Tantalizing Tales — May 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! This one’s pretty late, as I spent most of the day either in a medical facility or passed out at home. My illness has gotten so bad that I barely even had the energy to read! Hopefully, some of these books I’m about to discuss will help entice me out of this reading slump, starting with two novels publishing next week, before we look back at four shorter reads from 2025.

First up is Robert B Parker’s Booked by Alison Gaylin, as she continues the famed late author’s PI Sunny Randall novels with the thirteenth book in the series. Sunny’s latest client might seem to be little more than an industry in-joke, as a book critic sends a bestselling author on a spiral. World-famous writer Melanie Joan Hall is less than thrilled that the online book influencer known only as Book Babe has given her a scathing one-star review. Ordinarily, Melanie — like all sensible authors — would just brush off a bad review. Unfortunately, her publisher is now threatening to pull all her books due to Book Babe’s outsize influence on social media.

In desperation, Melanie hires Sunny to help her track down Book Babe. Sunny’s investigations uncover a rich history between the two women, as well as a ton of bad blood. When Book Babe suddenly turns up dead, Sunny will have to face the likelihood of her latest client being a murderer. Will she be able to unravel and escape this tangled web of enmity before she becomes the next victim herself?

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Next up we have a standalone contemporary/urban fantasy novel that deals with some of today’s most urgent issues, in Vaishnavi Patel’s We Dance Upon Demons

Our heroine Nisha is a reproductive health care worker who is barely keeping it together as she works in a Chicago clinic. Between rapidly changing abortion laws, screaming protestors and her own all-consuming depression, she’s burning out fast.

A quick trip to the Indian art exhibit at her favorite museum doesn’t give her the respite that it usually does. Instead, she abruptly finds herself bleeding and disoriented on the ground, with her last memory that of a statue beckoning for her to make contact. Over the next few days, Nisha begins to feel something moving within her, a strange new power that also, unfortunately, attracts the attention of the strange and dangerous people who covet what she now has for themselves.

As she faces new threats and old, otherworldly and human, she’ll have to make uncertain alliances in an attempt to make sense of what’s happening to her. Her new powers, it seem, lie at the heart of a mystery that stretches back centuries. With danger closing in on her loved ones, her community and the clinic that she’s determined to protect, Nisha will have to make hard choices, even as she’s thrust into a battle against the demons that want to take everything from her.

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Looking back to 2025, we have a heartwarming story of love lost and independence found, in Steven Rowley’s The Dogs Of Venice.

Our protagonist Paul has spent months planning the perfect romantic holiday in Venice. He’s thus completely blindsided when his marriage of five years abruptly unravels, leaving him heartbroken and alone.

Hoping that a change of scenery will help heal at least a little of his heartbreak, he decides to take the Venice trip by himself. Soon after arriving, he notices a small, scruffy dog trotting alongside a canal, with all the self-assurance that he himself lacks. When their paths cross again, Paul decides to follow the little dog, in hopes of gaining some insight into the creature’s confident self-sufficiency.

As Paul journeys amidst the sights, sounds, food and people of Venice, he begins to discover connections that he never thought possible, whether to a dog, a city or — perhaps most importantly — to himself.

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For a less wholesome but still entirely entertaining take on life abroad, check out the Queen of African Horror Nuzo Onoh’s latest diabolical novel, Futility. Warning: it may whet your appetite for all sorts of enticing things. I’m super craving Nigerian food just writing about it!

Chia runs one of the most popular restaurants in Abuja, Nigeria. Her hot pepper soup is to die for, as her largely male clientele will happily attest. Beautiful and successful, her life seems like a dream come true. But she harbors dark secrets, that hide in an interior still filled with rage after an unforgiveable betrayal.

Claire is a white British expatriate who lives with her much younger boyfriend and his beautiful “cousin” (quotation marks my own because I know how men can be.) Claire’s carefully organized life is constantly on the verge of disaster, consumed as she is by jealousy. A night out at Chia’s sets the match to the resentments burning in her chest, as a trickster god makes deals with both women, leading to a blood-soaked escapade of vengeance as chaotic and brutal as that book cover!

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Another tale of horror that I’m super looking forward to fitting into my absurd schedule is Nathan Ballingrud’s Cathedral Of The Drowned. This sequel to Crypt Of The Moon Spider once more takes on the niche but engrossing subject of Lovecraftian madness in space.

From the promotional material:

“There are two halves of Charlie Duchamp’s brain. One is in a jar stranded on Jupiter’s jungle moon, Io, who just wants to go home to the woman he loves. The other half is still locked in his body, hanging from a wall in Barrowfield Home on Earth’s own moon, host to the eggs of the Moon Spider and filled with a murderous rage.

“On Io, deep in the flooded remains of a crashed Cathedral ship, lives a giant centipede called the Bishop, who has taken control of the drowned astronaut-clergy inside. Both Charlies converge here, stalking each other in the haunted ruins, while more Moon Spiders prepare to be born.”

I super loved the first book in this planned trilogy. While part of me wants to wait for the third book, Kingdom Of The Conqueror Worm, to come out so I can devour both in one fell swoop, I don’t think I can wait till 2027! Let’s see if my schedule agrees with me.

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Finally, we have Nicholas Binge’s Extremity, a time-travelling, end of the world, police procedural novella that’s been described as True Detective as written by Philip K Dick.

Police detective Julia Torgrimsen once had a legendary career. A brutal act forced her into retirement, but she’s been called back to the force to investigate the murder of billionaire Bruno Donaldson, whom she’d worked with while undercover. She’s surprised to discover not one but two bodies at the crime scene. Both are Bruno’s, and identical down to the fingerprints. Both have been shot dead.

Soon, Julia finds herself in hot pursuit of a mysterious assassin targeting London’s wealthy elite, even as she tries to not get sucked back into the scene’s macabre underbelly. When she uncovers impossible documents, she realizes that she may have stumbled across a conspiracy of time-travel that could herald the extinction of all humanity.

In order to stop this conspiracy, Julia is going to have to finally face up to her own past, and the terrible choices she made while undercover. Will she be able to save the world, and her own life and sanity in the process?

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All of 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!