Mar 13 2026

Tantalizing Tales — March 2026 — Part Two

Welcome to the second week of March, where my part of the world experienced all the temperate seasons over the course of two entire days. I’m used to being tired all the time (I do, as my friends constantly remind me, A Lot) but being sick on top of everything has really poleaxed me these last two cold months. Hopefully, this latest in a series of illnesses is the last, and I can enjoy my upcoming Aidil Fitri celebrations in the best of health.

And in the meantime, we have so many wonderful books to read! I just received Natalie Haynes’ No Friend To This House and I am Obsessed. Perhaps not quite as obsessed as our main character, the legendary Medea, is with vengeance, but certainly in the vicinity, as Ms Haynes explores and unpacks the myth of that monstrous mother in her latest exciting novel.

Much as with the original tales, the Medea of this book is a princess of Colchis and renowned healer. She agrees to help the hero Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece that her father guards. In exchange for her aid, Jason promises to marry her and take her away with him once the Fleece is won. After a series of deadly adventures, they escape Colchis with the Fleece, and eventually settle in Corinth, married and in love.

Ten years and several children later, Jason announces that he has the chance to move up in the world by setting aside Medea and their children, and marrying Glauke, the princess of Corinth, instead. Unwilling to accept this fate, Medea plots to bring as much pain to Jason as he has to her. Death ensues.

I’m so excited to see what Ms Haynes will do with this material. She’s got a terrific reputation for reworking classical myths for modern audiences, and I can’t wait to read her interpretation of one of the most feminist and audacious legends of the Ancient Greeks.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/13/tantalizing-tales-march-2026-part-two/

Mar 12 2026

Hail Mariam by Huda Al-Marashi

Every time I think parts of my Malaysian Muslim upbringing were strict, I run up against really weird shit from other Muslim cultural denominations and I’m all “wow.” Which isn’t to run them down at all! And perhaps nowhere is this sort of reflection more appropriate than in a book about a twelve year-old Muslim girl enrolled in a Catholic school, who has no idea how to navigate what feels like the religious minefield in front of her.

Mariam is an overachiever whose physician parents don’t think that the local California public schools are challenging enough for her. They enroll her instead in a nearby Catholic school, and tell her that it’s important for her to be a good ambassador for both Muslims and Iraqis (no pressure, kiddo!) while she’s there.

Mariam takes these words to heart, but is constantly and understandably anxious about whether she’s committing sins by even looking at icons (considered idolatrous by the Muslim faith) and, later, by accepting the role of Mary in the school nativity play. It doesn’t help that the curriculum is, indeed, challenging and that she’s behind the other students in certain key areas.

When her beloved younger sister Salma falls ill, Mariam begins to think that maybe if she’s more religious, Allah will cure her sister. But playing Mary is the only way she knows how to get the recognition she craves from her schoolmates. What will Mariam do to satisfy these warring desires in her soul, of wanting to please God (and heal her sister) and wanting to please the voice inside her that cries out for attention?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/12/hail-mariam-by-huda-al-marashi/

Mar 11 2026

Forty The Fortune Teller by Drew Daywalt & Kevin Cornell

Oh, man, now I want to make a fortune teller (or a cootie catcher as some places rather bizarrely term them.)

Forty isn’t your usual paper fortune teller. Abandoned on the playground, she decides to get up and look around and see what’s up. That’s how she meets Chip, another recess cast-off who was dropped when the bell rang almost immediately after a kid took a bite out of his head. His plan now is to take the bus up to Canada where no kids will be able to finish off his delicious potato chip self.

But all talk of planning is interrupted by their discovery of a stray bolt that has somehow escaped the slide. While Forty and Chip certainly don’t want to get consumed by the kids, they don’t want those kids to come to harm either, so decide that they’d better put the bolt back in its place before doing anything else (and before the next recess bell sounds.) Their journey, however, is not without its obstacles, as Chip and Forty encounter all manner of hostiles as they trek across the playground. Will their grit and ingenuity help them complete their task and get away clean?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/11/forty-the-fortune-teller-by-drew-daywalt-kevin-cornell/

Mar 10 2026

Just Between Us by Adeline Kon

If you’re not ready for the magic of Milan-Cortina’s Olympics figure skating to be over yet a/o you’re looking for something to tide you over till your next Heated Rivalry fix, then do I have the wlw graphic novel for you!

Set in the world of competitive figure skating, this book revolves around Lydia Chen, the driven Asian American figure skater whose athleticism lies at the heart of her approach to the sport. Her technical perfection, coupled with her standoffish demeanor, have earned her the nickname The Ice Queen. For Lydia, figure skating isn’t about making friends or having fun. It’s about excelling, and thereby helping support her single mom and their small family of two.

When she first crosses paths with Malaysian figure skater Elaine Yee, she’s taken aback by how friendly the other girl is. While Elaine doesn’t have the jumps that Lydia does, her grace and performance skills showcase how much she loves skating, making her a top competitor in the field. Lydia doesn’t have time for friends — besides Helen, the daughter of her coach, who doesn’t skate and therefore isn’t a rival — so she’s relieved that her encounter with Elaine is brief. She’s even more vindicated when she beats Elaine at the first Grand Prix they skate in together.

Fast forward several years and Lydia is shocked to learn that Elaine is moving from the Canadian rink where she’s been training to join her own coach in Boston. She’s curious to see how her rival has been performing behind-the-scenes, but definitely doesn’t want to let her get too close. As sparks fly between them, however, both women will have to start reevaluating their relationships, not only with each other, but with the people they love and the sport that unites them.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/10/just-between-us-by-adeline-kon/

Mar 09 2026

Head Of Household by Oliver Munday

God bless short stories for how easily digestible they are, having stripped away so much extraneous matter to properly capture a mood and make a point, at least, tho not exclusively, in the literary genre.

Oliver Munday’s new collection of ten short stories exemplify this, almost to the point where I wanted more from several of the stories and felt that those works would have been better served as longer pieces. This is, tbc, different from feeling that the story could serve as the basis for a novel despite feeling complete in and of itself: fortunately there are far more of this latter than the former kind here. The opening story Fists, for example, is perfect as a tone piece about a father not knowing how to deal with the loss of his own youth, as he and his teenage daughter go on one of their annual vacations together. Would I love to read more about what happens next? Yes. Was it perfectly satisfactory on its own? Also yes.

Sterling, on the other hand, was one of those stories with too much build up and not enough denouement. Perhaps I am biased in this, however, as a committed Washington DC-lover who wanted to know exactly what happened at the end of the story. I was also far more inclined to feel kindly towards the older heroes (yes, all men) of these pieces. I had a lot more sympathy for the destructive — self or otherwise — urges of the parents who’d been through a lot and were still trying to cope as best they could. For example, Tom, the protagonist of Pizza Party, has to go through a mortifying destruction of the ego before he can find grace, as does the unnamed narrator of the collection’s closing story Dependents, tho in a very different way. Their struggles felt far more earned to me than the thrashing about of most of the younger protagonists showcased here.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/09/head-of-household-by-oliver-munday/

Mar 07 2026

Soviet Metro Stations by Christopher Herwig

with an introductory essay by Owen Hatherley

After two books on Soviet bus stops, an eccentric topic from a world that’s receding into history, photographer Christopher Herwig turned his attention to a slightly more expected topic: stations of various metro systems across the former Soviet Union. This book echoes its predecessors in size and style. It has the proportions of a postcard, but it is a bit bigger in both height and width, and it runs about 250 pages, most of which are given over to full-page or almost-full-page photographs.

Soviet Metro Stations by Christopher Herwig

One nice aspect of the book is how much space it devotes to the systems outside of Moscow. The Moscow Metro is amazing, both monumental and functional — I used to commute on it — an epic achievement now within sight of its centennial and still growing. It is the longest system anywhere in the world outside of China; at some stations, trains arrive every 90 seconds. Moscow could fill the book with plenty of material left over, but Herwig and his essayist Hatherley have wisely chosen to look more widely, to consider Metros and their meanings across the full territory of the former USSR. Hatherley’s essay begins with Moscow, the first Metro and the model for all the others, and then proceeds across the former USSR in the order that the systems were built. The second section is on St Petersburg and Kyiv, both in cities that had different names when their metros were started. The stages of the systems’ development reflect first the state of the Soviet system that built them and then later the moods and capabilities of the post-Soviet era. For example, the oldest stations on St Petersburg’s Line 1 continue the epic and peculiar grandeur of the early Moscow lines: palaces for the people with art depicting heroic labor and the inevitable triumph of the communist system. Stations that were designed during the Khrushchev or Brezhnev eras are more prosaic, reflecting the larger shift from monumental constructions to improved material conditions for a larger share of the population.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/07/soviet-metro-stations-by-christopher-herwig/

Mar 06 2026

Tantalizing Tales — March 2026 — Part One

Happy March, dear reader! Today we’ve got a terrific slate of upcoming books for you, as well as two novels I missed out on in 2025 that you should still definitely keep on your radar.

First up, we have Jessi Cole Jackson’s Ruinous Creatures, a standalone romantasy perfect for anyone wanting to dip their toes into the genre without getting sucked into a multi-book series that probably hasn’t even been completed yet (me, that’s me!)

Adela is a priestess whose sacred duty is to preserve the skulls of the magical creatures who perish in her valley sanctuary. Their bones are still laced with magic, and skulls can be matched with the privileged few who are able to wield the powers of the creatures whose skulls they wear.

Despite her long experience, Adela is surprised one day to discover a pair of phoenix skulls. Magical is one thing: phoenixes, otoh, are legendary. Her mentor warns her against it but Adela awakens the skulls anyway, unwittingly sending a shockwave of power through the valley that unleashes chaos.

Kian is a novitiate preparing for the upcoming matching ceremony. He has a secret tho: he blames his parents’ death on this tradition, and is looking for a way to end it and the magic of the skulls for good.

Fate has other plans, as an impulsive kiss between Adela and Kian seals them to each other and to each of the phoenix skulls. As they deal with the consequences of their connection, they discover that they’ll have to use the power that they now wield to either save The Valley or destroy it entirely.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/06/tantalizing-tales-march-2026-part-one/

Mar 05 2026

The Great Escape by Deborah Marcero

This picture book is extreeeeemely relatable to all older siblings. Idk what it is about younger sibs always wanting to get up in our business, but this book very accurately portrays that situation, then delightfully shows readers one way to resolve it.

Evie is your average kid. She believes very much in magic, and wishes she had some sort of spell to help control her rambunctious younger siblings, Wolfie, Bunny and Teddy (who are all charmingly and conveniently dressed in onesies reminiscent of their names throughout this book.) They’re always bugging her to play loud and chaotic games with them when she just wants to read a book or have some quiet time alone.

One wintry day, she devises a plan to sneak out past her whirlwind of siblings and enjoy some solitary time out in nature. But with the hypervigilance of little kids, they easily track her down. Out of sheer desperation, she casts a spell that helps her plunge right into a snowdrift and emerge into a fantastical world of beauty.

Wolfie, Bunny and Teddy, however, are relentless. Can Evie figure out a way to evade them so she can fully enjoy her new surroundings and finally get a little peace and quiet?

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/05/the-great-escape-by-deborah-marcero/

Mar 04 2026

Night Of The Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

It feels weird to pretend that this horror novella is about the supernatural more than it is ultimately about the unraveling of an adolescent mind. I actually forgot in the lead up to writing this review that the title has mannequins in the plural as, if you go into this book without reading anything about it — which might actually be the best way to do it, so you can stop reading right here if you want absolutely zero spoilers, even tho pretty much everything I’m going to discuss is laid out in the first few pages of the novella — you might think this is about department store figures coming to life and terrorizing a bunch of people.

And there is a mannequin here, discovered by the narrator Sawyer and his friends as they’re growing up in small town Texas, in a creek that’s more mud than water behind JR’s house. They rescue the figure’s parts and use them for any number of games and pranks over the years.

But things are changing. The kids are getting older and taking on real responsibilities. Accidents happen and Shanna has to get a real job (well, as real as anyone still in high school can get) at the local movie theater. That’s when things get weird.

As a revenge prank against Shanna’s bosses, Sawyer, Danielle, Tim and JR decide to dress up the mannequin — which they’ve christened Manny — and prop him up in one of the theater seats during a movie. They’ll then call in management to handle a “disruptive” patron, hoping to jump scare whichever of the upper-level employees comes out and discovers Manny. But Sawyer, who’s watching while the assistant manager uses a discreet flashlight to methodically check everyone’s tickets, is surprised to get absolutely no reaction when the guy asks for and examines Manny’s ticket. Worse, at the end of the movie, the figure in Manny’s seat gets up and walks out of the theater.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/04/night-of-the-mannequins-by-stephen-graham-jones/

Mar 03 2026

Lola Gillette And The Summer Of Second Chances by Kimberly Behre Kenna (EXCERPT)

Hello, dear readers! I don’t usually do excerpts of Middle Grade books here, so I have a delightful treat for you today with this magic-tinged adventure novel.

The third book in Kimberly Behre Kenna’s Brave Girls series is titled Lola Gillette And The Summer Of Second Chances. Our title heroine is so desperate to complete a Perfect Pairs Collection that she resorts to stealing… and gets caught. Out of frustration, her parents decide to send her to live with her “quirky” Uncle Milo in his ramshackle mansion on the banks of the Connecticut River for a month.

Once there, she becomes even more obsessed with her collection, convinced that if she can acquire a Lucky Baker’s Dozen of pairs, she’ll generate enough magic to avoid going to a boarding school for bad girls like herself. But misadventures with a Zen Garden, a glitchy projector that spits out holographic messages from her dead aunt, a beached houseboat and a displaced wolf soon have her reconsidering her relationship with magic and luck.

As this MG novel was partially inspired by Connecticut actor and inventor William Gillette (who’s perhaps best known for his iconic role as Sherlock Holmes in the early 1900s,) part of the proceeds from the book’s sales will be donated to Gillette Castle State Park.

Read on to get acquainted with Lola, her parents and her uncle!

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2026/03/03/lola-gillette-and-the-summer-of-second-chances-by-kimberly-behre-kenna-excerpt/