Elimination Round

I went through another bookhaul as promised though I've spread it out the whole week instead of just one day, picking 'em off one by one. Unfortunately, these books weren't sold in one bookstore so I had to trawl through a considerable number of shops.

One thing nice about this book haul is that most of these are from highly-recommended yet hard-to-find writers. Well, hard to find on these local shores.

To wit:

1. Reviewer jay tomio has been heavily pimping Catherynne Valente but most of her work had been small press stuff. Thankfully, Valente now has her first big publisher work with the fantastical The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden and it looks gorgeous as it comes complete with Michael Kaluta illustrations.
2. Obviously, I'm still aiming to get the first novel of Paul Witcover (see Waking Beauty) but when I saw the trade paperback of his second work, the weird SF-fantasy Tumbling After, I thought this was too much of a good opportunity to check out his stuff.
3. On the other hand, I had a harder time tracking down Elizabeth Bear's urban-fantasy Blood and Iron-- it came out a couple months ago-- and I'm taking it as a good sign that most of her stock locally has been selling well. Bear started out with a couple of well-recommended SF books but I'm starting out with this work.
4. Funny enough, I've always had a hard time getting into horrormeister Ramsey Campbell despite andrew eldritch constantly championing him because of the lousy book covers/designs. So when I spotted Campbell's short-story collection Alone with the Horrors with its impressive-looking cover, how could I resist? Hopefully, the copy will last until I get it...
5. Lastly, I ordered fantasist Jeffery Ford's short-story collection The Empire of Ice Cream a couple of months ago and I haven't picked it up yet. I'm bad, I know. Thank goodness Robert of Booktopia is nice enough to excuse my idiosyncracies... and my lack of funds at times.

One thing nice about this book selection is that most of the authors I've selected have an online presence (i.e. Valente, Bear, and Ford) and they're quite friendly with their fans. So extra motivation to help them succeed, yes?