Finally getting to the bottom of my catalog pile and wanted to point out a few more titles of interest for winter & spring.

From Scholastic, Judy Blundell has a new book due out in March, STRINGS ATTACHED. Everybody loved WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED (and for good reason) and this time we have another mid century noir with mobsters, the entertainment industry (in NYC) and a boyfriend who has gone off to Korea. I love the YA mystery aspect and the time period but mostly I just love Blundell...GEEK FANTASY NOVEL by E. Archer is a MG fantasy about Ralph who is spending the summer with his "strange British relatives" setting up their wifi network. And then something starts happening with games and he gets stuck in something and there are "killer bunny rabbits, evil aunts and bothersome bacteria". Color me curious....And Shaun Tan fans will delight in the new packaging for three of his earlier works: The Red Tree, The Lost Thing and John Marsden's fantastic (it's amazing) The Rabbits (Tan did the illustrations). I have all these books and love them and Tan fans will see a lot they recognize in them. Put together in LOST & FOUND, this volume should cement his position as a writer and illustrator to watch.

From Tor: Jo Walton has a new one coming out, AMONG OTHERS. From the pub: "Among Others is at once the compelling story of a young woman struggling to escape a troubled childhood, a brilliant diary of first encounters with the great novels of modern fantasy and SF, and a spellbinding tale of escape from ancient enchantment." Includes elements of autobiography & fantasy and sounds utterly original....Also, they are reissuing Philip K. Dick's PUTTERING ABOUT IN A SMALL LAND - a realistic novel about married life in the LA suburbs in the 1950s. I love the period, the kitchiness of it and that the man who wrote Blade Runner could write this. Totally check out worthy.

From Graywolf: OTHERWISE KNOWN AS THE HUMAN CONDITION, an essay collection by Geoff Dyer. He's a great writer, always thoughtful, always smart.

From FSG Kids: MEADOWLANDS by Thomas Yezerski - a PB about the meadowlands area in NJ and how it is coming back (I think this will even appeal to MG or older reluctant reader/sports fans familiar with the name but not the history and it will get them reading about nature)...DEATH CLOUD by Andrew Lane - how Sherlock Holmes became Sherlock Holmes told when he was a teen with lots of James Bond type action. Smart thrills! This one apparently came out this summer but it's listed for winter. Hmmm.

FSG Adults: MOLOTOV'S MAGIC LANTERN by Rachel Polonsky. The Independent ran a review on this one in March. Here's a bit:

The genesis of this intriguingly entitled book is the writer's discovery, as an academic expatriate living in Moscow, that the flat directly above hers had been occupied for many years by the disgraced Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov. His heirs, who were now renting the flat out to well-to-do foreigners, had left bits and pieces from his library, and a "magic lantern" affording faint pictures of a forgotten past...The result is that Rachel Polonsky was diverted from her flagging research into early 20th century Russian Orientalism and wrote this unusual and elegant book. It moves outwards, chapter by chapter, from the flat, in a block and a street at one time reserved for the Soviet priviligentsia, via provincial cities in the Russian north and south, to the Russian Far East, marking the point at which Molotov's professional life declined into quasi exile when he became ambassador to Mongolia.

So you have a Russian setting, a forgotten library, pictures from the past and an approach that "repeatedly crosses the borders between memoir, travelogue, cultural appreciation and intellectual history." Totally up my alley.

Also from FSG, see Sara Wheeler, who I don't think knows how to write a dull book, with her US debut of MAGNETIC NORTH a title I have been waiting for, for obvious reasons.

From First Second are two new gns for kids: ZITA THE SPACE GIRL by Ben Hatke for MG readers - looks sweet and funny (and it's in space!) and LEWIS & CLARK from Nick Bertozzi, a historical novel on an obvious subject.

Finally, Henry Holt kids gives us PABLO NERUDA from Monica Brown, who is proving you can write a biography on just about anyone for the picture book crowd, and HURRICANE DANCERS from Margarita Engle -her latest novel in verse and sure to dazzle as much as her others.

I think that clears every stray piece of paper I have sitting on my desk....