Curt's most anticipated new books of 2012
From French Masters to Brazilian dragons to underwater welders.
Flannery O'Connor: The Cartoons (Fantagraphics, April 2) While Flannery O'Connor secured her fame with her Southern Grotesque fiction such as the novel Wise Blood, she set out to be a cartoonist as a young woman. This anthology focuses on O'Connor's work for high school and college publications in the 1940s, and offers an intriguing glimpse into the gestation of a great Southern writer.
Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d'Art (William Morrow, April 3) Novelist Christopher Moore has applied his pranksterish sense of humor to subjects ranging from vampires to King Lear, and with his latest book takes a satirical look at such great painters as Vincent Van Gogh and Toulouse-Letrec. If it's at all like Fool, it'll be the kind of book that's so funny, you won't notice how much you're learning.