Cheshire Crossing

Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir

Cheshire Crossing takes characters from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Peter Pan, and follows Alice Liddell, Dorothy Gale, and Wendy Darling after they are united at "Cheshire Crossing" by the mysterious Dr. Ernest Rutherford and Miss Mary Poppins. Originally writen and illustrated by Andy Weir from 2006 to 2008 as a four issue fanzine, it was later released as a graphic novel, illustrated by Sarah Andersen, from Ten Speed Press in 2019.
Dr. Rutherford believes that the girls can travel to other worlds and wants to study how they do it. The girls end up travelling to and between their three destination worlds, along with good and evil characters of these worlds as well, stirring up troubles as they go. Things can get confusing but they always remain fun and all ends up well.
Andy Weir is best known for his science fiction novel The Martian and his short story "The Egg". This is a much more playful early work.
The original 4 issue series is available free online.

The Hotel Dick

The Hotel Dick by Axel Brand

The Hotel Dick is the first of a series of four detective novels that follows the exploits of Lieutenant Joe Sonntag of the Milwaukee Police Department and are set in the late 1940s. The novel starts off when a hotel detective named J. Axel Brand is shot in the hotel brbershop while getting his morning shave. The only witness to the crime is the barber who swears that the movie actor Spencer Tracy is the shooter. A quick check with Tracy's studio reveals that he has an alibi and could not be the murderer, leaving Sonntag to puzzle over the eyewitness account as they begin questioning anyone who might have had a reason to dislike the hotel dick.
Full of atmospheric references to Milwaukee in the late Forties supplied by the author who grew up there, this is a puzzling mystery and a good introduction to this series.
Axel Brand is a pseudonym for Richard Shaw Wheeler (1935 – 2019) who is known for his award winning novels set in the American West.