Tantalizing Tales — January 2025 — Part Three

What a busy month filled with some terrific books! We’re on our third round-up of January so let’s dive straight into some of the really terrific books I’m hoping to find time to read soon.

First up is Linda H Codega’s Motheater. Being a game designer, I know Mx Codega from their excellent work reporting on developments in the indie tabletop field, so was super excited to check out their fiction-writing, too. Their debut novel is a queer fantasy set amid the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia, as the last witch of the Ridge must choose sides in a clash between industry and nature.

After her best friend dies in a coal mine, Benethea “Bennie” Mattox sacrifices her job, her relationship and her reputation to uncover what’s killing miners on Kire Mountain. When she finds a half-drowned white woman in a dirty mine slough, Bennie takes her in because it’s the right thing to do — but also because she hopes that this odd, magnetic stranger can lead her to the proof she needs.

Instead, the stranger brings more questions. The woman called Motheater can’t remember her true name, or how she ended up inside the mountain. She knows only that she’s a witch of Appalachia, bound to tor and holler, possum and snake, with power in her hands and Scripture on her tongue. But the mystery of her fate, her doomed quest to keep industry off Kire Mountain, and the promises she bent and broke have followed her a century and a half into the future. Now, the choices that Motheater and Bennie make together could change the face of the mountain itself.

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I’m also really excited to check out Laurie L Dove’s Mask Of The Deer Woman, which I was beaten to by another lucky reviewer over at CriminalElement.com. This is another novel where the spirit of a place and a people play an important role in the proceedings.

After hitting rock bottom following the murder of her daughter, ex-Chicago police detective Carrie Starr has nowhere to go but back to her roots. Starr’s father never talked much about the reservation that raised him, but they need a new tribal marshal as much as Starr needs a place to call home.

In the last decade, too many young women have disappeared from the rez. Some have turned up dead, while others are just… gone. Now, local college student Chenoa Cloud is missing, and Starr falls into an investigation that leaves her drowning in memories of her daughter, the girl she failed to save.

Starr feels lost in a place she had thought would welcome her. When she catches a glimpse of a figure from her father’s stories, with the body of a woman and the antlers of a deer, she can’t shake the feeling that the fearsome spirit is both watching her and following her. What she doesn’t know is whether Deer Woman is here to guide her or to seek vengeance for the lost daughters that Starr can never bring home.

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The motives of another supernatural woman are far more obvious — and terrifying — in Susan Barker’s Old Soul, which is both her first horror novel and her first novel in a decade. This provocative, surrealistic epic revolves around an enigmatic killer, the man determined to stop her, and a Faustian bargain that will ripple across time and space for generations to come.

In Osaka, two strangers, Jake and Mariko, initially bond over missing a flight. Over dinner, they discover a more disturbing connection: Jake’s closest friend and Mariko’s twin brother each died in brutal, unfathomable circumstances after crossing paths with the same beguiling woman whom no one seems to have seen since. Desperate for answers, Jake follows the trail set by these revelations from Japan to rural Wales, from Germany to Hungary and to the United States, gathering chilling testimonies from others who encountered this woman-of-many-aliases over the years. It is this chain of shattered souls that eventually leads Jake to Theo, a dying sculptor who knew her better than anyone… and who might just be the key to who — or what — she is.

Meanwhile, Jake’s disquieting, interconnected interviews alternate with glimpses of the woman in the present day as she closes in on her next victim in the stark, desolate badlands of New Mexico. Will Jake be able to piece together her grisly motives before it’s too late?

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If you’re feeling more like a mystery sans paranormal activity, check out Jakob Kerr’s Dead Money. Loosely inspired by Mr Kerr’s own experiences working as one of the first employees at Airbnb, this debut novel follows a Silicon Valley fixer as she investigates a billionaire founder’s death while pursuing her own hidden agenda.

In her job solving problems for Silicon Valley’s most ruthless venture capitalist, Mackenzie Clyde is used to playing for high stakes, even if none of the jaw-dropping sums in play ever seem to make it into her hands. Her new assignment is something else entirely tho. The lightning-rod CEO of tech’s hottest startup has just been murdered, leaving behind billions in “dead money” frozen in his will. As the company’s chief investor, Mackenzie’s boss has a fortune on the line. Which means that solving this impossible crime has now become her problem, too.

Mackenzie’s a lawyer, not a detective. But suddenly she finds herself riding shotgun with the FBI, guiding the agent in charge through Silicon Valley’s halls of power. As secrets are revealed and the true stakes of the case come to light, it seems that she’s just getting in deeper and deeper over her head.

But Mackenzie’s used to being underestimated. In fact, she’s counting on it. The way she sees it, this isn’t just an investigation. It’s an opportunity. And she’ll do anything it takes to seize it.

Anything at all.

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Finally, if you’re more in the mood for love as Valentine’s Day peeks around the corner, check out Ellie K Wilde’s spicy small-town, brother’s best friend, sports romance, Only In Your Dreams.

Ten years after one of the most heartbreaking nights of her life, Melody Woods is back in her small hometown of Oakwood Bay, broke, jaded and unceremoniously dumped by her big-city boyfriend. To top it all off, her twin brother Parker is pushing her to take his spot on a camping trip with the one guy she’s spent the last decade avoiding.

For college football coach Zac Porter, his best friend’s twin sister Melody has always been off-limits. After fumbling his chance with her ten years ago, a devastated Zac was sure he’d lost her for good. So when Melody shows up at the campsite instead of Parker, Zac realizes that he’s been given a second chance to prove to her that they were always meant to be, no matter how long it takes to make up for his teenage self’s mistake.

Reeling from the truth of her last relationship, Melody plans to stay in town just long enough to get back on her feet. Zac is thus not only facing the uphill battle of coaching his team to its first winning game in years, but of showing Melody how she deserves to be loved (and of hopefully keeping Parker from finding out.) Maybe once he’s done all this, being with Melody will be more than just a dream.

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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!