Tantalizing Tales — January 2026 — Part Five

Ooh, is this the first Part Five I’ve ever published of this monthly series? It can’t be because this year’s January has lasted forever can it, hahahahahuuuuuuuunh.

Anyway, this column is coming out on a Thursday this week because we’re taking part in the USA’s General Strike tomorrow. No work, no school, no shopping for one day, which — if you’re like me — could be the perfect opportunity to just curl up with a good book to read for fun. We have some excellent suggestions for you here should you need them, with five upcoming releases you can pre-order in anticipation of the next time you need a temporary respite from the horrors, as well as a throwback from warmer days in 2025.

First up, we have W. M. Akers’ To Kill A Cook, the first in a planned duology set in 1970s New York City. Fast-talking, hard-charging Bernice Black is the city’s busiest restaurant critic, juggling her career with her fiance and his two young sons. When she stops by the restaurant of her favorite chef and mentor Laurent Tirel one morning, she’s horrified to discover his severed head perfectly preserved in a mold of jellied aspic.

The cops are clueless, and with layoffs looming, she makes a reckless bet with her editor to solve the crime and get the scoop within a week. But Laurent’s killer has no qualms about striking again, much less eliminating any nosy journalists who keep getting in their way.

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For an even darker take on the culinary world, check out Callie Kazumi’s latest horror-tinged thriller Greedy. Edward Cook has more than one kind of gambling problem, after the Yakuza decide to start coming after him for unpaid debts. Broke and unemployed, he fears that they’ll come after his family next if he can’t find a way to rustle up some money fast.

So answering an ad for a private chef that promises to pay a million yen per day seems like the answer to a prayer. Ed might not have a Michelin star but he is perfectly capable in the kitchen. Bonus: getting the job means that he can flee Tokyo and hide out on a private estate in the mountains, escaping his immediate problems for at least a little while.

Disgraced socialite Hazeline Yamamoto is a woman of refined tastes, with a discerning palate that she has more than enough money to indulge. She thus craves more than just the simple or even decadent, and is willing to reward loyalty and skill with lavish generosity. Working for her should feel like a match made in heaven. But the more Ed discovers about his new job and his new boss, the more concerned he grows. He soon realizes that the punishment of mere gangsters pales in the face of the new terrors he may have to fear.

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From Japan we head to Iceland for Snæbjörn Arngrímsson’s bestselling thriller One True Word, translated into English by Larissa Kyzer.

Our narrator Julia has had it. While on a trip to an uninhabited island with her husband Gio, she finally snaps and takes off, leaving him stranded on a freezing fjord in the depths of winter, as night swiftly closes in.

When she comes to her senses and returns for him, he’s nowhere to be found. She alerts the police, fudging the details of the circumstances in order to paint herself in a more favorable light. But as their investigation into Gio’s disappearance advances, suspicion of more than just a temporary abandonment begins to fall on Julia. One small lie snowballs into another, as her story starts to collapse beneath its own weight, revealing the dark secrets at its foundation.

As Julia races to discover what really happened to Gio, she’ll have to wonder whether he made it out alive and if so, where he is now and why he won’t resurface. Is she hunting for him or is she being hunted herself? Will the truth set her free or will it destroy her?

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For something much lighter — despite its rather emphatic title — let’s take a look at debut author Greer Stother’s hilarious gay romantasy Apparently Sir Cameron Needs To Die, In Which Many Dangerous and Homosexual Things Happen.

The publicity material is so chef’s-kiss perfect that I’m just going to quote it here for you in its entirety:

“All his life, Sir Cameron has tried to stay as far away from danger as possible. But when the Church hands down a prophecy to his fellow knights predicting that the only way to defeat their nemesis, the mad sorcerer Merulo, is to kill Sir Cameron, he finds himself in a situation too sticky for even his considerable wiles. Short of ideas, Cameron throws himself on the mercy of the one person who now actually wants him to the mad sorcerer.

“Merulo isn’t thrilled to be babysitting a spoilt, attention-seeking knight, but fate has tied them together. And transmogrifying Cameron into a vulture is at least a great source of entertainment. Cameron, meanwhile, is on a voyage of self-discovery. It turns out he’s really, really into surly sorcerers who lock him up and tell him what to do. Who knew?

“As a legion of knights surround their stronghold, led by an angry concussed elf—which definitely isn’t in any way Cameron’s fault—the sorcerer’s poisonous ambitions draw ever closer to fruition. Cameron is quite invested in not dying, but he finds he’s also invested in Merulo. And sometimes, supporting the sorcerer you care about means taking an interest in their hobbies. Even if their hobby is trying to kill God.

“Even if it might get you killed, too.”

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The last book on our list of upcoming titles is the one I’m personally most looking forward to. I’ve been obsessed with Rym Kechacha’s writing since the astonishing Dark River and cannot wait to dive into her latest novel, The Apple And The Pearl.

Drawing on her background in professional dance, Ms Kechacha spins the tale of a travelling ballet company whose members have committed their lives to perfecting their performance of the ancient dance known as The Apple And The Pearl. As dawn breaks on All Souls Day, newcomer Lara has to learn her role, even as everyone involved — front or back of house — prepares to confront the malevolent glamour of their audience. For every night they must perform for the faerie realms, under constant threat of being snatched away to the Otherworld by their audience of fae princes, imps and sprites.

Told from multiple points of view over the course of a single day, this is another stunningly atmospheric fantasy novel from a writer who very much deserves to be far better known.

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Finally, we look back to the latest book from an acclaimed author whose work I’ve had varying but overall positive experiences with. Riley Sager’s With A Vengeance is both an homage to Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express and its own thrilling creature.

For twelve years, Anna Matheson has been formulating the perfect plan to avenge herself against the six people who destroyed her family. Now it’s 1954 and she’s successfully lured them all aboard the train her father loved and lost. Little do any of her “guests” know that they’re the only passengers aboard, or that the train is a non-stop to Chicago, with no way out for thirteen hours.

Anna isn’t out for actual blood tho. She just wants confessions that will let her deliver all six guilty parties to the proper authorities. But when one of them is murdered, all her careful plotting is thrown out the window, as it quickly becomes clear that someone else is out for a far more final revenge. If Anna isn’t careful, she might be the next to die.

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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!