I have been behaving myself with unseemly discipline lately -- perhaps because books are continuing to trickle in from my buying spree last month. Oh, and all right, I admit it: I've continued to purchase books on Amazon that haven't been published yet, and I'm not going to tell you about them until they actually come through the door. But in the meantime, publishers have been kind enough to send me three new books, all of which I very much want to read.

Today's mail brought Jay Lake's Green, which I've been looking forward to for some time now. The jacket copy and the promotional materials promise a tale of a courtesan who rejects her place in court in a dramatic way. She must thereafter make her own place in a world where gods meddle in the affairs of mortals, and magic is a tool of state. The cover is wonderful, isn't it? I do love stories about strong women.

Yesterday brought a new Tachyon Publications book, The Best of Michael Moorcock. I have read little by this author, which is to my shame, because he is one of the key figures in bringing science fiction and fantasy out of the 1950s and into a more contemporary world in style and subject matter. This one is high in the "to be read" pile as well.

A week or so ago, Orbit Books sent me In Ashes Lie by Marie Brennan. I purchased Brennan's earlier book set in this universe, Midnight Never Come, some months ago but have not yet read it. Both books posit a faerie court parallel to the court of England; Midnight Never Come is about Elizabethan England, while In Ashes Lie is set in 1666, when Oliver Cromwell was flexing his muscles. Brennan is an anthropologist and folklorist by education, so I'm expecting great things from these two books.

More about these books as I read them.