Tantalizing Tales — August 2024 — Part Two

We have a bumper issue for the second part of our monthly roundup this August, beginning with a book that I did get to read this month but didn’t feel quite merited an entire post of its own.

Yahgz Vol 2: The Gwash War by Art Baltazar of Tiny Titans and Itty Bitty Hellboy fame was another vivid, humorous installment of the children’s graphic novel series. A lot of stuff happens in it as our intrepid heroes traverse the planet, hoping to save the capital city from their mortal enemies. Even as some of them attempt to hold the vengeful Gwash at bay, the others seek out twin objects that could hold the secret to stopping the Gwash for good.

Despite the abundant plot, I felt that this installment felt far more like a bridge from the interesting first volume to whatever is planned for Book 3. Mr Baltazar’s art is kinetic, fun and cartoony, but so much is crammed into this book that none of it feels important as anything more than a means to an end. I’ll definitely be interested in seeing where he goes in the next volume: hopefully, it will have enough meaningful content for me to be able to devote an entire review to!

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And now on to the books I really wish I had the time to read right now. Late August right before school starts back up is a very popular time for publishing new books, including the first one on my list, Singaporean author Wen-yi Lee’s debut. The Dark We Know also has the distinction of being the first YA title to be published by Gillian Flynn Books.

This queer, contemporary reimagining of Stephen King’s IT revolves around eighteen-year-old art student Isadora Chang, who’s sworn never to return to her hometown. Growing up as one of the few people of color in the repressive former mining town of Slater, Isa never felt at ease there, even before she realized she was bisexual. After the deaths of two of her childhood friends, Slater went from feeling claustrophobic to downright suffocating. Isa took off before the town could swallow her whole, too.

When Isa’s abusive father dies, she agrees to come back just long enough to collect her inheritance. Her efforts to get in and out are stymied by Mason, her last surviving friend from childhood (who also happens to be the son of the local medium.) He turns up at the cemetery with a revelation and a plea: believing that their friends were murdered by a supernatural entity, he needs Isa to help him stop the evil before it takes anyone else. When the heiress to the town’s mining fortune is the next to disappear, Isa and Mason must work together to uncover the presence that is haunting Slater’s children, with a shot at overcoming their own demons in the process.

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Our next book is Peter Heller’s Burn. I’m a big fan of his novel Celine, and had really high hopes of being able to add this one to my schedule, even if it’s distinctly more dystopian than mystery.

Burn is an urgent and timely tale that speaks directly to the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection. It follows Jess and Storey —friends since boyhood — as they make their annual pilgrimage to northern Maine. Although the state has convulsed all summer with secession mania, Jess and Storey don’t think much of it… until, that is, they reach a small town that’s been burned to the ground.

What started out as a fun camping trip soon turns into a fight for their lives as these two men try to find their way home in what has become a divided country wracked by bewildering violence. Then they stumble upon a child and their paths are altered yet again. Drenched with the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Heller’s magisterial new book is both a blistering warning of a country riven by political strife and an ode to the salvation that can be found in our chosen families.

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Blackheart Man is award-winning speculative author Nalo Hopkinson’s first novel in twelve years! Ms Hopkinson is back with a book that takes an authentic and at times harrowing look at Caribbean colonialization through the popular trend of historically-based fantasy.

The magical island of Chynchin faces both conquerors from abroad and something sinister from within. Veycosi is a scholar of folklore who hopes to sail off to examine the rare Alamat Book of Light. Doing so could help him secure a spot at Chynchin’s Colloquium of Scholars, and would provide a helpful distraction from the problems of his polyamorous personal life. The arrival of fifteen Ymisen galleons in the island’s harbor, however, forces an abrupt change of plans as Chynchin is strongarmed into a trade agreement and more.

Of all people, Veycosi is put in charge of the situation. Hoping to prove himself with a bold move, he quickly finds that he’s in way over his head. Bad turns to worse when malign forces start to stir on Chynchin itself. Children are disappearing and an ancient invading army led by the fearsome demon known as the Blackheart Man is showing new signs of life, despite being long frozen into statues by island witches. Will Veycosi be able to figure out how to save his island and his people, or will he only make things worse?

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Our next book is of great personal interest to me as a performing cellist. Harriet Constable’s historical fiction novel The Instrumentalist is set in eighteenth century Venice, and tells the story of a group of orphan girls and their contributions to some of the most famous pieces in classical music.

It is said that legendary composer Antonio Vivaldi created all of his most famous pieces while working at an orphanage in Venice called the Pietà, where he taught music to a group of disabled and disfigured orphan girls. Many of them were the children of prostitutes and had been fated to drown in the city’s canals. Letters from the time explain that these girls were fundamental to the creation of Vivaldi’s work, composing pieces in his style in secret. Scholars agree that without the Pietà and these girls, Vivaldi’s music would not exist today, including one of the most famous pieces of classical music on earth: The Four Seasons.

One of these orphans was Anna Maria della Pietà who, as this novel depicts, is determined to be the greatest violinist and composer there is. She has only ever known life inside the orphanage, where the girls are given music lessons from an early age. Those who excel are spared from being married off to anyone who will have them. Music, for the girls, is the difference between glory and the abyss. So when their violin teacher, Antonio Vivaldi, selects her as his star pupil at only eight years old, Anna Maria does everything she can to win his praise and attention, even isolating herself from the other girls. But as she rises to become an international celebrity and renowned violinist, her talent threatens to eclipse that of her mentor, and her dreams begin to unravel.

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Lisa Childs’ The House By The Cemetery has been described as Six Feet Under meets Succession, with a gothic, murderous twist. After leaving home at seventeen, River Gold swore that she would never return to her hometown of Gold Creek, Michigan. Growing up at the Gold Funeral Home and Memorial Gardens was a nightmare for her. Classmates constantly teased her for being part of the “Ghoul” family, while her own family denied that she was actually one of them.

Her father, undertaker Gregory Gold, certainly never acted like a father. He was far more interested in profiting off of other people’s tragedies. But now Gregory has died and River has surrendered to her mother Fiona’s pleas that she come home for his funeral.

But their mourning period is cut short when it’s discovered that Gregory died of poisoning and Fiona is arrested for his murder. It’s clear to River that Fiona, her father’s third wife and the funeral home’s cosmetologist, is being framed. There are plenty of much more likely suspects, and River is determined to prove her mother’s innocence. That she’ll have to work with the sheriff — her high school enemy — is a small price to pay.

With a fortune at stake, River is sure the killer lies among Gregory’s first two wives, their children and grandchildren. But as longstanding secrets are unearthed and teenagers start disappearing from the cemetery, danger hits closer to home than River ever imagined possible. Drawn back into the lives — and lies — of the Golds, she’ll have to use every resource possible to keep herself and her loved ones safe from the evil haunting Gold Creek.

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Our next novel also has another outsider digging into a death that has roots in a town’s murky past. That town is River Glen, the fictional setting of several other books by Nancy Bush, before her latest here, The Sorority.

Every school has its cool girls. At River Glen High, they’re known as The Sorority. The name began as a joke, but it holds a grain of truth. Because they’ve made a pledge to protect one another, no matter what the cost may be.

The pledge to kill Ethan Stanhope — that was a joke too. But then Ethan died in a car crash on the night of graduation, along with his little sister. A tragic accident, they said.

Private investigator Mackenzie Laughlin remembers the girls of The Sorority. As a cop’s daughter, she was an outsider to their glimmering high school circle. Nearly ten years later, one of them has gone missing. Mac is hired to find her, and discovers that the accidents have started again too — if that’s what they really are. The more Mac investigates, the more she realizes just how much the Sorority sisters have to hide and how far they’ll go to keep their secrets.

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Finally, we have Heather Redmond’s Death And The Visitors, the sophomore novel in her Mary Shelley mystery series. The debut, Death And The Sisters, established Mary Godwin, her stepsister Jane “Claire” Clairmont and poet Percy Shelley as a fractious if effective detecting trio, long before their artistic and romantic exploits became the talk of Europe.

But for now it’s the year 1814 and the sisters are still living at home with their parents. Foreign diplomats are descending on London in advance of the Congress of Vienna meetings to formulate a new peace plan for Europe following Napoleon’s downfall. Mary and Jane’s father, political philosopher William Godwin, is hosting a gathering with an advance party of Russian royal staff. The Russians are enthusiastic followers of Mary’s late mother, philosopher and women’s rights advocate Mary Wollstonecraft, leading to the lively dinner discussion that’s a hallmark of the Godwins’ table.

Following their visit, Jane overhears her father reassuring his pushiest creditor that the Russians have pledged much-needed diamonds to support his publishing venture, the Juvenile Library. But when Godwin is told that the man who promised to relieve his financial burden was pulled out dead from the River Thames, his dire financial problems are complicated by the suspicion that his family may have been involved in the Russian’s murder.

Mary and Jane resolve to find the real killer to clear the family name. Coming to their aid is Godwin’s disciple, the dashing poet Percy Shelley, who seems increasingly devoted to Mary despite being very much married. And a young woman Jane befriends turns out to be the mistress of the celebrated poet — and infamous lover — Lord Byron. As both sisters find themselves perhaps dangerously captivated by the poets, their proximity to the truth of the Russian’s murder puts them in far greater peril.

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Let me know if you’re able to get to any of these books before I do, dear readers! I’d love to hear your opinions, and see if that will help 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 this year so far in my Bookshop storefront linked below!