Book Review: The End of the Playboy

Larry Funk is in a funk. Adrift in Los Angeles’s celebrity-obsessed youth culture, the 49-year-old Gen X rock star and former Casanova grapples with fading fame, advancing age, and a waning musical career threatened by the pop culture wars in a fractured nation.

Set in the chaotic year of 2016, amidst national turmoil and heartbreaking losses, Funk and the rest of a wistful America are stuck in a “holding pattern.” But during one magical spring break weekend in L. A., his career is miraculously revived when he gets a second chance at love and becomes the unlikely star of a hidden camera reality show. With humor and grace, this authentic middle-aged hero with a crooked smile and an easy gait will momentarily charm a new generation of fans in this high-stakes game of who gets the girl. With the odds stacked against him, Funk, as always, will give the fans their money’s worth in this life-affirming and often hilarious odyssey.

Book Review: Trillion Game vol. 2

Self-proclaimed “world’s greediest man” Haru and timid computer whiz Gaku set out to make a trillion dollars. They start the company Trillion Game to accomplish this task and hope to iron out the details as they go. With charm, technical skills, and no business plan, can these unlikely friends reach their lofty goal?

Hoping to get their money-making efforts off the ground, Haru and Gaku enter a hacking competition sponsored by Dragon Bank. Competing against elite teams of professionals, the two implement a risky strategy that could lead to a life-changing payoff if it succeeds!

Book Review: Sons of Star Trek

In the aftermath of Kahless’ harrowing Day of Blood, Jake Sisko struggles to find his place in the universe now that his family has been reunited and his father, Benjamin Sisko, has once again saved the Galaxy.

Meanwhile, Nog faces the challenges of being the first Ferengi in Starfleet and Alexander Rozhenko is recovering mentally and emotionally from his time as one of Kahless’ devout followers. Although his father, Worf, was able to break him away from the Red Path cult, Alexander is haunted by his actions during the bloody coup and is unsure of his ability to atone for the devastation he caused.

Jake, Alexander, and Nog find their stories intertwined as they’re thrust into an alternate reality full of lessons that may be just what the doctor ordered!

Book Review: The Mushroom Knight vol. 2

An adolescent girl named Lem searches the deep dark woods for her missing dog, entangling her destiny with a chivalrous mushroom faerie named Gowlitrot on a mystical quest to protect the biome from catastrophic ruin.

As their friendship develops, Gowlitrot pledges to aid Lem in a quest to discover the fate of her missing dog, but as the search progresses, they uncover perilous betrayals that challenge the foundation of each of their worlds— both inner and outer. The natural world may never appear the same again.

Book Review: Robert B. Parker's Hot Property

Spenser is waiting out the latest Boston snowstorm when he gets word that Rita Fiore has been shot. Rita’s always been a tricky one: flirting with Spenser for years, she’s an ever-present figure that transcends friendship in Spenser’s circle. But at the end of the day, Rita is family. And family will always be protected.

Both a pit bull in the courtroom and provocateur outside it, Rita is no stranger to controversy. But as one of the city’s toughest lawyers, Spenser knows that there’s no short list of suspects who might want to enact revenge. With Rita’s life hanging in the balance, it’s up to him to get to the bottom of things, even if it means unearthing some unsavory secrets that might just lead him into an age-old game of lies and deceit.

Book Review: Toto

I was mostly a Good Dog until they sold me out to animal control, okay? But if it’s a choice between Oz, with its creepy little singing dudes, and being behind bars in gray old Kansas, I’ll choose the place where animals talk and run the show for now, thanks.

It’s not my fault that the kid is stuck here too, or that she stumbled into a tug-of-war over a pair of slippers that don’t even taste good. Now one witch in good eyeliner calls her pretty and we’re off on a quest? Teenagers. I try to tell her she’s falling in with the wrong crowd when she befriends a freaking hedge wizard made of straw, that blue jay with revolutionary aspirations, and the walking tin can. Still, I’m not one to judge when there’s the small matter of a coup in the Forest Kingdom.

Book Review: The Shithead

Eric Bauer—son, husband, father, and small business owner—is slowly losing his grip on reality. Drowning in debt and a never-ending to-do list, he finally catches a break.

To trade the torment of barely scraping by for the riches of Nashville's elite Pinnacle Club, he only needs to keep doing what he's been doing since college. Lie.

Playing fast and loose with the truth is the easy part. What's hard for The Shithead is figuring out how to build a meaningful life in a meaningless world.

Book Review: Norman Lear - His Life and Times

Beginning in the 1970s, writer and producer Norman Lear forever altered the television landscape with such groundbreaking situation comedies as All in the Family, Maude, Good Times, Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and One Day at a Time. For over half a century his body of work boldly tackled race, class, sexuality, politics, and religion—topics previously considered too taboo to be the subject of comedy on the small screen.

Norma Lear: His Life and Times is the unforgettable story of an extraordinary seven-decade career. Veteran author and entertainment journalist Tripp Whetsell offers an intimate portrait of Lear that is the product of years of research and numerous interviews. Whetsell shows how Lear created the gold standard for television comedies, producing shows that were the first to give underrepresented members of society an authentic prime-time voice, while encouraging audiences to confront their own humanity and shortcomings. In the process, he explores one of television’s most transformative periods, detailing Lear’s legacy as one of its chief architects and catalysts.

Book Review: X-Men - The Manga Remastered vol. 1

Jubilation Lee is a teenager with a secret: she’s a mutant, the next level of human evolution, and has fantastic powers. All she wants is a normal life with trips to the mall to get away from her parents, but when the mutant-hunting robots known as Sentinels come after her, that normal life is pushed out of her reach! Discover the X-Men, mutant heroes hated and feared by a world they’re sworn to protect, alongside Jubilee in this classic manga series!

X-Men: The Animated Series was a global sensation and the perfect introduction to Marvel’s mutants! The classic manga adaptation, unavailable for years, now finally returns to print! Newly remastered and presented in a deluxe edition, this is the ultimate X-Men collector’s item!

Book Review: Snow and Ink vol. 1

Sentenced to death for the crime of sadistically killing his entire village, Neneo is all but ready to accept his unfortunate fate when he is mysteriously bought and saved by the wealthy heiress Freya. Emotionless and numb to the world, Freya is also an outcast, hiding deep wounds of her own. Unfazed by the tales of Neneo's crimes, she enlists him to accompany her in her exile to the far north. As this unlikely pair, both shunned by a cold world, venture together into the deep snow, they begin to find warmth in each other. But the past won't let itself be so easily forgotten.

Snow and Ink volume 1 by Miyuki Unohana will be published November 5, 2024. Kodansha Comics provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: Life's Short, Talk Fast

Fast-talking, warm-hearted, and endlessly rewatchable, Gilmore Girls has bonded real-life mothers and daughters since 2000, when its iconic pilot introduced us to Lorelai, Rory, and their idyllic Connecticut town of Stars Hollow. More than twenty years later, it has become one of the most-streamed TV shows, ever.

In an anthology as intimate and quick-witted as Gilmore Girls itself, best-selling author Ann Hood invites fifteen writers to investigate their personal relationships to the show. (“It’s a show? It’s a lifestyle. It’s a religion.”) Joanna Rakoff considers how Emily Gilmore helped her understand her own mother; Sanjena Sathian sees herself—and Asian American defiance—in Lane Kim; Freya North connects with her son through the show; Francesco Sedita discovers an antidote to pandemic loneliness; Nina de Gramont offers a comic ode to the unreality of Stars Hollow. For anyone who identifies as Team Logan, Team Jess, or even Team Dean, Life’s Short, Talk Fast reveals what Gilmore Girls tells us about ourselves—and why it matters.

Book Review: Christmas TV Memories

For most of us, fond memories of the Christmas season are inseparable from TV’s holiday presentations. The world loves everything from iconic cartoons like How the Grinch Stole Christmas and A Charlie Brown Christmas to the ground-breaking Julia sitcom segment, “I’m Dreaming of a Black Christmas,” Christmas in Rockefeller Center, and the 1992 TV-remake of Christmas in Connecticut directed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Christmas TV Memories: Nostalgic Holiday Favorites of the Small Screen embraces it all, offering a tinsel-decked traipse down memory lane and chronicling animated classics, variety shows, made-for-TV features, and holiday-specific episodes of series like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. With a Foreword by best-selling Free to Be You and Me author and That Girl star Marlo Thomas, along with commentary from other celebrities, historical quotes, and insights from entertainment journalists and archivists, Christmas TV Memories serves as the go-to companion to the small screen’s most cherished holiday programs.

Book Review: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook

Earth has been transformed into the set of the galaxy’s most watched game show: Dungeon Crawler World, a nightmarish, multilevel, video game–like dungeon filled with traps, monsters, and mind-bending puzzles. Carl and Donut have survived so far, but this fourth level is unlike anything they could imagine. The Iron Tangle: an impossibly complicated subway system tied together into a knot of trains of all kinds, from classic steam engines to sleek modern cars. Up is down. Down is up. Close is far. The cars are filled with monsters, the railway stations aren’t always what they seem, and the exit is perpetually just a few stops away.

The top ten list is populated, and Carl and Donut have made it. But that popularity comes with a price. They each now have a bounty on their head. They must work with other crawlers to solve the puzzle of the floor, but how can they do that when they don’t know who to trust? The secret to unraveling it all may be hidden in the pages of a seemingly useless book.

Book Review: The Düngeonmeister Book of RPG Trivia

Test your knowledge with The Düngeonmeister Book of RPG Trivia. With questions and interesting details about the history of tabletop gaming, your favorite game genres, and the media and video game connections you know and love, this new trivia book is sure to be a hit for seasoned gamers and newbies alike.

Featuring tons of questions to test your nerd cred.

The Düngeonmeister Book of RPG Trivia by Jef Aldrich and Jon Taylor will be published September 24, 2024. Adams Media provided an early galley for review.

Book Review: Eight Perfect Murders

A series of unsolved murders with one thing in common: each of the deaths bears an eerie resemblance to the crimes depicted in classic mystery novels.

The deaths lead FBI Agent Gwen Mulvey to mystery bookshop Old Devils. Owner Malcolm Kershaw had once posted online an article titled 'My Eight Favourite Murders,' and there seems to be a deadly link between the deaths and his list - which includes Agatha Christie's The ABC Murders, Patricia Highsmith's Strangers on a Train and Donna Tartt's The Secret History.

Can the killer be stopped before all eight of these perfect murders have been re-enacted?

Book Review: The Mighty Marvel Dictionary

The Mighty Marvel Dictionary (thuh my-tee mahr-vuhl dik-shuh-ner-ee)

noun: an illustrated A-to-Z glossary that provides readers of all ages a redefined, never-before-seen exploration of the code names, items, teams, locations, and sound effects that have shaped Marvel Comics for over 85 years

Featuring more than 1,000 definitions of the words that have been the foundation of Marvel Comics’ epic stories, this illustrated compendium is the perfect gift for Marvel fans of all ages.

Book Review: Frank Miller's Ronin Rising

A cursed Ronin. Psychological manipulation by a sentient AI. A security commander turned savior. And a postapocalyptic biotech war in the demon-teeming pits of a twenty-first century New York inadvertently started by the once benevolent Aquarius Corporation.

Eisner Hall of Famer Frank Miller’s Ronin is cited as the inspiration for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Samurai Jack. Now—40 years later—Miller, with the team Philip Tan and Daniel Henriques, returns to the world of Ronin, continuing his story for a new generation in Frank Miller’s Ronin Rising.

Miller and his team continue the story of Ronin deftly and intentionally, drawing the reader into his postapocalyptic world as completely as he did in the original series run, published in 1983–84 by DC Comics, which is widely considered to be one of his most influential original works.

Book Review: Dark Space

If life were fair, ace pilot Jose Carriles should have ended up a desk jockey like his former friend Corin Timony, back on the lunar colony of New Destiny. Instead, he’s the pilot of the Mosaic—a massive ship taking the Interstellar Union’s first-ever mission to outside our solar system.

Timony should have been the best spy at the Bazaar, the lunar colony’s international intelligence arm. Instead, she’s been demoted to admin duties like monitoring long-range communications. She has no one to blame but herself—and maybe Carriles.

But when the Mosaic experiences a series of strange malfunctions and Carriles is forced to take a wild gamble to save the ship, he begins to suspect the reasons behind the exploratory mission weren’t exactly on the up and up.

Book Review: Spider-Man - Octo-Girl vol. 1

Spider-Man rogue Doctor Octopus faces his biggest challenge yet—living life as a middle school girl in Japan!

After a battle with Spider-Man, the evil genius scientist Doctor Octopus falls into a coma. When he wakes up, his consciousness is in the body of Otoha Okutamiya, a regular kid in Tokyo! Thus begins the strange new life of Spider-Man’s biggest rival…as a schoolgirl!

Spider-Man: Octo-Girl by Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court will be published on October 8, 2024. VIZ Media provided an early galley for review.