Tantalizing Tales — December 2025 — Part Three

In our last Tantalizing Tales column of 2025, dear reader, let’s look back at some (more) of the books I wish I’d had time to read this year, as well as books publishing soon that sound super exciting!

First up is Nat Cassidy’s latest thrilling horror novel, When The Wolf Comes Home. Jess is a struggling actress whose life feels like it’s on a downward spiral. The last thing she expects to come across is a five year-old runaway hiding in the bushes outside her apartment building one day. Worse, a violent encounter with his father soon sends both her and the boy running for their lives.

As she helps the boy evade his increasingly desperate father, Jess realizes that the trail of blood springing up in their wake is not coincidental. Their pursuer’s viciousness only seems to grow the longer the chase continues. Will Jess and her unexpected charge be able to make it to safety? Does a safe place even exist given the terrifying nature of what’s hunting them down?

All good horror stories take on seemingly incomprehensible social issues and help readers better understand them. The best of these often offer solutions either specific (don’t build houses on stolen sacred land) or general (be brave in standing up for what’s right.) This one is no different, as it explores themes of trauma, parenting and anger through a genre lens.

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Our next selection is also a horror novel. This one, however, is based on the urban legend of a government-developed video game with psychoactive properties. Collin Armstrong’s debut Polybius has been described as The Walking Dead meets Stranger Things (of which I’ve just finished the terrific s5e4! Protect Lucas and Erica at all costs!)

High schooler Andi is not thrilled at being forced to move to the coastal town of Tasker Bay by her mom. It’s October of 1982, and the only thing she wants to do is make enough money to be able to head back to Silicon Valley. To this end, she uses her self-taught electronics skills to get a job at the local arcade, run by the shadiest business owner in town. She doesn’t care: all she wants to do is keep her head down and bankroll her eventual escape.

Complicating matters, however, is Ro, the son of the town sheriff. He has a huge crush on her and keeps showing up at the arcade to spend time with her. Despite her initial indifference and ongoing determination not to get attached to anyone in Tasker Bay, she’s slowly won her over by his thoughtfulness and their shared enthusiasms.

When a new game named Polybius suddenly appears, it becomes an unexpected hit. The arcade is soon packed with people fighting each other for a turn. At the same time, a strange virus takes over the town, even as a violent storm rolls in, isolating the inhabitants from the rest of the country. As anger, paranoia and even hallucinations begin to to afflict the people of Tasker Bay, a grisly act of violence plunges the town into outright chaos.

Andi and Ro are convinced that none of this is coincidental, and that Polybius is somehow responsible for all this mayhem. Will they be able to figure out a way to stop it by investigating Polybius? More importantly, will they be able to fix things before they become the game’s next victims themselves?

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We move from a novel inspired by an urban legend to a novel inspired by true crime. Ashley Flowers is the host of the #1 true crime podcast Crime Junkie. Her second novel, The Missing Half, was co-written with Alex Kiester, continuing the successful partnership that launched their debut book together.

Nic Monroe is a 24 year-old high school graduate whose life was upended by the disappearance of her older sister Kasey seven years earlier. Kasey’s car was found abandoned a hundred miles from home, with her purse lying untouched on the passenger seat. Two weeks earlier, another young woman had vanished under almost exactly the same circumstances. But there were no other clues to be found in either Kasey or Jules Connor’s cases, both of which quickly went cold.

Nic wants to be able to bury the past and finally move on from the sense of hopelessness that’s followed her ever since. The sudden appearance of Jules’ sister Jenna, however, offers her an alternative. Soon, the two women are bound together in a quest to figure out what happened to the most important people in their lives, no matter the cost to themselves or anyone around them.

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Another missing sister lies at the heart of Elizabeth Rose Quinn’s newest thriller, Follow Me. This biting social commentary on parenting in the age of social media features Adrienne Shaw, who’s long had differences with her more domestic twin Chiara. But after Chiara goes missing while attending a momfluencer weekend, Adrienne decides that she’ll do whatever it takes to find her sister again, even if it means pretending to be the very thing she loathes: an Instamommy.

A year after Chiara’s vanishing, the authorities still have no answers for Adrienne. Chiara’s husband is just as useless to her. So Adrienne decides to take matters into her own hands by going undercover and infiltrating the same Northern California ranch that she’s convinced Chiara never left all that time ago.

The people at the retreat are certainly welcoming, with a charismatic leader and plenty of communal activities. But there’s something weirdly cult-like behind their fixed smiles and dead eyes. Will Adrienne be able to uncover the truth before the other women, all picture-perfect and poised, realize that she’s a threat to them, and perhaps one that needs to be ruthlessly eliminated?

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We go back to the true crime sphere with Kate Summerscale’s critically acclaimed The Peepshow. Subtitled The Murders At Rillington Place, this is a non-fiction account of two journalists who competed to solve the notorious Christie murders in post-World War II London.

In March 1953, London police discovered the bodies of three young women hidden in a wall of 10 Rillington Place, a dingy rowhouse in Notting Hill. Disturbingly, a mother and child had been murdered in the same building three years earlier. Their killer was hanged, but the discovery of these newer corpses casts doubt on his conviction.

A nationwide manhunt is soon launched for the soft-spoken ground floor tenant, former police officer Reg Christie. At the same time, two star journalists – the dogged Harry Procter of the Sunday Pictorial and renowned crime writer Fryn Tennyson Jesse – compete to solve the killings of the three women. Christie is a fascinating new sort of criminal for not only them but the reading public, in the UK and beyond. Which of these reporters will get the scoop of the century by solving the mystery of who Christie was and why he committed the murders — if he committed them — first?

Ms Summerscale’s goal in investigating historical tales of murder and crime in London is to shine a mirror on contemporary anxieties. Her writing compels readers to reconsider how we look at gender, race, class and justice in crime writing. In this volume, she’s mined the archives to uncover the real lives involved in this sensational case, against the backdrop of a changing post-World War II London. What she reveals sheds fascinating light not only on that chapter in history, but on the modern world’s fixation on true crime.

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And now we look ahead to January, with two books publishing on the first of the year! Behind These Four Walls is the latest psychological thriller from Ghanaian American writer Yasmin Angoe, depicting a determined young woman who infiltrates the family estate of a Black billionaire in a desperate ploy to find her long-missing best friend.

Isla Thorne did not have an easy start to life. One good thing about living in a group home, however, was that she met her best friend Eden Galloway there. The two girls vowed to run away together to Los Angeles, but Eden had one last thing she had to do first. Devastatingly, she never came back from her task, leaving Isla to go on without her.

Twelve years later and Isla is finally ready to figure out what happened to her best friend. The Corrigan mansion in Virginia is home to one of the most rich and powerful families in the nation. It’s also Eden’s last known location. The further Isla insinuates herself into the Corrigans’ lives, the more she uncovers about their secrets and lies. While she finds an unexpected ally in one of the Corrigan sons, she also finds herself caught in the crosshairs of the family’s machinations, as she desperately races to uncover what happened to Eden… and perhaps even more disturbingly, exactly what Eden had planned to do all those years ago.

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Finally we have The Water Lies, the first psychological thriller from bestselling author and University of Southern California writing professor Amy Meyerson. Set along the atmospheric Venice canals of Los Angeles, this novel explores the complexities surrounding fertility, motherhood and aging.

Even tho she leads a seemingly charmed life in Venice Beach, heavily pregnant Tessa Irons is just about at her breaking point when her toddler has a screaming fit in a local cafe. She’s mortified that he won’t stop yelling “Gigi!” at a complete stranger, but her embarrassment and frustration turn into something altogether different when that same stranger’s corpse is dredged out of the canal that runs right outside her luxurious home the next morning.

Way across the country, Barb Geller refuses to believe that her daughter drowned in a drunken accident. She arrives in LA looking for answers and finds an unexpected ally in Tessa. As they try to figure out the connection between their children, they find little outside help. The police think they’re being hysterical, while Tessa’s husband puts down her concerns to pregnancy hormones. But Barb and Tessa are determined, and the more they uncover, the stronger their bond becomes in their pursuit of the shocking truth.

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All these books are either available or available for pre-order 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!