Bookshelf: What we're reading in September

Returning from San Diego Comic-Con, my luggage was laden down with lots of books. Along with being able to find discounts, the annual convention offers a great opportunity to scope out new books and comics from a variety of publishers.

The easiest no-brainer purchase was the "Fatale" compendium. The 24-issue comic book series, which originally ran from January 2012 to July 2014, has been collected in this sizable edition.

This book is a collaboration between writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips, a team that also produced the creator-owned series "Criminal," "Incognito," "The Fade Out" and "Kill or Be Killed."

"Fatale" takes its inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft and crime noir in its tale of Josephine, a femme fatale at the center of a number of mysteries covering the 1930s and World War II as well as 1950s San Francisco and mid-'70s L.A.

I collected the singles when it first came out but didn't end up finishing the series so this edition is a great way to have the story all in one place.

My convention purchases also included a few titles from Quirk Books, which always has a fun selection for the show. It also gives away advanced reader copies (I was able to snag "Horror for Weenies: Everything You Need to Know About the Films You're Too Scared to Watch" and "The Unmothers").

A purchase that might be of more interest to magazine readers is "The United States of Cryptids: A Tour of American Myths and Monsters."

This illustrated book by J. W. Ocker delves into the mysterious monsters that "lurk in the dark forests, deep lakes, and sticky swamps of all 50 states."

The creatures, including the Nain Rouge of Michigan and South Carolina's Lizard Man, are organized by region: Northeast, South, Midwest and West.

In the West section, highlighted cryptids range from the cute jackalope of Wyoming to the Fresno nightcrawler, deemed the weirdest entry in the entire book as it appears as a pair of legs with no visible torso, head or arms.

Each entry includes key stats — type, location, earliest sighting and notable feature — along with enough information to whet your appetite in case you want to conduct further research.

Last up is "Silver Nitrate," the book I brought along on the trip to read but returned with unopened. That's no fault of the author. I immensely enjoyed Silvia Moreno-Garcia's previous "Mexican Gothic" as well as "The Seventh Veil of Salome," an August release to which I had advance access.

This book taps into Mexican horror movies and Nazi occultism in a tale about a female sound editor who, along with her childhood friend, gets mixed up with a cult horror director aiming to finish his final film.

Facing the day-to-day drudgery of the boys' club running the film industry in 1990s Mexico City, Montserrat is ready for a change when her work dries up. When the director, Abel Urueta, claims the film can change their lives, there's no way they can resist getting involved.

Moreno-Garcia does a good job of presenting strong female heroines who do their own saving when the need arises.