Therapy is a book that has been on my mind for ten years.  Seriously.  I started reading it ten years ago and then lost it—to my despair.  For some reason I didn’t get my hands on another copy right away, and then I forgot the exact title and author—you know how that is—and from time to time I would remember this book as a wonderful pleasurable read and curse myself for losing it in the first place.  But the universe often rights itself, and I recently stumbled upon the title.  Hooray!  Of course, I finished the book in two days: a) because I loved it b) to minimize the chances of me losing it again. 

I had remembered this novel as humorous, charming, and immensely readable—which it is—but what I didn’t initially realize is that David Lodge is a serious—funny—British writer.  Therapy will not be the last David Lodge book that I read.   I am now a David Lodge fan.  He’s funny.  He’s smart.  He’s a fan of Graham Greene.  What more can I ask for?   Anyway, what isTherapy about, you may wonder?  Well, Tubby Passmore is a successful sitcom screenwriter who goes to various therapies for aches and pains and angst.  That’s basically it.  Well, there is a lot more involving love relationships and existential doubt…but you will just have to read it to find out.   

Cartoonist Marisa Acocella shares her personal battle with breast cancer in a way only a New Yorker can in this illustrated memoir. On the eve of her marriage to a handsome Italian restaurant owner, Marisa finds a lump in her breast and it feels like everything she loves is about to be sucked into a black hole. But with courage, her faithful fiance, slightly crazy Italian mother, brutally honest friends and a little dose of fashion, she manages her eleven month treatment with grace and more than a little humor.

If you never thought a memoir on Cancer could make you laugh-out-loud, think again. With bold, witty and emotionally powerful illustrations, Marisa takes us through one of the most chaotic times of her life. This graphic novel has continually been named one of the best in its genre.

The always-impressive Bear enchants with this new fantasy set in an Asian-inspired land.  Young Temur wakes up on the battlefield having been left for dead. He is the grandson of the Great Khagan and has been supporting his half-brother’s bid for rulership—but they were defeated in a series of terrible battles against the usurper Qori Buqa.  He joins a caravan of refugees fleeing toward the mountains known as the Range of Ghosts and finds himself adopted into another tribe and paired off with the lovely young woman Edene. But his enemies are still hunting him and when Edene is stolen by an army of undead ghosts sent against him, Temur must rescue her. Along the way, he crosses paths with Samarkar, a former princess of the Rasan people and now a newly-minted wizard; and Hrahima, a tiger-woman at odds with her god and her people. The three have similar goals—and similar enemies. Qori Buqa has joined forces with al-Sepehr, a necromantic sorcerer from the Uthman Caliphate seeking to restore his sect’s prominence—and al-Sepehr’s blood magic threatens to bring back the dark days of the Carrion King.

The vivid world-building and unusual, multi-cultural setting and sympathetic, realistic characters are a delight. The parallels to the real-world cultures of the Mongols, Tatars, Chinese, and others are obvious, but each imagined culture nevertheless has a richness that never feels derivative.  A great fantasy for those who may be tired of the same old Medieval Europe-inspired fantasies so prevalent on the shelves.

All his life, Joe Spork has been caught between the legacy of his grandfather Daniel, a brilliant and honest clockmaker, and his father Mathew, a vivacious and larger-than-life criminal mastermind who ruled London's underground world. As a child, Joe ran wild in Mathew’s world as Crown Prince of Crime, learning the hidden ways of the gangster. But after his father’s death and his mother’s retreat into a convent, Joe took up Daniel’s legacy, becoming a clockmaker and running the store he inherited from his grandfather.  When an old friend of Joe’s brings him a client with a fabulous piece of antique clockwork needing repair, Joe’s quiet life is disrupted with explosive consequences. The clockwork device is no toy, it seems, but is actually part of a weapon of mass destruction developed by a French genius a generation before but never deployed—until Joe repaired it and turned it on unknowingly.  Now Joe is caught between shadowy governement agents, a strange group of cultists calling themselves the Ruskinites, an old enemy from Britain’s past, and a now-elderly former spy named Edie Banister, all of whom want control of the device—the Angelmaker. And Joe must embrace parts of himself he’d thought long in his past if he’s going to not only survive, but save the world in the bargain.

This impressive, intriguing, and complex novel is impossible to categorize. Part steampunk romp, part espionage thriller, part gangster adventure, with dollops of romance and philosophy dropped in for good measure, the only thing one can call this novel for sure is great fun. You might not know quite what you’re reading, but you’re going to love it all the same. Muscular prose, endless inventiveness, and truly engaging characters put the icing on this particular cake.