Apr 10 2026

Tantalizing Tales — April 2026 — Part Two

Hello, dear readers! I haven’t been bedridden in over a week now, which feels like a small but important victory as I struggle to catch up with all the work that’s fallen by the wayside since mid-January. The weather, at least, has been lovely where I am, leading to lots of outdoor reading (after a hefty dose of allergy meds, of course.)

I’ve also been looking favorably at my pile of upcoming reads, with Kelly Yang’s The Take top of the list. I first fell in love with her writing when my eldest child introduced me to Front Desk, a book he’d been assigned in middle school, and I’ve loved everything I’ve read of hers since.

Her debut adult novel revolves around the relationship between Maggie Wang and Ingrid Parker, two women in very different positions in life. Maggie is a broke young Asian American writer, whose work is dismissed as not possessing enough life experience. Ingrid is an aging white Hollywood producer who isn’t willing to be sidelined in an industry that renders women invisible as they age.

Out of desperation, Ingrid makes Maggie an offer. She’ll pay Maggie three million dollars and act as her mentor. In exchange, all Maggie has to do is participate in an experimental age-reversal treatment involving ten blood transfusions.

Their strictly transactional arrangement devolves into a power play as both women discover that simply taking what they want — whether it be youth, wisdom or power — comes at a cost. As they begin to question who’s really benefiting from their relationship, they also have to confront what they’re willing to do and sacrifice in order to succeed.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/10/tantalizing-tales-april-2026-part-two/

Apr 09 2026

Ami Moon And The Galactic Peacekeepers by Frances Lee

For whatever reason, I had this book’s publication date misfiled, but oh what a perfect time to read it, as the Artemis II mission reminds millions of people worldwide why so many of us initially fell in love with the idea of outer space.

And space is, obviously, the setting for Ami Moon And The Galactic Peacekeepers. The graphic novel opens with a greeting to readers from a(n adorable) Peacekeeper named Emo, who will serve as our guide through the experience. Emo relates that the only human among the Galactic Peacekeepers before us was Ami, a girl who couldn’t remember how to get back to Earth. Funnily enough, none of the other Peacekeepers knew of a planet by that name either, so she spent her days helping on missions of peace even as she missed home and her mother terribly.

As we follow along, we learn that being a Peacekeeper means that there are a lot of things to keep both us and her occupied. Ami has been assigned to a team with the much larger, bear-shaped and gentle Sumo, and the smaller, shark-shaped and prickly (in nature if not in body) Rosa. In their downtime, the trio enjoy noodles and exploring the Peacekeepers’ headquarters planet, even as they try to avoid getting into fights with snobbier colleagues. But when their AI, whom Ami wistfully names MOM, has a mission for them, it’s all systems go.

Seeing as how they’re all novices, the missions start out pretty simply, but grow in complexity as their skills develop. Soon, they’re encountering actual dangers with psychological repercussions. Will they be able to complete their missions and return home safely, even as Ami searches for any word of Earth?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/09/ami-moon-and-the-galactic-peacekeepers-by-frances-lee/

Apr 08 2026

Now You Know Your ABCs (Or Do You?) by Caspar Salmon & Matt Hunt

I honestly cannot remember the last time I laughed so delightedly at a children’s picture book!

Now You Know Your ABCs (Or Do You?) begins how books like these usually do, with an A is for Apple and B is for Ball. The story grows increasingly immersive, however, as we plunge deeper into the alphabet. Soon, readers are pulled into a tale at once adventurous and magical, as a wolf pursues us through the charmingly illustrated pages, traversing the entire alphabet for good measure.

There is definitely a hint of danger here but younger readers will, presumably, be enjoying this with a safe adult who’ll ensure that this wild tale feels more exciting romp than actually scary. Honestly, this book hearkens very much to the kind of fairy tale yarn that more creative storytellers than myself often spin for their children’s bedtime stories. Kids do tend to be weirdly bloodthirsty, and many of them will enjoy this epic journey, if they’re not rooting outright for the wolf to win. I know that my little monsters would have been jumping up and down with excitement had this book come out when they were still read-along picture book enthusiasts.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/08/now-you-know-your-abcs-or-do-you-by-caspar-salmon-matt-hunt/

Apr 07 2026

Two Truths And A Lie by Mark Stevens (EXCERPT)

Hello, dear readers! Today I have an intriguing excerpt from the second book in the Flynn Martin series, Two Truths And A Lie.

After being instrumental in helping to catch the notorious PDQ killer who terrorized Denver, investigative reporter Flynn Martin is thrilled that her career is flying high. Juggling her professional responsibilities with motherhood is a continuing challenge, but one she finds worthwhile if it means putting the guilty behind bars.

Serial killer Harry Kugel isn’t ready to let their relationship go, however, even as he’s facing a long prison sentence for the crimes he’s committed. Four months after his sentencing, an upstanding family of four mysteriously disappears. As Flynn investigates, she begins receiving cryptic messages from someone who has no qualms about targeting not only her sources but those nearest and dearest to her as well. Is Harry somehow involved in this case too? Or has yet another copycat killer come out of the woodwork to prey on the innocent of Colorado?

Read on for a scene-setting excerpt, as Harry faces a judge and leaves Flynn with a clear message:

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/07/two-truths-and-a-lie-by-mark-stevens-excerpt/

Apr 04 2026

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

The Tailor of Panama is Harry Pendel, half of the Savile Row partnership of Pendel & Braithwaite, relocated to Panama City some years back. A large portrait of the late Arthur Braithwaite — shipped over from England at his widow’s insistence and damn the expense — presides over the premises just off the prestigious Via España. The prestige of English hand-tailoring has translated into a tidy business for Pendel. He has fitted more than one president, quite a number of ministers, practically all of Panama’s business elite, and wealthy men of discerning taste from around the region. He has not held himself above creating uniforms for men new to their high ranks, and he is far too worldly to inquire about how they attained those ranks, or indeed how legitimate their governments might be. Credit available to the right customers, but cash very much preferred.

The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carré

The book was published in 1996 and is set a vague but not too large number of years following the first Bush administration’s forceful ouster of Panama’s notorious ruler Manuel Noriega in 1989. Corruption is assumed of anyone with money. The deadly violence of the drug trade is also assumed, but stays in the background in this novel. By all appearances, Pendel has created a jolly island of English probity and taste in the tropics. The men who come to his shop enjoy the whisky more than the good fitting, and there are regulars who stop by to be seen and to catch up on the latest gossip, in between business, golfing, maintenance of at least one mistress, and the other accoutrements of being rich and Panamanian. Pendel hears a lot in unguarded moments, whether that is during fittings or when his clients are relaxing in the club-like atmosphere of Pendel & Braithwaite.

Pendel himself is a devoted family man; one of the novel’s first scenes shows him taking his two children to their school. His wife, Louisa, is a daughter of one of the Canal’s leading engineers and grew up when the Canal Zone emphasized the practical colonial status of the country that surrounded the Canal. She works for a Panamanian politico-businessman, and she’s a part of the city’s network of socially elite women, parallel to the men’s networks and just as riven by affairs and personal scores. At times Pendel cannot believe his luck; at others, he cannot meet Louisa’s complex and contradictory psychological demands. Le Carré only partly explores this relationship, which is probably just as well because I do not think it would hold up to protracted investigation.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/04/the-tailor-of-panama-by-john-le-carre/

Apr 03 2026

Tantalizing Tales — April 2026 — Part One

The first quarter of the year is over, friends, and here I am, trying to balance engagement with our dire reality with the joys of slipping away into fiction. One fictional place I’m really looking forward to visiting soon is Erica Wright’s The Museum Of Unusual Occurrence, the first in her brand new Psychic City mystery series.

Aly Orlean is rational, cynical and fiercely proud of her hometown of Wyndale, Florida. She runs the local Museum of Unusual Occurrence, a place that showcases strange events that Aly doesn’t necessarily believe have supernatural explanations, no matter what else the people in Wyndale might claim. She’s happy to let them talk up the place and to take her visitors money, tho, especially since she has Merope, her teenage sister, to take care of.

Things take a decided turn when someone sneaks into the museum and gruesomely stages the fresh corpse of Rose Dempsey, a local twenty year-old, as if she were part of a ritual sacrifice. The police are clueless, and Aly begins to fear that this murder was actually meant as a message to her and to her solitary lifestyle. In order to protect both herself and her sister, Aly’s going to have to figure out not only who killed Rose and why, but why her museum was targeted too.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/03/tantalizing-tales-april-2026-part-one/

Apr 02 2026

Murder By Memory & Nobody’s Baby by Olivia Waite

Oh, boy, am I the worst person to send a speculative fiction mystery to when the mystery is, at best, mid. And that’s the thing: these mysteries could be so good, and have so much to say about the human condition as we hurtle into infinity, if the ideas were at all fleshed out and given room to breathe.

Which is a bit ironic given that being fleshed out is one of the core technologies at the heart of these novellas. The basic premise is that instead of generation ships carrying humanity to new life on a distant planet, the inhabitants have the ability instead to write their memories and personalities into digital books stored in the ship’s Library. These can then be re-downloaded into newly created bodies based on each individual’s own genetic codes when their old ones expire, whether from natural causes or otherwise. The people aboard the HMS Fairweather have thus been alive for centuries.

Ship’s detective Dorothy Gentleman had elected not to be immediately reborn after her latest death, and has essentially been hibernating for the past two years. She’s thus startled, as Murder By Memory begins, to find herself rudely awakened, and not in a body corresponding to her own. Instead, she wakes up in an elevator, her personality and memory abruptly thrust upon another’s in an emergency action that the ship’s computer Ferry has deemed absolutely necessary.

It seems that while the ship is weathering a magnetic storm, some of the books in the Library have been damaged beyond repair, including Dorothy’s. Given her importance to the ship, Ferry shunted her consciousness into the first available body, knowing it would be able to sort everything out later. But another emergency has come up: there’s been a murder aboard the Fairweather. And who better than the newly reanimated ship’s detective to solve it?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/02/murder-by-memory-nobodys-baby-by-olivia-waite/

Apr 01 2026

Armaveni by Nadine Takvorian

subtitled: A Graphic Novel Of The Armenian Genocide.

The older I get, the more I wonder why people who commit genocide are so hellbent on pretending it never happened. It adds a layer of weaseldom to an already terrible thing. Like, it’s bad enough you’re a mass murderer but when confronted with the evidence, you’ll pretend it never happened? That feels like a double erasure, of not only a person’s life but also their very existence.

Perhaps that’s the point, which is why it feels especially important in this day and age that the stories of the murdered, displaced and those otherwise affected by state-led actions of eradication continue to be told. The tragedy of the Armenian genocide is probably one of the best hidden of the 20th century. Even as well-read as I’ve been throughout my lifetime, I didn’t know about it until maybe ten years ago? I’m glad that people are speaking out, and that Nadine Takvorian has turned her family history into this compelling Young Adult graphic novel.

Partially set in 2001, the teenaged Nadine of this book comes from an Armenian American family that doesn’t like to talk about the past. California-born Nadine loves drawing and loves stories, tho knows that there are certain ones that her family refuses to share. Her parents run a specialty food store in the city, where she and her brother Sayat help out on Saturdays. A passing question from a customer regarding her identity, and an essay assignment on what it means to be American from her history teacher Mr Ward, soon combine to have her question her own heritage with greater intensity.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/04/01/armaveni-by-nadine-takvorian/

Mar 31 2026

Nobi Nobi TRPG Collector’s Box by Takashi Konno

I am trying to wean myself off of the bad habit of buying books and games via Kickstarter that I don’t subsequently have the time to read and/or play. One way to do this, ofc, is to stop buying things. But another way, more pleasing to my heart if tougher on my calendar, is to actually enjoy these things I’ve bought, whether by myself or in groups.

So when several of my local D&D regulars were unable to make it to the only date we could schedule to meet after a several month hiatus, I thought, “it’s finally time to give some of my other games a go!” I primarily wanted to try out the Nobi Nobi Tabletalk Role Playing Game because it’s lightweight, versatile, almost zero prep and, well, I’d been getting marketing emails letting me know that the expansion set is coming out soon, lol. How to decide whether I’m interested in buying the Cyberpunk and Steampunk expansions if I haven’t yet tried the original even?!

I also had another, slightly ulterior but definitely sneaky, motive for wanting to introduce Nobi Nobi to my RPG table. The game calls for the set of Game Masters and Main Characters to rotate from Scene to Scene. I wanted to use this quality to make players feel more comfortable telling stories, doing improv and being the focus, thereby fostering confidence and hopefully inspiring them to take more agency in the rest of our games going forward. Maybe one of them will even offer to GM a game soon! Stranger things, Horatio!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/31/nobi-nobi-trpg-collectors-box-by-takashi-konno/

Mar 30 2026

The Trouble With Leo by Michelle Assarasakorn & Nathan Fairbairn

This fifth installment of the PAWS graphic novel series for Middle Grade readers is too cute!

Jumping into a series on its fifth installment can always feel a little disorienting, so I do recommend reading the earlier books in the series first to get a better understanding of who some of these unintroduced characters are. That said, the book does work as a standalone. I can’t imagine not wanting to get started with the prior books, tho, if they’re anywhere close to as charming as this one is!

It’s been a whole year since a group of girls who weren’t allowed to own dogs, but who really wanted to hang out with them, started a dog-walking service called PAWS. Members have come and gone in the interim but business continues to grow for Gabby, Mindy and Hazel. The girls and their families and friends are having an anniversary picnic at the park when a regrettable encounter between Gabby and her nemesis Leo leads to the latter declaring that he’ll just start his own dog-walking business then.

Gabby laughs it off, but when flyers for a new dog-walking service called SCAMPS start showing up around the neighborhood — staffed by Leo and his friends Brandon and Nolawi — an all-out turf war erupts, with both sides resorting to dirty tactics. Gabby’s big mouth, however, winds up getting Mindy and Brandon assigned to work on their class science project together. As an unlikely friendship springs up between the two, can they figure out a way to calm things down before one of the pet-lovers does something that there’s no coming back from?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/30/the-trouble-with-leo-by-michelle-assarasakorn-nathan-fairbairn/