Sakura continues to collect Clow cards with her fabulous outfits, only in this volume, she has a rival: Syaoran, a transfer student from Hong Kong who seems to hate Sakura right off the bat. Kero figures out that Syaoran is a descendant of Clow on his mother’s side, and thinks he has a claim over Clow’s cards and magic. However, since Sakura released the deck, Syaoran can’t collect the cards on her behalf. Some of the cards in this volume are more difficult to capture. Sakura runs into an entirely different card - one that she has to call by its name in order to capture. There’s also another thing about Syaoran - he also seems to like Yukito, making him Sakura’s rival for magic and love.

Volume 13 starts off giving us insight into how Scar ended up running away with a (seemingly) unconscious Winry from the end of volume 12. Ed and Al hatched a plan to get Scar, Dr. Marcoh, and everyone else back to Fort Briggs safely without drawing the attention of Kimbley. A heavy snow storm covers the groups’ tracks and they slowly make their way back while the two Elric brothers try to steal Kimbley off their tracks. Then, Central Command pulls Major General Armstrong away, removing the fierce ally in the Fort that should be protecting the fleeing group. Alphonse trudges through the snow storm to warn them, but he falls victim to an odd sensation - the sense that his physical body is pulling his soul out of the armor. Later, we delve into Van Hohenheim’s backstory, and how he’s tangled up with the Father of the Homunculi.

Naho is a typical girl in Grade 11, with a solid friend group and all the worries of a high-school student: passing tests, what the future holds, boys, etc.  One day, she receives a letter, from what claims to be her future self, warning her about what's happening in her life and trying to steer her away from bad choices.  The letter comes just as new student Kakeru joins the class and her friend group.  As the things. in the letter start to happen, Naho has no choice but to believe her "future self" and try to make up for regrets and missed opportunities that haven't happened yet.  To further tangle things, Takano also embeds chapters from the friends' future selves, and more clues as to what lies in store are revealed.

Book 1: The Flight of the Prince, illustrated by Michael Dialynas

Wynd is trying to be the typical boy in Pipetown - one of the last human settlements that has strict laws against anything magical or with “weirdblood.” Meanwhile, the king is on his deathbed, daily making his son promise to uphold the Blood Laws that have kept the humans of Pipetown safe from magical infection.  The prince decides this isn’t the way he wants to rule, and he sneaks out in the middle of the night to find his uncle, The Duke, who has a much nicer outlook on magical folk.  The king calls back his best enforcer, The Bandaged Man, to root out any other weirdbloods, and, of course, Wynd catches his attention.  Wynd's adoptive mother plans the Prince's escape out of Pipetown in exchange for bringing Wynd to safety, but the plan doesn't go quite as expected. Wynd, his adoptive sister Oakley, Prince Yorik, and Yorik's trusted friend Thorn try to escape the pursuit of the King's Men, and begin to see the world maybe isn't what they thought it was.

Illustrated by Drew Zucker
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At the end of the first book, Canto’s people leave Arcana to make a New Arcana.  The first chapter is a short side-story where Canto frees some fairies from being tortured by an evil witch. Then, we go into New Arcana and see Canto and his friends in their new home.  The Shrouded Man hasn’t come after them, but that’s probably because he has cursed their clocks to slowly wind down.  Canto and a few friends decide to travel back to the Tower and confront the Shrouded Man, hoping to beat their clocks and get the curse reversed.  Along the way, they are attacked by The Furies, and Canto realizes that not all of his friends can come with him.   He reaches his destination and hopes he has found a magic that can take down the Shrouded Man. Canto’s journey is definitely not over here, and the nice cliffhanger will have fans scrambling for the next volume.

Satoru has woken from his 15 year coma and doesn’t remember a thing about the attempt on his life. While outside the hospital where he is receiving care, he find Airi-kun once again, although he can’t remember why he knows her and she certainly doesn’t know him. Then, a jolt of memory slips him back into a coma for another year where his mind works out all the jumbled memories he has from living life before revival. Meanwhile, the killer learns of Satoru’s second recovery, and he plots one last thrill of a lifetime to challenge Satoru and potentially murder more people. It’s up to Satoru to work it all out and save everyone, including himself again.

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.