Tantalizing Tales — January 2025 — Part One

Hello, readers! January is always such a weird month, feeling at once packed with activity and strangely prolonged. Depending on how many recent releases I can spotlight here, I might have to do three round-up columns this month, starting with this one!

Late last year, I was sent a delightful gift bundle featuring Ramsey Campbell’s latest horror novel, The Incubations. Packaged in a gorgeous foiled hardback edition — a Flame Tree Press specialty — this is a can’t-miss volume for fans of traditional horror.

The story revolves around an Englishman named Leo Parker. Moved by the spirit of improving international relations that have been inculcated in him since he was a child, he goes to visit the German town of Alphafen as an adult. His stay, however, is marked by a series of unsettling experiences that he tries at first to shake off as being merely unfortunate.

Things only get worse after he leaves Alphafen, as “an airport turns into a labyrinth, his own words become treacherous if not lethal, a family meal grows unnaturally active[…] and what are those creatures that have appeared in the photographs he took? Even the therapy Leo undertakes becomes a source of menace.” Has Leo somehow awakened an ancient Alpine legend? Worse, has it decided to follow him home?

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Megan Collins’ Cross My Heart is her latest genre-bending novel, as a heart transplant recipient who think she’s in a rom-com finds herself thrust into the middle of a psychological suspense thriller instead.

Rosie Lachlan is a romantic whose emotional heartbreak coupled with a subsequent need for live-saving surgery have only made her more determined than ever to find The One. After receiving a new heart that she’s deeply grateful for, she begins to suspect that her donor is the late wife of local author Morgan Thorne. Using an anonymous service called DonorConnect, she messages him under the pretext of wanting to learn more about the late Daphne Thorne. But Rosie has an ulterior motive: she’s convinced that since she has his wife’s heart, she and Morgan are totally meant to be together.

The more she learns about Morgan and Daphne, tho, the more concerned she grows. As she digs deeper into his previous marriage, she begins to wonder whether Morgan might have had something to do with his late wife’s death. Can Rosie’s heart sustain another break, one that might end her life for good?

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If you prefer your mysteries a little more historical, check out Julia Bryan Thomas’ The Kennedy Girl, which we were lucky enough to be able to run an excerpt from last month!

Newly orphaned Mia is living an otherwise perfectly ordinary American life in 1961 New York, when a modeling scout appears seemingly out of nowhere. Complimenting the twenty-one-year-old’s Jacqueline Kennedy look, the scout offers her a one-way ticket to Paris. All Mia can think is: why not?

Even so, she’s a bit surprised to arrive in Paris and find that she does indeed have legitimate employment at a famous fashion house, strutting down runways, attending glamourous galas… and passing cryptic messages to unsettling strangers. Apparently, Jackie Kennedy isn’t the only beautiful mid-century woman for whom fashion and politics will dramatically collide.

From the far-reaching impact of the Cold War, to the surprising relevance of fashion across societies, to the significance of Paris in both history and fiction, this historical thriller expertly blends its themes in a refreshing and surprising way.
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A real-life historical murder mystery is the subject of Kate Winkler Dawson’s non-fiction investigation The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne.

On a cold winter day in 1832, Sarah Maria Cornell was found dead in a quiet farmyard in a small New England town. When her troubled past and a secret correspondence with charismatic Methodist minister Reverend Ephraim Avery were uncovered, more questions emerged. Was Sarah’s death a suicide or something much darker?

Determined to uncover the real story, Victorian writer Catharine Read Arnold Williams threw herself into the investigation as the trial was unfolding. Her research led her to write what many claim is the first American true-crime narrative, Fall River. The murder of Sarah Cornell divided the country and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter — but the reverend was not convicted, and questions linger to this day about what really led to the unfortunate victim’s death. Until now.

As a 21st century journalist, Ms Dawson travels back to 19th century small town America to re-examine Sarah Cornell’s 200-year-old case, using both William’s book, the prosecutor’s notes from 1833 and the victim’s own letters to guide her. In addition, she considers new forensic clues and modern investigative advancements such as forensic knot analysis to determine the cause of death, while also using the practice of criminal profiling, invented 55 years after the Avery trial. Will Ms Dawson agree with Williams about the minister’s guilt? Or did Williams damn an innocent man?

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Closing out the Year of the Dragon (and this week’s column) is a fantasy novel inspired by legendary martial artist Bruce Lee! Renowned fantasy author Fonda Lee teams up with Bruce’s daughter Shannon to write Breath Of The Dragon, the first book in the sweeping tale of a young warrior whose dream of proving his worth turns into a greater fight than he ever imagined.

Sixteen-year-old Jun dreams of competing in the elite Guardian’s Tournament, held every six years to entrust the magical Scroll of Heaven to a new protector. Eager to prove his skills, Jun hopes that a win will restore his father’s pride and right the horrible mistake that caused their banishment from their home and the rest of their family.

Jun’s father, however, strictly forbids him from participating as Jun is not Breathmarked, born with a patch of dragon scales and blessed with special abilities like Jun’s twin brother is. Determined to be the next Guardian anyway, Jun stows away in the wagon of Chang and his daughter Ren, performers on their way to the capital where the tournament will take place.

As Jun competes, he quickly realizes that he may be fighting not just for a better life for himself, but for the fate of the country and the very survival of everyone he loves.

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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 in my Bookshop storefront linked below!