Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! I got my flu shot yesterday and have been struggling a wee bit more than usual ever since, so all I want to do is climb back into bed with a book. The question, ofc, is which one? A strong contender is definitely Freya Marske’s Bodies Of Magic, publishing next week!

Medical school meets dark academia in the hallowed halls of the Academie of the Grand Duchy of Sieuxerr. Mages with the healer’s gift are given five grueling years in which to master their powers. At the end of that time, they’re subjected to the Grand Exam, which will determine the course of the rest of their lives.

Unfortunately for the overachievers among them, the Grand Exam is also a group project. Candidates are only told five days in advance who their randomly selected teammates will be. Together, the team will have to successfully complete five practical cases. They will either all pass together or all fail together.

Academie students Estiene, Alys, Moyna, Jehane and Clement are all aware of this, and have all prepared themselves as best they can for the attempt. There’s no preparing, however, for their discovery of the corpse of Ysabel Caudotte, the school’s best student. All five of them have a connection to Ysabel and know that they have to solve her murder, even if some people would rather her death be considered a suicide. The students only have five days to figure out whodunnit tho, or risk jeopardizing their entire futures.

I fell in love with Ms Marske’s writing while reading the inventive and unapologetically horny Cinder House — it was actually my first choice for Best Novella for the 2026 Hugo Awards — so can’t wait to experience her take on a dark academia murder mystery here!

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Another author I absolutely adore is back with her latest thoughtful yet eerie psychological thriller. In Something Of A Calling, Zoje Stage tries her hand at a police procedural, tho with distinctly supernatural elements.

Police detective Andy Cooper is on the verge of retirement. She isn’t sure what she wants to do next with her life tho. Maybe she’ll finally get a dog. Maybe she’ll finally travel. Maybe she’ll finally be able to make something of the garden behind her house on the edge of the forest. All she knows is that work will no longer to be able to fill the gaping void left in her life after the death of her daughter at the hands of a drunk driver, and her subsequent divorce.

So when she makes a new friend in Fiona, it seems almost like a dream come true. Fiona is funny, fierce and filled with a thirst for life that Andy herself hasn’t felt in a long time. But what is Fiona’s connection to the case that should be Andy’s last as a cop? Surely the confident nature-lover has nothing to do with the trail of murdered bodies that have recently turned up, looking like they were mauled to death by a wild animal foreign to their region. Even if she does, what will Andy decide to do after uncovering the dark truth?

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Another socially conscious book with more than a trace of the supernatural comes in the brilliantly packaged Wolves Of No World: Lobizona & Cazadora by Romina Garber, a single gorgeous volume collecting both books of her Young Adult duology.

In Book 1: Lobizona, Manu is an undocumented immigrant from Argentina, hiding out in a Miami apartment from her father’s crime family. When her surrogate grandmother is attacked and her mom is arrested by ICE, Manu will have to go on the run. Soon, she falls into a secret world of witches and werewolves, a place out of Argentine folklore where her unusual eyes finally allow her to belong.

In Book 2: Cazadora, Manu and her friends have crossed the mystical border into Kerana, a cursed realm in Argentina. They’re on the hunt for both refuge and allies, even as the Cazadores set up traps to capture her. After finally tracking down the elusive resistance, Manu discovers that the wannabe revolutionary movement is as much in need of rescue as she is herself. Is she the right person to lead them into it tho? And after so long on the run, is it finally time for her to make a stand?

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For a more horrifying and adult adaptation of legend, check out Saratoga Schaefer’s sapphic take on Bluebeard in A Thousand Monstrous Forms. From the excellent publicity materials:

“Artist Poppy Reed doesn’t care if others think her marriage to Celia Marie Fox, a wealthy art dealer, is impulsive. Sure, they’ve only known each other for six months, and Celia has an infamous romantic reputation, but Poppy is brimming with excitement when she moves across the country to Celia’s home: a formidable, isolated, and art-filled manor called Busirane.

“As Poppy tries to celebrate her first weeks of marriage and enjoy her new home, Busirane seems intent on rebuffing her every attempt to settle in. Strange noises and confounding occurrences lead Poppy to believe the house is haunted, a suspicion worsened by Celia’s insistence that Poppy avoid the locked basement.

“When Celia leaves for a work trip, Poppy is left alone in the house, then finds herself snowed in. Surrounded by secrets, stalked by faceless statues, and beset by bodiless whispers, she struggles to trust her wife—and her own mind. When Poppy is eventually drawn to the forbidden basement, dark truths shatter everything she thought she knew, throwing her into a desperate bid for survival.”

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Finally, we have a globe-trotting murder mystery from the prolific and unfailingly entertaining Richard Osman. We Chase Shadows is the second in the We Solve Murders mystery series, as an unlikely detecting trio is hired for their very first proper case.

Former cop Steve Wheeler has officially come out of retirement to start a detective agency with his daughter-in-law, private security expert Amy, and her eccentric former client turned sleuth herself, the bestselling thriller author Rosie d’Antonio. When they’re hired by a shady Italian businessman to figure out who killed a man on his property, leaving a threatening note behind on the body, they figure it can’t be too hard given their respective skillsets.

Little do they realize exactly how vast their potential suspect pool will be. From Sweden’s Most Wanted criminal to a canny ex-wife and a fierce business rival, there’s no shortage of people with the motive and means. As our detectives jet set between Italy, Palm Springs and Barcelona (with breaks at Steve’s village pub,) they come to realize that their quarry is exceptionally good at hiding, and may soon be coming for one of them next.

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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!