Tantalizing Tales — February 2026 — Part Three

Welp, I suffered a bit of a health setback in the lead up to Ramadan, but at least I was able to make it out to rehearsal today, even if my body keeps screaming at me to rest more. Fortunately, I can rest and read at the same time! And yes, I know, the impulse to constant productivity is a curse, and definitely something I’m working on curbing this 2026.

But first up this week, we have for you the recently released English-language translation of Cho Haejin’s award-winning Simple Heart. Translated from the original Korean by Jamie Chang, this story of an adopted woman on the cusp of motherhood examines Korean history and international relations through a deeply heartfelt lens.

Nana was born in Korea but raised in France by her adoptive parents. Now she’s a playwright who’s pregnant with the child of her ex-boyfriend. When she receives a request from a Korean filmmaker who wants to shoot a documentary of her life, she impulsively makes plans to fly to Korea to explore her own murky history, even as she prepares to become a mother herself. For before she was Nana, she was a little girl named Esther Park, who grew up in a Korean orphanage after being brought in from where she was abandoned, with another name altogether, on the railway tracks of Cheongnyangni station in Seoul.

This exploration of identity and belonging won Korea’s prestigious Daesan Literary Award in 2019. It’s a treat to finally have it able in English today.

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I’m super looking forward to finding time for Kate Alice Marshall’s upcoming thriller The Girls Before as well, in no small part due to a glowing recommendation from my favorite contemporary thriller author Ashley Winstead.

This dual point-of-view novel begins with a woman named Stranger, who’s chained and trapped in a basement. There was a man who would come and open the door from time to time, letting the light in and allowing her to more clearly read the comments left behind on the walls by girls long dead. He hasn’t been around in a while tho.

Now Stranger is running out of batteries for her flashlight, as well as food and water. She’s going to have to make one last desperate attempt to escape. Will freedom lie just beyond the shut door, or will that only mark the first hurdle she’ll have to clear in an even longer ordeal?

Audrey is a Search And Rescue expert who’s never stopped looking for the best friend who went missing when they were both teenagers. Before she disappeared, Janie used to love the local legend of a forest witch who would save girls from bad men. Audrey, however, is too old — and has seen too much — to believe in fairy tales any longer.

When Audrey finds evidence that an alleged teenage runaway might actually have been abducted from land owned by a prominent family, she’ll have to follow this fresh trail through decades worth of secrets. If she succeeds, she might find not only the missing young woman but the truth of what happened to all the other girls who’ve gone missing from the forest before.

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I’m also really excited about Kelsey Day’s The Spiral Key, a Young Adult thriller set in and around a virtual reality party. I’m ngl, I miss having the time for video games. Fortunately, books like this very much scratch that itch.

Bree Benson used to be BFFs with Lincoln Academy’s It Girl, Madison Pembroke. But ever since their epic falling out, she’s been excluded from Madison’s social circle and all its perks, including the annual invitation to Ametrine, a Virtual Reality paradise built by Madison’s tech billionaire parents. Every year, Madison sends an ornate spiral-shaped key to the few guests lucky enough to attend her fabulous VR birthday party. It isn’t just a fun night of partying: the events that take place in VR will cement the attendees’ social status in real life too.

So when Bree unexpectedly gets a key to Madison’s next party, she’s thrilled at what she sees as an olive branch from her former bestie. Maybe she and Madison will finally be able to have a heart to heart and get back to the way things were. Bree’s boyfriend is far more suspicious, but not even his cautionary words can prepare Bree for the nightmare that’s about to unfold. Madison might have been happy enough to let Bree enter Ametrine, but she’s certainly not letting her leave without a fight.

I have a weakness for novels that center fractured female friendships, especially in the teenage years. I’ve also been promised that this novel boasts excellent diversity representation that doesn’t feel shoehorned in, and I’m super excited to find that out for myself!

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Speaking of representation, I can’t wait to jump into Devon Mihesuah’s Blood Relay. Ms Mihesuah is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, and shines a much needed light on the ongoing issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people in her debut thriller.

From the promotional material:

“Choctaw Detective Perry Antelope has been with her partner, Sophia Burns, for only six months. Perry is a seasoned investigator while the ex-Olympian shot putter Sophia is a former street-smart police officer. Together, they are an intrepid pair with an established record of success. But when Perry and Sophia are called to investigate the disappearance of Dels Billy, a beloved women’s Indian Horse Relay rider, they quickly realize that it’s not as cut-and-dry as anything they’ve faced before.

“Piece by piece, they uncover unsettling connections between Dels’s disappearance and a series of unsolved abductions of women from Oklahoma reservations. But the perpetrator always seems to be one step ahead, and Perry soon finds herself—and her family—in the crosshairs of a ruthless killer. Despite her husband’s pleas for her to drop the case, Perry is determined to prevent Dels from becoming another statistic.

“As the investigation deepens, Perry and Sophia follow a tangled web of clues that point to a close-to-home plot more chilling than they could have imagined. Torn between her family’s safety and her duty to her community, Perry must race against the clock, and across tribal Nations, to find Dels before her murderous abductor can carry out their sinister plan.”

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The prolific Lindy Ryan is back with another snarky horror romp, this time through suburbia, in her newest novel Dollface.

Like Ms Ryan, our heroine Jill is also an author of horror novels. She’s not about to let that get in the way of her (hopefully) making friends with the other PTA moms in the New Jersey suburb that she and her family have just recently moved into tho. So what if her Final Girl mug and choice of attire weirds some of them out. Everyone has their little quirks and hobbies, right?

But when a serial killer in a plastic doll mask starts slashing their way through the neighborhood, Jill will have to start wondering whether her mug is more prophetic than she’d like it to be. The police are confounded and the other moms are outraged, as Jill finds herself inextricably drawn into a murderer’s schemes. Will she really be the Final Girl, or is an even darker fate awaiting her?

Inspired in equal part by movies like Barbie and Scream, this suburban slasher promises loads of 90s nostalgia fun for readers who enjoy their horror novels with a heaping side of salacious scandal.

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Next up is the latest novel from one of my favorite paranormal cozy authors. I adore (but still have to catch up with the latest books in) Angela M Sanders’ Witch Way Librarian mysteries, and am so excited that she’s come up with a spin-off series too.

A Whiff Of Murder stars Lise Bloom, who’s moved to small town Oregon from Seattle. She has clairalience, the unusual ability to read fragrances in the same way that some people can read auras. Whenever she meets someone new, she can sense their emotions and character through a fragrance that only she — and perhaps other similarly talented individuals — can smell.

In hopes of figuring out more regarding this paranormal ability, she takes a job at The Lucky Lotus, a new age shop run by the wealthy Dyann. Unfortunately for Lise, Dyann treats the place more like a casual hobby than an actual calling. Worse, she spends most of her time thinking up ways to torment her ex-husband Richard. After Dyann gleefully shares a particularly diabolical plan, Lise can’t take the toxicity any more and decides to quit. Before she can hand in her resignation later tho, she stumbles across Dyann’s dead body, with a spilled bottle of Mayan ceremonial liqueur beside it.

Lise is almost as horrified by Dyann’s death as she is to learn that she’s become prime suspect in her murder. With the help of her friends, found family and fragrance-related abilities, will Lise be able to clear her name by finding the real killer before anyone else gets hurt?

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Finally, we have my absolute most hotly anticipated release of next week, Jennifer Murphy’s The Ghost Women. It features dark academia! Tarot cards! A kickass female detective! Give it to meeeeeeeee!

It’s 1972 and the corpse of Abel Montague, a student at St Luke’s Institute Of The Arts, is found hanging from a tree. Tucked in one of his pockets is an ancient Tarot card depicting The Hanged Man, a character whose exact position is mirrored by the way Abel’s body has been carefully arranged.

St Luke’s has a reputation for spookiness, having once been a monastery that housed an order of witchfinders and executioners. Detective Lola Germany immediately suspects that Abel’s murder was ritualistic, a suspicion unalleviated by the caginess of his live-in girlfriend Pearl, or by the behavior of their friends, who style themselves as witches too. But as more students are found dead with their bodies positioned exactly like Tarot card illustrations, Lola realizes that she’s stumbled upon a centuries-spanning web of ambition and deceit that could very well claim her life too.

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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!