Tantalizing Tales — October 2026 — Part Two

As the days grow ever shorter in the countdown to Halloween and beyond, we have more awesome upcoming books for your consideration!

First up is a rarity: a full-length prose novel inspired by a comic book series instead of the other way around. James Tynion IV and Kiersten White — two creators I greatly admire! — have collaborated on the thrilling prose prequel to the former’s bestselling horror comic series Something Is Killing The Children.

In Hope Is A Knife, our heroine Erica Slaughter has arrived in the small Idaho town of Badwater. A child has been torn apart: by a bear, a person or something even more sinister. As a Black Mask — a monster hunter in the Order of St George — Erica’s entire purpose in life is to investigate cases like this to determine whether there’s really a monster afoot, then to track it down and slay it if so.

Her task this time around is complicated by the town’s charismatic doomsday preacher, who’s been whipping the townsfolk into a frenzy. When she discovers that the fear of one of the town’s children may have been responsible for summoning her latest quarry, she’s going to have to act fast to figure out which kid it actually is and to somehow sever the connection between child and creature. For the rest of the Order and the town are both ready to do anything to stop the monster, even if it means killing the kid who unwittingly summoned it.

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A slightly less supernatural but still chilling mystery lies at the heart of Amber Blaeser-Wardzala’s Another Word For Red. She gained a lot of fans with her contribution to the landmark Indigenous horror anthology Never Whistle At Night, ensuring an eager audience for this, her debut novel.

From the publicity materials:

“Middle Sister is haunted by everyone in her community who has disappeared—as well as those who remain. Her ex-best friend and ex-boyfriend are walking relics of the girl she used to be, while her family—her activist mother, checked-out father, and attention-starved younger siblings—are reminders of the elder sister she can never live up to. Then there’s John Smith, the infamous white man with red cowboy boots living on stolen reservation land, whose obsessive attentions are as repellant as they are compelling. But most of all, there are the thousands of unacknowledged missing and murdered Indigenous women, including Older Sister, whose year-long absence from the reservation has torn her remaining family apart.

“With local authorities proving useless, Middle Sister decides to start an investigation of her own, beginning with the mysterious “Eric”—a white man from a neighboring town who Older Sister claimed to love, and who she swore loved her. Attempting to hunt down the correct white Eric in the haystack of Minnesota forces Middle Sister to seek help from the community from which she’s grown alienated, starting with her coworker, Casanova; a stray rez dog; and Nookomis, her grandmother who’s foreseen her own death. Yet John still lurks in the growing wintry shadows, offering a sort of surrender that Middle Sister can’t help being drawn to. In the end, she must choose: either let the guilt consume her or forgive herself and fight.”

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To wrap up this week’s column, we have another exciting novel from an Indigenous writer, as Ojibwe and Scottish author Bear Meawasige kicks off a brand new fantasy series with In The Long Shadows.

Four young adventurers are destined to meet on the Great Turtle. Reed is an orphan who would do anything to get away from his hardscrabble life on the Flotilla, a floating city of ships. When he learns that one ship is about to sail away across the Broken Waters, he doesn’t hesitate to lie his way on board. Finch, one of the other crew members, seems to see right through him, even as he ties his fate to their company.

Meanwhile, Leaf wanders the forests of the Turtle, exploring the ruins where her grandmother Koomis was once imprisoned with other children by the invading Stonefolk who built the now-crumbling buildings. The Stonefolk are long gone but their artifacts remain, including a mysterious object that Leaf knows she can’t just leave where she found it.

Risking banishment by bringing it back to the Elderglade, she’s gratified that at least one person there agrees to help her find answers. Ash is a Watcher sworn to protect their clan’s people. Together, she and Leaf will embark on a dangerous journey to uncover the truth behind the strange artifact, a journey that will lead them to meet other truth and knowledge seekers from far away.

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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!