Sep 25 2026

Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part Four

It has gotten downright chilly here in Maryland, tho the weather report assures me that temperatures will go back to being pleasant over the next few days, thank goodness. I wonder whether that’s part of the reason I’ve been able to plow through books a little more quickly than usual lately, as I eschew walks outdoors for indoor spin sessions (with a good book!) instead.

We have plenty more books arriving soon to keep you company no matter the weather! The first is a terrific mash-up of historical romance, mystery and the paranormal, as enemies turn into lovers in Martha Waters’ charming new novel Spellstruck.

Magic has been outlawed in 1920s London, but families with the gift still exist, often running illegal speakeasies to cater to a public that still yearns for enchantment. Vesper Holloway runs her family’s club, sprinkling a little magic over the cocktails and into the patrons’ lives. But accidents — some that could be and are becoming increasingly dangerous — keep occurring, and not just in her establishment.

Maxwell Ashbridge is a government agent charged with enforcing the ban. He has a vendetta against the magical elite, but not against Vesper, whose older brother he was actually once friends with. Maxwell promises her immunity for the club if she’ll help him infiltrate the underground speakeasy scene in order to find and stop the source of the tainted magic that’s corrupting everyone’s businesses. Vesper is hesitant but agrees, even as she struggles against the growing attraction between them. As the accidents both continue and escalate, and the fight to repeal the ban makes its way to Parliament, will Vesper and Maxwell decide that their relationship is also worth fighting for?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/25/tantalizing-tales-september-2026-part-four/

Sep 24 2026

Hugo Awards 2026: Winners

Back in April when the finalists for the 2026 Hugo Awards were announced, your Frumious Consorters talked about what we liked in the nominations, what we were excited to find out more about, and what we hoped to actually read. Curious to discover how things turned out and what the Consortium thought? Read on!

LAConV LogoDoug: The awards were awarded! A quick list of winners is here and the detailed report on votes and nominations is here. Who wants to kick off our round table of mixed metaphors?

Doreen: First off, thanks for the link to the report, that I absolutely pored over as I do every year! Just as interesting to me as knowing who won is knowing how the rest of the voting shook out. There were some surprises, especially in the categories Doug and I both managed to cover at TFC, but I think I’d like to talk about some of the non-surprises first. Such as A Wizard Of Earthsea‘s win in the Graphic Story category. I didn’t rate it highly myself, but I am completely unsurprised that more people were in agreeance with Doug and propelled it to the win. Also, apologies if I take a while to reply, I have been feeling rather poorly this last day or so and it has been vexing!

Emily: I read an email from Book Riot recently that described the Hugo as “Voted on by members, they fall somewhere between a typical literary award and a Goodreads Choice award: a popularity contest with a caveat.”

Personally, I’ve always considered the Hugo as a major professional award in SFF. Since you are both voters, how do you think of it?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/24/hugo-awards-2026-winners/

Sep 23 2026

The Turn by Rachel Feder

Oh gosh, Idk why I didn’t think there would be actual monsters in this. I mean, the blurb is pretty straightforward about the book’s influences — primary among them being Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw and J Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla — but I genuinely thought it would lean more towards a “did she or didn’t she see something?” psychological horror instead of being a straight up monster book.

And there’s nothing wrong with being a straight up monster book, as the second half ends up being. The first half, tho, is the gauzy MFA-esque writing that has the reader wondering how reliable this narrator is, really. The narrator in question for this novella is Baxter, a grad student who takes on a part-time nanny position in the mountain home of her gorgeous, talented professor Alison. As the novel begins, she’s been there for a while and now lives with the family, including Alison’s handsome scientist husband Seb and their two kids, Quinn and Thebes. The details are a little hazy, as is Baxter’s memory. She remembers that the pandemic hit and she agreed to move in, exchanging room and board and a small stipend for child-rearing duties and the close professional attention of one of her favorite teachers.

But there are uncanny lights in the yard at night, and Baxter keeps losing time. Her memories seem to warp as she sees things that can’t possibly be real. She keeps discovering inexplicable bruises on her body and her ex-boyfriend won’t stop texting, finally sending her a warning that she isn’t safe. Baxter figures that he’s just desperate for her attention, until Alison and Quinn disappear while Seb is on a research trip, leaving an increasingly disoriented Baxter alone with Thebes on the mountain.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/23/the-turn-by-rachel-feder/

Sep 22 2026

Milton Makes A Move by Jonathan Graziano & Dan Tavis

This cute picture book from the creator of the Noodles And The No Bones Day series (yes, based on the viral TikToks featuring the adorable and, alas, now deceased pug named Noodle) is a sweet look at the power of friendship, primarily between a brave little pug and his new owner.

Milton is a pug who was raised with lots of other dogs, exploring their shared backyard and having lots of fun little adventures with his animal friends. The other dogs sometimes talk about eventually going off to live with families of their own, but Milton doesn’t think that will happen for him… until it does!

He’s understandably worried, but like the brave little pug that he is, he gets on a plane and flies to meet his new owner. Will his new family’s house be nice for pugs, with lots of smells, friends and tasty snacks? His new owner is a man named Jonathan, who previously cared for another pug named Noodles. Jonathan’s house has lots of pictures of Noodles having adventures, which help reassure Milton. But no move is without its challenges, as Milton and Jonathan soon discover. Will they be able to settle in as a family, courageously facing life’s adventures together?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/22/milton-makes-a-move-by-jonathan-graziano-dan-tavis/

Sep 21 2026

Dead Girls by Beck Kubrick

Y’all, I would kill to protect Cassie. When Ash Hargreeves, the heroine of this YA graphic novel, calls her foster sister “terminally delightful,” she is being 100% accurate, as Cassie is the absolute best no matter what life and serial killers try to throw at her. I love her and want to embody her positive spirit as much as humanly possible.

But this is not a book entirely about Cassie, amazing as she is. By contrast, Ash is the perpetually angry seventeen year-old whose choices as to whom to trust may seem tenuous at best. But can you blame her? When she was a little girl, her mother committed some of the most horrific serial killings the small town of Clossdale had ever seen. After slaughtering five other young women, “Evil Evelyn” perished in a fire that almost killed her daughter as well. Ash has been in foster care ever since. She doesn’t really trust her foster parents — and she definitely doesn’t trust the system — but she believes in Cassie and in their other best friend Jamie, whose own less than awesome home situation prompts Jamie to spend as much time at Ash and Cassie’ place as possible.

When girls start dying in the woods around Clossdale thirteen years after Evelyn’s initial rampage, suspicions almost inevitably turn to her maladjusted daughter. Ash knows she didn’t do it, but that doesn’t mean that someone isn’t targeting some of the most rich and popular girls of their high school. The sheriff has made little secret of the fact that she believes that Ash has “bad blood” running through her. But when the girl Ash has fallen for disappears, and the killer seems to be hunting Ash next, will she be able to tap into the killer instinct she allegedly inherited from her mom in order to save the day and stop the real murderer?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/21/dead-girls-by-beck-kubrick/

Sep 19 2026

Budapest by Victor Sebestyen

Victor Sebestyen offers a readable, one-volume history of Budapest from its Roman beginnings as Aquincum (plus a little more than a page on pre-Roman findings) through the time of the book’s publication in 2022, although it is very light on the years after the anti-communist uprising of 1956. Out of the book’s 377 pages, the remaining 33 years of the communist era and the 33 years from the revolution of 1989 — in which Hungary played a pivotal role for all of Europe — to the present receive 10 pages each. Though post-1989 Budapest really only gets four pages, Sebestyen still finds space to misread Fukuyama; and though Viktor Orban had been prime minister for about fourteen years (in two separate periods) by the time of publication, Sebestyen only mentions him as a student-age speaker at the reburial of Imre Nagy. The book is much stronger on the Habsburg period, and particularly on the 19th century that saw explosive growth, the merger of Buda and Pest into a single city, and the construction of the city’s modern appearance. It’s a defensible choice, as the 19th century did so much to shape the city’s current character and appearance, but between this emphasis and effectively ending the story in 1956, Sebestyen leaves the book looking at the past and giving short shrift to the gorgeous and dynamic city that Budapest has become as the 20th century turned into the 21st.

Budapest by Victor Sebestyen

Two more minor quibbles. First, the book has the subtitle “Portrait of a City Between East and West,” which is true enough, but the same can be said (and often is) of every major city between Munich and Moscow in one direction and between Venice and Ankara in the other. Though the phrase may be good marketing, it’s hardly unique to Budapest. Similarly, when Sebestyen writes about Hungary’s battles against the Ottoman Empire (roughly pages 47 to 63) he writes of the Magyar nation as a bulwark of Christendom against invaders from the East. This term has also been applied to Poles (and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth), Serbs, Croatians and even, as a little background searching showed, Albanians and Armenians. These examples point to my second quibble, which is that a little more comparative work would have improved the book. A sentence here and there about Vienna, Krakow or other Central European capitals would have helped to put Budapest into a broader context. Sebestyen is right when he writes in his introduction that Budapest

is at the crossroads of geographical regions and of civilizations, at the intersection of ancient trade routes. Mountains that gradually slope into gentle hills converge on a great river, the Danube, and a vast plain. Mediterranean Latin, Alpine German and Slavic peoples meet here. This is the focal point of Roman Catholic, North European Protestant and Greek Orthodox/Byzantine cultures. (p. 2)

All the more reason to place the city among its peers, to look around a bit even whilst concentrating on one urban area. Of course it helps to get the comparisons right. Sebestyen writes

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/19/budapest-by-victor-sebestyen/

Sep 18 2026

Tantalizing Tales — September 2026 — Part Three

The days are getting shorter and the worst of the heat is tapering off, at least in my part of the world! Hopefully the weather is also getting (or remaining!) nice and comfy in yours, with plenty of time for reading awesome books, like the following great selections.

We begin with the immaculate vibes of Marshall J Moore’s The Henchperson’s Guide To Unionizing. Labor Day may have come and gone here in the US but it’s always a good time to remember the rights that unions carved out for those of us in the workforce, whether we work for supervillains or otherwise (so yes, there are definite Halloween vibes going on here, too!)

In this comedic fantasy novel, Igor is the loyal assistant to a brilliant but demanding Doctor. Igor digs up graves, performs minor surgery and generally looks after his mad genius boss, for little thanks and questionable pay. But he believes in the Doctor’s mission of bringing new life to dead flesh, so is happy to put up with a lot in their joint quest for scientific revolution.

After a crowd of pitchfork- and torch-bearing villagers runs them out of their old digs, Igor and the Doctor are forced to find another place to carry on their mission. The walls of isolated Ravenwald Manor seem promising, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s already inhabited by a vampiric Count and his dissatisfied bride Cornelia. Meanwhile, an enigmatic witch and her feline familiar Grimalkin are also intent on performing an esoteric ritual there, leading to more than a little battling over turf.

Igor keeps the peace between the three factions as best he can. It wouldn’t do to have yet another swarm of villagers descend upon any of them, and working together is the best way to avoid arousing suspicion. He soon discovers, however, that he, Cornelia and Grimalkin have a lot more in common than they’d ever expected. When the three of them realize that their masters aren’t merely misunderstood figures but are actually planning to literally destroy the world, they’ll have to join forces to prevent Armageddon and, perhaps, to finally embrace life on their own terms.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/18/tantalizing-tales-september-2026-part-three/

Sep 17 2026

Muneca by Cynthia Gomez

As soon as I read the word “Orinda”, I was all “no way! I have to tell my best friend about this!” as that’s where she’s from and this is literally the first time I’ve ever read anything set specifically in that part of California.

Orinda and Oakland in the 1960s are the setting for this queer romance that’s also, technically, a horror novel (I’ve seen the term “horrormance” thrown around lately but idk if I’m ready to embrace that term yet, lol.) Our protagonist Nati Fuentes has returned as an adult to the manor where her mother worked as an unappreciated servant for years. The Miramontes who own the manor are the proud white Hispanic descendants of Spanish colonizers. Their wealth, however, has dwindled. Heiress Violeta, a few years older than Nati, married well but now lies trapped inside her own paralyzed body, stricken by an illness that the doctors can find neither cure nor explanation for.

Nati suspects witchcraft. More importantly, she believes that if she can break the curse, she’ll be well rewarded for her efforts. Applying for the position of Violeta’s personal attendant, she begins investigating the Miramonte manor and those who reside within it, and soon learns that things are exactly as she expected and yet, somehow, worse.

One bright spot, so to speak, is the flame of anger burning inside Violeta’s soul. As Nati and Violeta begin to communicate and confide in one another, they hatch a plan to both free Violeta and wreak revenge on the people who’ve been keeping her trapped so cruelly. Along the way, they begin to fall into a love so obviously forbidden for who and when they are that it should be unthinkable. Will their passion burn strongly enough to destroy all the obstacles standing between them?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/17/muneca-by-cynthia-gomez/

Sep 16 2026

After Review: The 25-26 Arsenal Season by Poorly Drawn Arsenal

I don’t often talk about zines on this website but honestly, the quality and size of this terrific perfect-bound book firmly qualify it for review (plus it has more words than plenty of other books I’ve discussed here, lol.)

As regular readers will know, I’m a massive Arsenal fan, having unexpectedly fallen in love with the sport and the team and its style of play as they destroyed Manchester United in 1997, to the chagrin of my Red Devil brother. It’s been a glorious if often rocky road since then, with me often exasperatedly needing to remind fellow fans that yes, the Community Shield counts as a trophy (even if, admittedly, my attempts at claiming that the Tridentity Cup also counted were primarily facetious on my part.) As I’ve moved between cities and countries, through different life situations and relationships, my love for the Arsenal has always been one of the most incontrovertible parts of my character. This is very much helped by the fact that my club has held to our own shared values of respecting fairness, living within our means and promoting inclusivity. It hasn’t always behaved impeccably, but whomst among us is free of flaw? What’s important is that the club has done and continues to do its best, again reflecting my own growth through these turbulent and increasingly connected (for better or worse) times.

Anyway, through our many ups and downs, I have remained a cheerfully steadfast Gooner who, like my kids’ future stepdad Declan Rice, knows that it’s not done till it’s done. That’s the nature of sports (and life) after all: you do your best, process what happened then go again. For twenty-two long years, however, it seemed that the pinnacle of the most competitive and arguably most entertaining league in the world — the greatest objective measure of success in sports, or at least this sport as decided by common consensus — was out of our grasp. We came in second too many times, and slid all the way down to eighth not once but twice. And then somehow, in this latest season, we won the lot.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/16/after-review-the-25-26-arsenal-season-by-poorly-drawn-arsenal/

Sep 15 2026

The Hanged Man by Jane Brookwood (EXCERPT)

The weather is cooling off up here in the northern hemisphere and the sequel to Practical Magic is in theatres too, so what better time to check out a new cozy mystery series featuring Tarot cards and a delicious tinge, if not more, of the supernatural?

Jane Brookwood’s The Hanged Man is the first novel in the Raven-verse Mystery series that’s named for the metaphysical shop owned by our heroine Fiona Miller. At The Raven, Fiona sells crystals, mixes teas and reads Tarot cards, alongside her cat and familiar Rosie. After doing a reading with Rosie that results in ominous portents, Fiona is already braced for the worst, even before she learns of the death of her long-lost best friend’s son. His body has been found in a manner eerily reminiscent of The Hanged Man card that Fiona only recently drew. Is it just a coincidence? Or a sign urging her to get involved with the investigation?

The town of Pineridge Hollow seems to have already made up its mind about the death, no matter what Fiona, Rosie or the Tarot cards have to say. As Fiona and her friends dig further into the town’s secrets, they’ll uncover long-held grudges and old money that would much rather its secrets stay buried, no matter the cost.

Read on for a scene-setting excerpt that reveals which cards Fiona drew in her initial reading! I took one look and went “Phew! Trouble is certainly brewing over there in Pineridge Hollow!”

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/09/15/the-hanged-man-by-jane-brookwood-excerpt/