Incels, adults in arrested development, COVID (of course), climate change, suicide, self-driving cars, the homeless problem, teachers hooking up with students, hallucinogenics, and a social credit system - in the US? TC Boyle’s latest collection of short stories is very much about the here and now of our world.
One of the finest games in recent years is unquestionably Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild from 2017 for the Switch. The story goes: Princess Zelda tasks the androgynous hero Link to defeat the evil Ganon with the help of the Four Divine Beasts, all of whom, along with the land of Hyrule, have been corrupted by Ganon’s Blight and Link must cure them each to aid him in his quest.
The Cincinnati Kid is a young up-and-coming card player who decides to challenge the reigning champ, Lancey Hodges, in an underground poker game. Will he win or lose? Snore.
Charlie’s gay and crushing hard on his new classmate Nick, who’s straight - or is he? As the two become fast friends, Nick undergoes an awakening.
Spooky box summons spookier demons who wants to suck on souls cos theys spooky demons what sucks on souls! Then soulless victim haunts house of newlyweds - for blood! Ready to get stoopid? Here’s The Spiky Heart Thing!
(Duh duh duh duh, duh duh duh duh) You're travelling through another Junji Ito horror manga, a manga not only of panels and word balloons but of lunacy. A demented journey into an hysterical land whose boundaries are that of imagination and page counts. That's the creepy signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Liminal Zone!
Jude, Willem, Malcolm, and JB are best friends. But, as close as they are, they know next to nothing about Jude. They don’t know why his legs hurt him. They don’t know if he has any family. They don’t know where he’s from. But they respect him enough to leave him be. As the years go by though, Jude’s secrets are slowly revealed to a select few. And they are terrifying…
Apparently Moon Knight/Khonshu tried taking over the world, or something stupid, in a recent Jason Aaron Avengers arc (I gave up on that series after the dismal first volume so I’m guessing from details gleaned from this book) and now he’s running a religious mission in the city… for reasons? And just in time too as a number of done-in-one-issue-sized threats for him to deal with have conveniently started to pop up!
There’s this weird sub-genre in manga that’s appeared recently that mixes criminal stereotypes with the domestic. There was The Way of the Househusband, where a former Yakuza becomes a househusband in what turned out to be a one-joke series that went on and on but was incongruously popular, and there’s Sakamoto Days, where a former ace hitman leaves the life to get married and work a regular job, that’s actually surprisingly good. And then there’s this one, which is unfortunately at the crappiest end of the spectrum.
Sergeant Hoke Moseley is still on the cold cases, this time investigating the suspicious death of a local doctor, thinking his two partners might’ve had him offed. And then he’s approached by his boss for an unexpected undercover mission outside his Miami jurisdiction to investigate a shady farmer in the small town of Immokalee where a number of Haitian workers have gone missing after working at his farm. Meanwhile, a murderer he put away years ago, who promised to fix Hoke’s wagon if he ever got out, has been let out early on a technicality and has moved into the house across from Hoke’s…
A geologist visits a distant island with a lighthouse to investigate a mysterious sinkhole that doesn’t appear to have a bottom. What lies at the end of all that darkness… ?
Late 19th century China, and an unwanted fourth child is born to a peasant family - so unwanted, she’s not even given a real name, just a designation of the order she was born and her sex: Four-Girl. As she endures a horrible childhood, Four-Girl discovers Christianity though, unfortunately, the Boxer Rebellion is in full swing, with the rebels killing anyone from the West and/or Christian. Which side will Four-Girl choose - her country or her faith?
12 year old Yuta is given a phone to film his dying mother’s last days, the footage of which he turns into a documentary for a school project - and is soundly mocked for it by his peers. Dismayed by the reaction, he decides to kill himself by throwing himself off the roof of his school - which is where he meets the mysterious Eri who takes it upon herself to educate Yuta on films so that his next movie will be a crowd-pleaser. But Eri harbours a dark secret… or does she?
A Chinese woman and her elderly mother have a holiday in Japan where they do touristy things and then go home. That’s honestly it. Jessica Au’s Cold Enough for Snow might be the most boring novella ever written.
The cadets have graduated to fully-fledged members of the Defense Force - except for the hapless Kafka Hibino, aka the secret Kaiju No. 8, but whose training performance has intrigued the higher-ups enough to take him on anyway as a trainee. As they head out on their first mission to take down a giant mushroom kaiju, they also encounter the mysterious humanoid kaiju - and for some of the new grads, this debut mission might be their last…
