The Veiled Prophet

 

The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis by Devin Thomas O'Shea. 472 pgs. © 2026

Finished! Wow, this book was a doozy. Heavily researched and consistently surprising, author O'Shea takes readers all the way back to the beginning of this secret, racist club of rich people that conspired to squash workers unions, maintain class hegemony and frighten minorities in the region. Founded in 1878 by Missouri-born Alonzo Slayback, whose education was steeped in Masonic symbology and who would eventually grow up to fight and lose for the Confederates in the Civil War, Slayback was inspired to create the group from a poem called Lalla Rookh by Byron, which features a "veiled prophet" who is also a ruthless tyrant. Coupled with a yearly city parade and a debutante ball where rich fathers offered up their daughters as tributes to the veiled prophet in hopes for future connections, the organization carried on for decades before the age of mass media started showing cracks in its facade. This is definitely not for the casual reader but rather students of history, activists and anyone interested in St. Louis lore. 

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Quietly

 

The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Quietly by Katarina Bivald (2026)  344 pages

Berit Gardner, a Swedish novelist who usually stays in England, has decided to spend the fall and winter in a cottage her grandparents had owned on an island off Sweden. She ends up inviting police detective Ian Ahmed, whom she met during the course of the first book in this series, The Murders in Great Diddling, to join her. He's off duty and a bit stir-crazy because of a broken leg. He spends his time with binoculars, obsessed with a large home built on a nearby island. The woman who owns it is Margrethe Cullberg-Frantzen, a wealthy, opinionated, and abrasive owner of art galleries in three countries. 

Berit and Ian are invited to celebrate her 80th birthday. The atmosphere is tense as Margrethe belittles her adult children. Later, she falls off a cliff to her death, and it's not clear whether it was an accident or murder. The Swedish police would call it an accident except that Margrethe had told Ian that she feared for her life.

The weeks pass by, and as it gets colder and more desolate (yet beautiful), pieces of information come to light that help Berit finally piece together the mystery. But the novel is more than a mystery as it delves deeper into Berit and Ian's friendship, Berit's background, and the physical world around them on this Swedish archipelago. Highly recommended.

As You Wake, Break the Shell

As You Wake, Break the Shell by Becky Chambers, 480 pages

Cora is a rorqual pilot, someone who works with and controls a vast space-native creature to haul goods and mines from far-off moons to supplement the sparse goods of Fortune, the planet where Cora and thousands of others live. Cora and her rorqual, Colibri, have an unusually close relationship, one that is beginning to be detrimental to Cora's health, as their mental connection is causing a condition called "mindbleed." When a pilot gets this, their career is pretty much over, and while it's possible for the rorqual to be reassigned, it generally doesn't work and leads to the death of the giant creature. In her hunt for an off-the-books solution to mindbleed, Cora ends up on the doorstep of botanist Signy, a woman who runs a quiet plant shop during the day, but bio-prints medicine for those in need in her "free" time. Creating these medicines means risking her license and freedom, but Signy can't not help if she's able.

Told in alternating chapters between their early days of meeting and their later, well-established domestic bliss together, this book tells the us the beginning and the end of a lovely story of trust, love, respect, and worthwhile risks. I can't wait for the second book of the duology, which I'm hoping helps bridge the gap between the beginning and the end. A lovely story, no matter what.

This book will be published Oct. 13, 2026.

The Dragon Has Some Complaints

The Dragon Has Some Complaints by John Wiswell, 400 pages

Once a powerful four-headed dragon, Garrodigh now has three heads and a stump, and is an outcast from the wild dragon society. Complicating matters, his three heads all have different personalities — Centerhead is mad at everyone and wants to rain terror on the heads of all he sees, Upperhead is under the delusion that he's human, and Bottomhead's personality is similar to that of my dog, in that he's food-motivated and dumber than a box of rocks. When a battle goes awry, Garrodigh ends up in a human-run training facility, where he gets shelter, meals, medical help, and a quirky rider named Rania who's desperate enough for a dragon that she's willing to put up with his weirdness. As he learns to trust himself and his rider, Garrodigh and Rania team up to help fight for the safety of their world.

I'll readily admit that I came to this book based entirely on my assumption that a three-headed, three-personality dragon would be hilarious, and that Wiswell would do it justice. And thankfully, I was right in that assumption. What I didn't anticipate (but really should have expected, given my previous experience reading Wiswell's books) was the thoughtful treatment of the often bumpy physical and mental healing process Garrodigh goes through. We get to see personal growth, the impact of colonialism and xenophobia on cultures, and the power of friendship, all with a solid magical system and just the right amount of humor. Highly recommend this one.

The Whisper Man

 The Whisper Man by Alex North (2019), 384 pages

Tom and his son, Jake, move to a new town to regroup and re-establish their lives after the sudden death of his wife and Jake's mom. Unbeknownst to them, the town has a dark past that appears to be re-emerging. Twenty years ago, a serial killer was luring his child victims by whispering to them through their window. Is he back??

The Whisper Man is creepy with some pretty unsettling rhymes and "imaginary" friends to keep you feeling a little off. It is also about families and relationships that were broken and are slowly being rebuilt. All this to say, that the novel has more emotional heft than you might expect from a thriller. 

Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends

 

Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends by A.D. Sui, 312 pages.

Dr. Cassandra Barlowe is doing thankless, underfunded research on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a world that is rapidly spiraling towards climate apocalypse. Partially because she cares about plastic-eating fungi, and partially to get as far away as possible from Dr. Yana Gulsvig, the brilliant scientist of an ex she had an intense lifetime relationship with. Part of the reason her funding is so non-existent is because of Yana's own research on deleria, a drug that lets people look into other timelines to deal with their grief or search other timelines for the perfect solutions to Earth's problems. When Yana calls Cas right before the center of deleria research explodes with her inside, she is called back to Canada for a domestic terrorism investigation, and once she's there her own grief for Yana pulls her into a desperate, drug-fueled, investigation into why she died.

This book has one of the coolest concepts I've heard recently. The deleria is a great idea, and the framing device sounds great for a high-tension thriller. Unfortunately, the execution left something to be desired. I think this book needed at least a couple more of rounds of edits. There were a whole lot of details that didn't really make any sense (getting internationally arrested as a terrorist after a 1-minute phone call with someone you haven't spoken to in years, threatening to frame someone for a crime in a world where everyone is wearing recording devices in their eyes at all times, etc.) that added up to something that didn't feel very cohesive. Which makes this the most disappointing kind of book, because I can clearly see the bones of a great book underneath, but it is not what I'm reading. 

This book will be published on October 27th, 2026 

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta

Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham, 352 pages

During the day and a half after her parole, we follow a wrongfully-incarcerated Trans woman as she comes home to find Brooklyn, friends and family, and herself changed over the last 20 years. The story is told in a mix of third-person narration and Carlotta’s inner monologue. What makes this book work is that Carlotta absolutely has a heart of gold! Her wise-cracks led me to spew water on my steering wheel when listening to the audiobook in one case. You will love Carlotta’s hopefulness, but this is by no means a saccharine-sweet book. I have the lowest tolerance for cheesiness of just about any reader I know, and this book passed that test with flying colors. I recommend DNGASWHTC if you want something gritty but not brutal.

Lost Lambs

 

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash, 320 pages

The Flynn family becomes more unhinged by the day. Between Catherine and Bud's open marriage, Abigail's boyfriend "War Crimes Wes", Louise's online correspondence with a terrorist, and Harper's insistence in uncovering the town's mysteries, there is always trouble brewing in the household. This trouble is connected throughout the novel by the dark figure looming over the town, a billionaire named Paul Alabaster. 

The writing of each character in this novel is unique and immersive, and although the plot is unbelievably insane, there is something so special about the Flynn family and the ways in which they love one another. At the beginning of the book, it is hard to imagine rooting for any of the characters, but at the end of the book I found myself smiling at the ways in which they had grown. 

Engines of Reason

 

Engines of Reason by Adrian Tchaikovsky, 192 pages.

It has been 15 years Nyr and Lyn defeated the impossible demon and saved the world. The fairytale of the precocious princess and the reluctant wizard came to an end, and life got in the way, as rifts opened between people who were important to each other. But a new threat is emerging, a "sorcerer" with more power than he should have, and the only answers are in the secrets of the past.

Elder Race is one of my favorite novellas, and while I didn't think it particularly needed a sequel, I was still very excited when I saw it was getting one. Having now read it, I honestly still think it probably didn't need a sequel. I did enjoy this book, but I don't think it had the magic of the original, which would have been difficult to recapture. It did have some interesting things to say about identity within stories, and the end definitely feels like it might be setting up a longer series, which I'm sure I will continue to read. This book is great if you were invested in the characters of Elder Race, but not quite so exceptional if you were more interested in the structure. 

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart

 

Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart: And Other Stories by GennaRose Nethercott, 259 pages.

This is a collection of contemporary fairy tales; not retellings, but fairy tales for the modern world. I found myself very confused in almost every story, but nevertheless found them very compelling. They are very comfortable in metaphorical and ambiguous spaces, a trait that is often shared in traditional fairy tales. "The Thread Boy" was probably my favorite of the collection, but I've also found myself thinking of "A Lily is a Lily" frequently since finishing the collection. Dark and puzzling, but also entrancing, this collection is hard to look away from and even harder to make sense of.