Batman/Grendel: Devil's Riddle, by Matt Wagner

  Batman/Grendel: Devil's Riddle (part 1), by Matt Wagner, 48 pages

Not going to lie- I picked this up in the hope that Grendel was going to be like Beowulf's Grendel.  :(  It is not- this Grendel is sort of like a ninja with a cane who wants to steal the Sphinx.  Not what I was hoping for.  The art is fairly '90s, but with classic Bob Kane-style Batman- so it's not terrible.  Both of my library copies of this have artwork cut out of page 7/8, so I'm annoyed and curious at what someone found offensive or enticing enough to remove.

Songdogs, by Colum McCann

Songdogs, by Colum McCann, 224 pages

Conor Lyons is searching for his mother through his father's photos and through a road trip that follows their footsteps through Mexico, across America, and back to his birthplace of Ireland.  His father, once a vibrant young photographer, is now an aging man approaching his end, and provides little more than his photographs for Conor to discover what happened to his mother.  What Conor finds is not resolution, but certainly a sense of understanding.

This is beautifully written, and would make for an interesting book club selection.