Incoming Books, Week of 8/25

There may be a couple here from two weeks ago, but the bulk of this is from a trip into the city on Wednesday, when I hit both the Strand and my usual comics shop. There are also a couple of publicity things that I hope to get to quickly; we'll see how that goes.

• Gregory Frost's new fantasy novel, Shadowbridge, coming in late December from Del Rey -- I don't know Greg well (and I don't think I've read any of his books), but I did have dinner with him once at a Philcon, so I want to get to this one.
  
• The Great Mortality by John Kelly, a history of the Black Death -- I was idly poking through the $1 shelves outside the Strand, ready to head on to my next errand and virtuously not spend two hours shopping inside, when I found this...and it was all over.
  
• Millennium People by J.G. Ballard -- I've been waiting for so long for his latest novel to be published here that I found a remaindered UK trade paperback. That's good enough for me.
  
• The Discomfort Zone by Jonathan Franzen -- I haven't read The Corrections (in part because of Oprah), and I'm not sure if I even have a copy of it. But I did read and enjoy Franzen's subsequent essay collection How To Be Alone, so I expect to also enjoy these autobiographical essays.
  
• Chance in Hell, Gilbert Hernandez's new standalone graphic novel. I hope to review it soon.
  
• Monkey Food by Ellen Forney, collecting her "I Was Seven in '75" comic strips. I was six in '75, and this was cheap -- and I've seen it and thought about buying it several times now -- so I finally got it.
  
• The Complete Peanuts, 1965 to 1966 by Charles M. Schulz -- if you don't know about Peanuts by now, there's probably no hope for you.
  
• Bound to Please by Michael Dirda -- a big, big book all about great books. I don't know if I'll be able to sit down and read many classics until my kids get older, but I'm stockpiling books just in case.
  
• Tricked by Alex Robinson -- I've been vaguely thinking about buying this or Box Office Poison for ages, so, when I saw this for half-price at the Strand, I knew I had to try it.
  
• Olive or Twist? by Jack Ziegler -- a collection of cartoons from the New Yorker, all about drinking. I love books of single-panel cartoons, I cannot deny it.
  
• Is Nothing Sacred? by Gahan Wilson -- more single-panel cartoons by one of the all-time greats, featuring one of my very favorite cartoons on the cover. And for three bucks!
  
• James Sturm's America, collecting three previously-published (short) graphic novels.
  
• and Margo Lanagan's Red Spikes, her third short-story collection. I now have all three, so I'd better read at least one of them.

And what I've been reading this week has been a whole lot of Loren D. Estleman. Next week will be mostly the same, though the most recent books are a bit shorter, so I may speed up. After that, I dunno. Maybe back to the fields of SF and Fantasy.