Reviewing the Mail: Week of 6/7

This is the part where, every week, I express hope that anyone reading this connected with a publishing company do their part to shower me with books so that I can fill up this column in later weeks. As always, any help would be appreciated, and I am usually pretty even-handed and happy in these Monday round-ups (as opposed to my actual reviews, where I'm typically more sanguine).

On the other hand, I already have giant piles of books everywhere in the basement, and I'm typing this post much later than usual this week.

Anyway, here's what came in this week:

The Bearskin Rug, third in the sex-filled romantic fantasy series from Jennifer Stevenson, after The Brass Bed and The Velvet Chair. I'd thought that I would try to read the first book, since I've had Stevenson's Trash Sex Magic on my to-be-read pile for ages, but they're piling up awfully quickly. This is from Ballantine, and on sale 6/24. I wonder if the title progression -- which I'm assuming is of enchanted but slightly less comfortable places in which to bonk -- will continue? We could have Cold Tile Floor, or maybe The Kitchen Table, or The Cheap Motel. Eventually, if it runs long enough, we could see Upside Down in Gravity Boots...

Kamichama Karin Chu, Vol. 1 by Koge-Donbo begins a sequel series to Kamichama Karin, which I didn't read. It's about a "girl next door" who's also a goddess, and I bet it's mostly about her love life. And check out those giant eyes and masses of pink frills on the cover! (I think we can all tell what the target audience for this one is.) Del Rey Manga will publish it on 6/24.

The Last Vampire by Patricia Rosemoor & Marc Paoletti is the first in a new contemporary fantasy series from Del Rey (also publishing on June 24th). I'm not sure why these vampires require two people to write about them -- perhaps because there are two lead characters, one male and one female -- but they have them if they need them.

The second volume of Osamu Tezuka's historical/supernatural samurai serio-comic epic Dororo is also hitting stores on 6/24; it's published by Vertical. (I reviewed the first volume in early April for ComicMix.) If you only read one book about a swordsman battling demons in medieval Japan to get back his body parts -- well, I hope it's this one, since I'd prefer to live in a world where that wasn't a common plot.

And last this week was a finished book of Mr. Fooster Traveling on a Whim by Tom Corwin and illustrated by Craig Frazier; I'd seen it in bound galley form a few months ago. (But it's been languishing in the unread pile, despite being very short.) It looks quite odd, but so far has been getting admiring attention, so I might just have to break down and read the thing as soon as I finish the massive brick-like fantasy novel I'm working on now. Crown will send Mr. Fooster out into the world on June 17th.