Nov 06 2025
Hello, readers! Today we have a pulse-pounding excerpt for you from debut author TJ Derry’s soul-searching adventure novel, Carried Away! From the press materials: “Feeling numb and worn down by routine, Cole leaves New York for a chain of tropical Indonesian islands, chasing silence, clarity, and something real. Amidst the salt and heat, he reconnects …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/11/06/carried-away-by-tj-derry-excerpt/
Oct 26 2025
In Rituale — Rituals to give the book its English title — Cees Nooteboom begins in the middle, goes back to the beginning, and then skips a bit to get to something of an ending. As middle beginnings that might well be endings go, the first sentence in Rituals is arresting: “On the day that Inni …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/10/26/rituale-by-cees-nooteboom/
Aug 30 2025
The first two pages of The Kite Runner establish that as a child in Kabul in 1975, the first-person narrator witnessed or did something life-changing, something that so indelibly marked him that he carried it into the novel’s present day, which is December 2001. The summer of that year the narrator, who is living in …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/30/the-kite-runner-by-khaled-hosseini/
Aug 11 2025
This post concludes my year of reading all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books! After her death in 2011, Earwig and the Witch was published the same year, and a collection of her nonfiction writing was published in 2012. Much more recently, Moondust Books has published collections of her plays and poems! In this post I’ll …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/08/11/a-year-of-diana-wynne-jones-wrap-up/
Jul 29 2025
We have a timely treat for you today, readers, with an excerpt from Jacqueline Friedland’s Counting Backwards. Told in two alternating narratives bound together by a shocking parallel of issues — including reproductive rights and society’s expectations of women and mothers — this novel is a compelling reminder that progress is rarely a straight line …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/29/counting-backwards-by-jacqueline-friedland-excerpt/
Jul 22 2025
We have another terrific excerpt for you today, dear readers, with an absorbing, dual viewpoint look at one of the most traumatic experiences of a person’s life, and the mysterious circumstances that precipitated it. Leslie Rasmussen’s When People Leave is subtitled A Story Of Love, Lies And Finding The Truth. It follows the three Weiss …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/07/22/when-people-leave-by-leslie-rasmussen-excerpt/
May 18 2025
I purchased A Perfect Day to Be Alone on the strength of Doreen’s review. The book is, as Doreen described, short, quiet, absorbing, surprising and, in the end, memorable. A young Japanese woman named Chizu is the first-person narrator, and she tells her story over a bit more than a year as she manages her …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/05/18/a-perfect-day-to-be-alone-by-nanae-aoyama-2/
Apr 16 2025
Hyo the Hellmaker, by Mina Ikemoto Ghosh came out this week, from Scholastic! It’s got intricate world building, noir vibes, and atmospheric illustrations by the author for any manga-loving teen of your acquaintance. Hyo is a “hellmaker,” which means she is able to make bespoke curses for your enemies. Once you commission her, she can …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/04/16/hyo-the-hellmaker-by-mina-ikemoto-ghosh/
Mar 17 2025
The global COVID-19 lockdowns were a tough time for millions around the globe, in no small part due to the confrontation many people had with whether or not they actually enjoyed living with themselves. One such person is Mylo Gunn, a fifty year-old Black American whose extra time for introspection butts up against the burgeoning …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/03/17/groomed-by-jody-paschal/
Feb 09 2025
This slim novel — titled Une jeunesse in the French original and Young Once in English — opens as a thirty-fifth birthday celebration for Odile is winding down. She and her husband Louis have run a children’s home in a village at the foot of the Alps for a dozen years, but now that their own …
Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2025/02/09/eine-jugend-by-patrick-modiano/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire