Reviewing the Mail: Week of 12/26

As expected, this was a light week, with only a few books coming in the mail for potential review. But, as always, I'll note that these books have all just arrived, and that I haven't actually read any of them yet. With that out of the way, here's what I saw:

The Best of Joe R. Lansdale is coming as a trade paperback from Tachyon Publications in March. Now. I've only read a couple of Lansdale's stories, and none of his novels, so I won't be much good at telling you if this is the essential stuff of not. But I can say that it has both "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks" and "Night They Missed the Horror Show," which even a Yankee like me knows are two of your quintessential Lansdale stories, and the story "Bubba Ho-Tep," which became a movie you might have heard of.

On the far side of the universe of books from Lansdale -- in terms of audience and genre and just about everything else -- is the "Babymouse" series of graphic novels for young readers, and I also have a new one of those: Babymouse Burns Rubber, the twelfth in the very popular series. (It'll be published on January 12th.) I should really find out if the neighbor girls like these books, because it's wasted on my and my two boys (currently burning through all of the videogames that they got yesterday). Babymouse, as always, is by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm.

I've got another book here for young readers, the third in a series that I hadn't previously known about -- The Gecko and Sticky: Sinister Substitute. As far as I can tell, it's about a boy named Dave and his talking Gecko, Sticky, (yes, the gecko is both halves of the series title, which is slightly confusing). who seem to regularly have unpleasant run-ins with Damien Black, "dastardly treasure hunter and master of disguise." This time, Dave's nasty teacher is missing, possibly replaced by Black, and he -- I gather -- has to decide which of them is more evil and whether he should do anything about it. Sinister Substitute is by Wendelin Van Draanen, and is being published by Knopf Books for Young Readers.

And last for this week -- I warned you that it was a short list -- is King of RPGs, Vol. 1, a new graphic novel from Del Rey on January 19th. It's written by Jason Thompson (author of Manga: The Complete Guide, which I probably shouldn't admit sits right next to my writing chair) and illustrated by Victor Hao. It's the story of a college freshman and recovering World of Warfare (note the very slight change to avoid prosecution) addict who gets sucked into his campus gaming club, and I expect it will parody Yu-Gi-Oh and various online RPGs as it goes on.