new to the bookshelf

Not too many new books for the Alfar bookshelf, what with the pressure of tuition coming up (yes, Sage's tuition fee is enough to give any decent man a heart attack) as well as the assorted costs of real life. But still, no way can there be no new books (it's simply impossible, even if I have to hock some of my old stuff, I will end up with new fiction somehow -damn this addiction). Here are the ones that are new to us:

Twenty Epics edited by Susan Groppi and David Moles
The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente
Solstice Wood by Patricia A. McKillip
Strange Itineraries by Tim Powers
Hart & Boot & Other Stories by Tim Pratt
Willful Creatures by Aimee Bender
New Magics edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories by John Klima

Some of these I ordered from Amazon, the others I was happy to chance upon in Manila. I'm particularly happy with Twenty Epics and have been wanting to read it since I first heard about it. It's nice and thick and chockfull of goodness. Also jumping high on the "read me first, dammit" list is the new collection of Pratt (the LitCritters are among his most avid readers, as his much-read first collection Little Gods can attest). And the Kilma antho based on winning words from the Scripps National Spelling Bee is just too delicious to believe - and the roster of author reads like the LitCritters reading list: Anna Tambour, Jeff Vandermeer, Hal Duncan, Elizabeth Hand, Jay Lake, Liz Williams, Alan de Niro, Tim Pratt, Theodora Goss, Paolo Bacigalupi - it's crazy).

As for my periodicals fix, I'm always happy to receive the latest issues of Realms of Fantasy (this issue featuring new fiction from one of favorites, Theodora Goss - yay! that's two Goss stories) and Fantasy & Science Fiction (Matthew Hughes has gotten me more than mildly interested in his scifi noonaut).