The Best American Comics 2010

Coraline's Daddy, comics guy Neil Gaiman, curates a year's best collection which focuses on indy and "alternative" titles, leaving the capes-and-cowls crowd in the dust. Familiar names such as Carol Tyler consort with newcomers like Fred Chao, whose Manhattan-centric protagonist Johnny Hiro could be the next Scott Pilgrim.

June 19: On this day in 1816, the Shelleys, Lord Byron, and entourage gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva to tell the ghost stories that would trigger Frankenstein. This most legendary of storm-tossed evenings inspired…

Very few debut novels exhibit the charm, assurance, emotional depth and bravura fabulation which the lucky reader will discover in Helene Wecker's

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