Here's the latest series pulling on my nostalgia and purse strings alike.  Kodansha has released an anniversary edition of Cardcaptor Sakura in hardback, and of course I need to get all of them.

​Fourth-grader Sakura Kinomoto, with her latent magical ability, accidentally sets free a deck of magical cards, called Clow Cards, from inside a book in her father’s study. She’s also awakened “Cerberus,” nicknamed Kero-San, the Guardian of the Seal, who gives Sakura the key to the book and the ability to capture the cards again. These cards have gone out into the world and will wreck havoc in their own ways depending on their magical affinity. Sakura must capture the cards and use their abilities to capture even more cards. 

Illustrated by Nate Powell

​On the morning of Barack Obama’s inauguration to his first term as president, Congressman John Lewis readies himself in his office in Washington D.C. A lady with two kids stops by the office, obviously not expecting the Congressman to be there, but they are delighted to find him and ask questions about his life and his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. This launches Lewis down memory lane as he recounts his childhood from growing up on a farm, raising chickens, to going to school and getting involved in sit ins at local department store lunch counters.  The work isn't done with those demonstrations, as later volumes promise to hold other activism and demonstrations Lewis took part in and led.

The Sailor Scouts have a new enemy who has put a spell over the entire Jûban district of Tokyo, and is setting loose little concentrated spheres of evil - lemures - to turn all the beautiful dreams into nightmares. This new enemy is headed by Queen Nehellenia, the queen of the New Moon, of the dark side of the moon. She has found a way in through all the protections on Earth, and is attacking it from the inside. The Dead Moon Circus is her front to besiege the people of Jûban, and her efforts are affecting Mamoru-san. To complicate things even more, the scouts find they can’t transform in the face of this new enemy, but instead have to gain a new power up.

Satoru and his friends continue “playing detective” by finding all the elementary students in their class who spend too much time alone. These kids could become targets for the serial killer on the loose. Satoru has succeeded in thwarting some of the killer’s plots, but he’s has now prevented the murders he knows about, rendering him effectively blind in predicting the killer’s next moves. Being such a visible deterrent to the killer has put Satoru in the path of the killer, but he doesn’t realize this until much too late. This volumes ends with a major time jump and only one and a half volumes left for Satoru to get everything straightened out in his life.

Rayearth is one of those interesting series broken up into parts. While this is volume four if this series, it's labeled as "Part Two: Book One." In the 25th Anniversary Edition, Part Two is in a different boxed set than Part One.

Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu are still reeling from their major battle that closed out Part One. The three try to adjust back to normal life, but the weight of what happened in Cefiro weighs heavy on them. The three meet up in Tokyo Tower again to try to come to terms with what has happened when suddenly, they are transported again! This time, the world they enter is in shambles. The ocean is gone, the sky is black, and the only thing they can see is a castle standing tall above a jagged, rocky island. The three are taken to the castle, where they reunite with what’s left of the old cast, and they are told what grim fate has befallen Cefiro. They also discover that there are several invading forces from other worlds desperately clawing at Cefiro’s borders, all vying for the chance to install themselves as a new ruler. Our Magic Knights pick up the mantle once again in defense of this once-beautiful world.

Hot off of her successful acquisition of her first Stella, the Folger family is on the way to get a dog for Anya. They have no success at a pet store (completely stocked with agency dogs and run by the agency), so Yor and Anya try a pet expo while Loid gets feigns a bathroom emergency in order to slip away to his handler. Loid finds out that a foreign minister is in the country for peace talks, and there is a terrorist plot to blow up the meeting using highly trained — what else? — dogs! Anya, with her telepathic ability, accidentally discovers one of the terrorists’ lairs, but one of the highly trained dogs comes to her rescue. Anya sees brief glimpses inside the dog’s mind, and she realizes that this dog has a special ability! In their own separate ways, Yor, Loid with the agency, and Anya with the dog work against them terrorists in the name of World Peace.

Vol 2: Murder on the Rockport Limited! by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy, illustrated by Carey Pietsch

​Your adventure zone friends are back with an Agatha Christie vibe. The three are officially part of the Bureau of Balance as "Reclaimers" - tasked with finding ridiculously powerful magical items and bringing them back to the Bureau to be destroyed. Their next assignment is to figure out where another reclaimer went wrong in obtaining one of the powerful magical objects. This lands them on the Rockport Limited, an express train with heightened security and relatively few passengers. They get assistance from Angus, the World’s Greatest Detective, and a fourth grader. Together, they must solve the murder mystery aboard the train, obtain the overpowered magical item, and have a hilarious time doing it.

Yor’s brother Yuri comes to visit after he heard through the grape vine that she’s been married for a year. It turns out, Yuri is part of the secret police, and his number one target is the super spy, Twilight! Loid is back to training Anya to win stella awards through academics, but Anya hates studying. He tries to get her into a community service project at a recovery hospital because that’s another way to earn stellas, but Anya proves to be horrible at that as well. On their way out, she hears a little boy drowning in the physical therapy pool, and saving his life earns her her first Stella! The bonus chapter has Yor trying to hide a gunshot wound in her butt, a souvenir from her latest assassin job, but her pain comes across to Loid as her being unsatisfied with him. He tries to win her over by taking her on a wonderful date, all the while Yor deals with her pain.

This series is impossible to summarize and review without spoiling, so if you don't mind, feel free to read on.

Satoru succeeds in saving Hinazuki from disappearing on what he calls X day, but she instead disappears the day after.  He discovers she is missing when his mom, a news reporter, is asked to keep the disappearance secret again, just like when he was twelve the first time.  Before he can do anything about all of this, his revival is over, and he is pulled back to when he is twenty-nine.  The police are searching for him as the main suspect in the murder he was trying to stop in volume one. Airi, his coworker, gives him a place to stay for the night, but this pulls her in to the real murderer's crosshairs.  Just as Satoru is backed into a corner, Revival happens again, and he is taken back to two days before X-day.  This time, he's come up with a very different plan to save Hinazuki.  

Coming off the interruption of the Second Test for Agott and Richeh, the apprentices and Master Olruggio travel to the Hall of Witche, where they can get medical attention for the badly injured Master Qifrey, and where they have to answer the questions of Lord Beldaruit, Wise of Teaching, about what happened during the test. The apprentices show Coco around the Hall, and she continues to be amazed by the magic employed by witches. The apprentices are also given a make-up test opportunity: they must surprise Lord Beldaruit, wise of teaching, who seems to be not easily impressed, with some form of magic that will rekindle his awe for magic. But, instead of the rest being just for Agott and Richeh, Beldaruit gives all of Quifrey’s apprentices the opportunity to take and pass the Second Test, including Coco.