advice columnist at Photoplay magazine now, but she knows she has it in her for more hard-hitting journalism, no matter what her boss may think. Maddeningly, he isn’t the only person dismissive of her claims. When no one believes that she witnessed the kidnapping of a famous singer from a Harlem speakeasy, Ginny knows it’s finally time to prove herself by taking matters into her own hands.

Determined to uncover the truth — and hopefully a dynamite story — she’s a little irritated when private detective Jack Crawford keeps horning in on her action. She solves this problem by turning him from rival to reluctant collaborator, and begins to fall for the kind heart she finds beating beneath his brooding exterior. Complicating matters, however, is her growing attraction to the effervescent Gloria Gardner, star dancer at the Ziegfeld Follies.

Romantic troubles become the least of her worries though when murder enters the picture. As she struggles to navigate a world of drugs, extortion and organized crime, Ginny must fend off dangers that are ready to strike closer to home than she could ever have imagined.

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Finally, we have Ron Currie’s The Savage Noble Death Of Babs Dionne, which looks at the drug trade and American subcultures from a unique insider perspective.

Our title character is the older, tough-as-nails matriarch of a drug-running operation out of Waterville, Maine. A proud Franco-American, Babs controls the flow of drugs into Little Canada with the help of her best friends from childhood and her reluctant eldest daughter Lori, a dishonorably discharged Marine whose distaste for the trade is matched only by her sense of duty to her family.

When an even bigger figure on the illegal narcotics food chain discovers that his numbers are down in what he considers his territory, he sends a henchman known only as The Man to investigate. Shortly after The Man arrives in Waterville, Babs’ younger daughter Sis disappears. When Sis’ corpse is found twenty-four hours later, nothing can convince Babs that The Man’s arrival was a mere coincidence. Babs will stop at nothing in her search for retribution, no matter what it costs or who she hurts to get it.

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All these books are available now, 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!