Books! O books!

Two books for you to consider: one I've read, and one I desperately, desperately wish to run out and buy because it looks so good.

First, the one I've read: Tiny Deaths, by Rob Shearman. It's a short-story collection, and each story is a surreal, mordant little gem. It's getting fabulous reviews, and been nominated for all sorts of awards, and rightly so. I recommend reading the stories with intervals of time between them, because they're very distinctive and can be a tad intense, and you'll want to cleanse your palate (much as you would between, say, different flavors of gourmet ice cream, or craft beers, or other intense, distinctively flavored things that you like). (Incidentally, you may recognize Rob Shearman's name as the writer behind the Doctor Who episode "Dalek" in the first season, the Eccleston year.)

Now, the looker: Doctor Grordbort's Contrapulatronic Dingus Directory (Catalogue Edition). Here's the web site, and here's the Amazon link. See graphic for an example of its tantalizing beauty. And it's from your friends at Weta, the New Zealand special-effects people. (I found out about it on Rob Hood's blog, via Cat Sparks's blog.)