I returned to my office, not having been here since Wednesday afternoon, to find my desk laden with packages. It’s the beginning of a new buying season, so I’m getting lots of new galleys and books each day. Here’s a glimpse of what I got and plan on reading:

• Roma by Steven Saylor—This is an epic novel of Rome, not another book in his historical mystery series.
• Deep Economy by Bill McKibben—A book on economy and how we value the things we purchase.
• The Savage Detectives by Robert Bolano—New Directions and FSG are making sure that the works of this Chilean writer are kept in print. This is his first novel about two detectives tracking down a poet.
• Medicus by Ruth Downie—Another historical novel set in Roman Britain.
• Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski— A first novel from a former journalist in Thailand about a suicide, anthropology, demon possession and the taboo. Exciting!
• Taj Mahal by Diana and Michael Preston—A book that examines the building of the great wonder and also the history of the Moghul Empire itself.
• The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark—I never read her first book The Great Stink, but heard good things about it. This one is set in the early Eighteenth Century, we follow a pregnant apothecary’s maid as she investigates her masters odd experiments.
• Aya by Marguerite Abouet & Clement Oubrerie—Another Drawn & Quarterly book—I love all of their books. This one is centers on several overlapping love stories in the Ivory Coast.
• Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations by Georgina Howell—Bell turned her back on the Victorian society and made her own rules. This bio promises an “impeccably researched” and “richly compelling portrait” of this interesting woman.
• The Darker Nations by Vijay Prashad—An alternative history of the cold war from the perspective of the Third World.
• The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall—Hard to say what this book is about. It’s got some blurbs comparing it to Memento and Murakami. We’ll see.

I can’t wait to see what I get tomorrow!