Tantalizing Tales — June 2026 — Part One

Happy June, everybody! The English Premier league season is over and the World Cup is right around the corner, with plenty of other things to celebrate in a world grown increasingly malevolent for people just trying to live our lives (in other words, Happy Pride!)

In keeping with that thought, we have our first selection of upcoming reads for the month, with Mollyhall Seeley’s We Hexed The Moon. Four teenaged best friends are facing down the prospect of having to grow up and grow apart now that they’ve graduated high school. During a sleepover, they jokingly decide to hex the moon. Imagine their shock when the moon does leave the sky and shows up, in mostly person-shaped form, in one of their bedrooms instead.

Unfortunately for the girls, the moon has no intention of returning to her rightful place in the heavens. Planet Earth, however, still very much needs a satellite. The moon tells the four besties that since they had the audacity to try to cast a spell on her, they’re going to have to find her a replacement: someone who’ll essentially have to sacrifice their own humanity in order to take the moon’s place in the sky while she takes over their body in turn. The girls, who are so close that they’re practically one person, are forced to splinter further apart as they reckon with what they’ve done and what they must do to fix it.

I cannot be the only person getting Diana Wynne Jones’ The Time Of The Ghost vibes from this, which is one of the biggest compliments I can honestly give a book. Bonus: there’s explicitly queer representation here as the girls not only struggle with the moon’s demand but also with the reality of the swiftly changing world around them.

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Another exciting speculative read is Cynthia Pelayo’s upcoming It Came From Neverland. As the title suggests, this historical horror-mystery novel is a reinterpretation of J M Barrie’s classic Peter Pan, as a grown-up Wendy must fight a murderous presence whose crimes the authorities believe are entirely her doing.

1914 England is in the throes of The Great War. Schoolteacher Wendy Darling spends her nights volunteering to care for soldiers who’ve returned from the Western Front. When a comatose soldier murmurs the words “Peter Pan”, Wendy is suddenly forced to confront a childhood that her own brothers remember very differently. They have warm memories of fantasy and games: she, however, remembers the children who went missing, and whose murdered bodies were later recovered throughout London.

When one of her students disappears, the police begin to look into her own past and her uncanny knowledge of all the dead children. Wendy knows that the monstrous Peter Pan is back and responsible for the killings. Will she be able to prove it, and finally end his reign of terror?

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For something a little more lighthearted, we have Gordon Jack’s charming cozy mystery caper Poppy Montgomery Gets Even.

Our octogenarian title heroine is not having a good time. The police have taken her away her driver’s license, her in-recovery daughter wants to put her in a retirement home, and a new fitter-than-thou attendee seems to be taking over her favorite water aerobics class. Even for a certified curmudgeon with a distinctly dim view on life and other people, this is all Too Much.

When her new friend Ginny is scammed on a dating site for seniors, Poppy has finally had enough. With the help of her tech-savvy, basement-dwelling grandson Jeremy, she decides to turn the table on scammers, successfully striking back against the people who’ve been taking advantage of others just like her. But when two women at Ginny’s retirement home die of unnatural causes, and it looks like Poppy’s latest target had something to do with it, her fun online sting operation becomes a matter of life of death. Soon, she and her ragtag team are going to have to pull off one last job — and solve some murders — before any of them become a killer’s next victim.

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If the summer heat has you down and you’d rather escape into a beautifully wintry book, look no further than Adalyn Grace’s Holly, the lushly packaged and illustrated novella that continues her bestselling Belladonna series. I’m ngl, I originally accepted this pitch because I wanted to see how they fit a self-proclaimed “novella” into 384 pages. With gorgeous pictures by Lotusbubble, apparently!

Blythe and Aris are looking forward to hosting family for winter festivities at their magical manor, Wisteria Gardens. Unfortunately, the spirits of the place are growing increasingly restless, in ways that threaten to derail their celebrations. Not wanting anything to ruin their beloved Blythe’s plans, Aris and Blythe’s cousin Signa join forces to unravel the mystery of the manor’s ghosts, in hopes of being able to help them move on from the mortal realm. Meanwhile, Signa’s husband Death has his own plans involving a mysterious gift for Christmas, in this latest installment of the speculative Gothic romance series that has captured the hearts of countless readers.

I haven’t actually read any of the other books in the series yet, but I’m a sucker for a beautiful presentation, and am hoping that the contents live up to the allure of the cover and packaging!

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Speaking of evocative covers, check out the very timely illustration gracing Lauren Davis’ debut fiction collection The Nothing. I’ll be honest tho, I haven’t held this book back because I’ve been waiting for the Backrooms movie to come out first. I’ve just been having a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to explain the almost dream-like contents.

What I can safely say is that this is a short book, and a finalist for the Big Other Book Award for Fiction. I almost think it would be faster for me to read and review the collection than to try to come up with a short blurb at this point. My work schedule, alas, has very different ideas.

So here’s what I know about the book: it packs nineteen short stories into one slender volume. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the stories explore the liminal states people find themselves in, whether supernatural or otherwise, and how they react to grief, illness and loss. I’ve only read the very short Gone, Ralph, Gone so far, but it struck me as an examination of how people behave once the comfort of routine is broken, even if that routine is the vaguely unsettling and perhaps only half-serious threat of sexual violence. It’s smart and weird and atmospheric and thought-provoking in the best literary way.

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Finally, we have Tilia Klebenov Jacobs & Norm Birnbach’s Why Should I Trust You?, a cute middle grade novel directly inspired by prompts from a fifth-grade class.

From the publicity materials:

“What if your enemy needs a friend?

“Twelve-year-old Lark is new in town, stuck in a strange school where her mother is the new principal and everyone else seems out to get her—especially Jeff, the class troublemaker. Worse, her dad is seriously sick, and her mom is too busy running the school to notice how lost Lark feels. The only person who seems to understand her is Mr. Timothy, the kindly janitor with a knowing smile and a secret or two of his own.
 
“But one strange afternoon changes everything. 
 
“Lark and Jeff find themselves teaming up to solve a century-old crime, uncover hidden treasure, and face off against a terrifying demon cockroach. 
 
“Along the way, they learn that not all bullies are what they seem—and sometimes the only way to heal the present is by confronting the past.”

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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!