The Royal Treatment by MaryJanice Davidson, 320 pages

 In a world nearly identical to ours, the North won the Civil War, Ben Affleck is the sexiest man alive, and Russia never sold Alaska to the U.S. Instead, Alaska is a rough, beautiful country ruled by a famously eccentric royal family, and urgently in need of a bride for the Crown Prince. But they have no idea what they're in for when they offer the job to a feisty commoner. . .a girl who's going to need. . .

The Royal Treatment
The Princess-To-Be Primer,
Or, Things I've Learned Really Quick, As Compiled by Her Future Royal Highness--Yeah, Whatever--Christina. That's me.
1. Telling jokes you picked up from the guys on the fishing boat doesn't go over really well at a fancy ball.
2. Must learn to curtsy, stifle burps, and tell the difference between a salad fork and a fruit knife.
3. Must not keep thinking about Prince David's amazing eyes, lips, hands, shoulders, uh. . .wait, can I start over?
4. Becoming a princess is a lot harder than it looks.
5. Falling in love is a whole lot easier. . .
In this dazzling, delightfully wacky tale from MaryJanice Davidson, a tough commoner and a royal prince are about to discover that who they truly are. . .and what they desperately desire. . .may both be closer than they ever dreamed. . . 

Betty and Veronica Double Digest #117, 226 pages

 

A Million Little Pieces of Close to Home by John McPherson, 144 pages

 Is your face suffering from a lack of exercise? Readers rely on John McPherson's Close to Home cartoon to contort their facial muscles into an unstoppable grin each day. Not even Botox can stop you from smiling at this latest collection of Close to Home.

How do you measure a cartoon's popularity? The true measure of a comic panel's popularity is how often it is posted on a refrigerator, cubicle, break room bulletin board, or office door. By that standard, Close to Home wins the comic panel popularity contest hands down.

Close to Home captures the humor in all facets of life. From home to hospitals, from classrooms to courtrooms, from boardrooms to backyards--there's a Close to Home panel that hits us where we live and work and play.

A Million Little Pieces of Close to Home features hilarious panels first published in newspapers in the year 2000, the year of the Y2K scare that never materialized. Of course, that's just the kind of thing you'd expect from a Close to Home world.

Death and the Dancing Footman by Ngaio Marsh, 307 pages

 The party's over when murder makes an entrance...

With the notion of bringing together the most bitter of enemies for his own amusement, a bored, mischievous millionaire throws a house party. As a brutal snowstorm strands the unhappy guests, the party receives a most unwelcome visitor: death. Now the brilliant inspector Roderick Alleyn must step in to decipher who at the party is capable of cold-blooded murder..

Catabunga! by Darby Conley, 134 pages

 The Get Fuzzy team is back in action, and they’re jumping in with all feet.

 

Our tough-as-nails crew has been assembled. Bucky Katt has a plan to take out the ferrets next door, and it will require all of his powers of disguise and stealth to get the job done. Satchel Pooch is going on the offense and channeling his inner assault-broccoli to defeat the vegetables before they defeat him. And Rob, the unofficial peacekeeper, is left to clean up the aftermath before the whole thing becomes an international incident.
 
Packed with intrigue, covert aggression, and domestic warfare, Catabunga! is an all-out battle of wit and words that’s not to be missed.

Save Room for Pie: Food Songs and Chewy Ruminations by Roy Blount Jr., 280 pages

 Our best-laid plans will yield to fate.

And we will say, “We lived. We ate.”

Roy Blount Jr. is one of America’s most cherished comic writers. He’s been compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, and his books have been called everything from “a work of art” (Robert W. Creamer, The New York Times Book Review) to “a book to read till it falls apart” (Newsweek). Now, in Save Room for Pie, he applies his much-praised wit and charm to a rich and fundamental topic: food.

As a lifelong eater, Blount always got along easy with food—he didn’t have to think, he just ate. But food doesn’t exist in a vacuum; there’s the global climate and the global economy to consider, not to mention Blount’s chronic sinusitis, which constricts his sense of smell, and consequently his taste buds. So while he’s always frowned on eating with an ulterior motive, times have changed. Save Room for Pie grapples with these and other food-related questions in Blount’s signature style. Here you’ll find lively meditations on everything from bacon froth to grapefruit, Kobe beef to biscuits. You’ll also find defenses of gizzards, mullet, okra, cane syrup, watermelon, and boiled peanuts; an imagined dialogue between Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden; input from Louis Armstrong, Frederick Douglass, and Blaze Starr; and of course some shampooed possums and carjacking turkeys.

In poems and songs, limericks and fake (or sometimes true) news stories, Blount talks about food in surprising and innovative ways, with all the wit and verve that prompted Garrison Keillor, in The Paris Review, to say: “Blount is the best. He can be literate, uncouth, and soulful all in one sentence.”

Betty and Veronica Double Digest #107, 226 pages