This took a little longer to come together than we would have liked. Still, we hope this rundown of notable November books gives readers some ideas for a post-cold snap reading session. There’s a lot of ground covered here, from deftly reported nonfiction to essential fiction in translation. Read on for a look at what’s piqued our interest this month.
Ever since I first sat down with Nathan Ballingrud’s collection North American Lake Monsters, I’ve been enthusiastic about his work. The stories in that collection and its followup, Wounds, abounded with moments of dread both primal and existential. Film and television adaptations followed; then Ballingrud zigged when I expected him to zag, via the novel The Strange, set in an alternate past where other planets in the solar system can sustain human life without any sort of terraforming.
Is the idea of a crime taking place in a locked room the most primal version of the mystery novel? As a young reader, I devoured plenty of mystery stories, beginning with the Hardy Boys and Encyclopedia Brown and graduating to Agatha Christie’s novels. Lately, I’ve been exploring the world of John Dickson Carr, whose mysteries also revolve around crime scenes that defy logical explanations.
Today, we’re pleased to present an excerpt from a new retrospective collection covering the early years of Ruben Bolling’s long-running comic Tom the Dancing Bug, a Kickstarter campaign for which is now live. Bolling’s blend of slapstick humor and unnerving political commentary — Lucky Ducky is a favorite around these parts — remains deeply relevant to the current state of American politics. Read on for a look inside…
Writer and visual artist Aubrey Hirsch knows Clarence Thomas won’t be reading Graphic Rage – and that’s fine. Her new book isn’t meant to convert opponents; it aims to witness, validate, and give readers a steadier sense that they’re not alone.
At this year’s Harvey Awards, six storied comic book creators were inducted in to the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame: John Byrne, Peter David, Patrick McDonnell, Wendy and Richard Pini, and Barbara Shermund. We’re pleased to present McDonnell‘s speech, in which he reflects on his own development as an artist and awareness of comic book history.
He’s Peter, she’s Wendy, but this is no storybook romance. From the first pages of Bring Your Lover Back, the rockiness of this relationship is palpable—even before the reader learns of the small velvet box stuffed deep in Peter’s jacket pocket. But Peter’s ability to delude himself sends him on a journey of desperate efforts to win her—or someone—to love.
Both Matt Wagner and Kelley Jones have created some of the most unsettling stories in comic book history; Wagner’s work includes the sprawling science fiction/horror hybrid Grendel, while Jones’s uncanny illustrations appear in places like the graphic novel Batman: Red Rain. In collaboration with José Villarrubia, Wagner and Jones have also created several graphic novels reimagining the character of Dracula. A Kickstarter campaign for the third book, The Count, has raised over $181,000 as of this writing.