Batgirl: The Greatest Stories Ever Told
Batgirl's greatest adventures collected together in one volume.  Barbara Gordon is a demure librarian at Gotahm City Library.  She decides to surprise her father by dressing up as a female version of Batman for the Policeman's Masquerade Ball, but on her way there she interrupts an attack by Killer Moth on the playboy Bruce Wayne and decides to take the villains on.  Wayne takes the opportunity to escape, change into his Batman alter ego and assist the overwhelmed Batgirl.  It is the beginning of a great partnership, in which Batgirl defies Batman and her father and teams up with Robin to fight crime.

11 stories, moving from Gardner Fox's debut of Batgirl in DC comics in 1967, all bright colours and slapstick punching, kicking and bad puns, think Adam West and Burt Ward, to three darker late 1990s stories.  Photo Finish features the strange angles and beautifully fluid style of Duncan Fegrado (Enigma).  The two part disturbing  Folie a Deux ('shared psychosis') written by Kelley Puckett follows the treand of the 90s in exploring the darker sides and twisted psychologies of Gotham legends and villians.

An excellent collection and introduction to one of the lesser known but most endearing comic legends.  The only addition I would have like to have seen is reference to Barbara Gordon's career as Oracle after being critically injured by the Joker and having to rebuild her life (The Killing Joke)

The Oracle and The Archon by Catherine Fisher

These are both well written and interesting, the first two of the Oracle trilogy (the third is The Scarab). They are set in an archaic society, the Two Lands which is kind of a combination of Egyptian and Greek and in which trade depends on the Lands' currency: prophecy from the Oracle. Mirany is the newly created Bearer, one of the elite group the Nine, girls who live on The Island and communicate directly with The Oracle through a crack in the Temple of the God. Just beyond the end of the causeway at the entrance to The Port lies the Palace of the Archon, the personification in human form of the God, and to the south of the Island lies the massive City of the Dead where a hive of workers and scribes work above the Tombs.

In The Oracle the Two Lands are trapped in drought and The Archon offers his life to appease the Rain Queen and return water to the land but as the Archon's body travels through the Nine Houses of Mourning on his journey to his tomb and the search begins for his successor, a 10 year old boy into whose body the God has transferred, Mirany realises that she is at the centre of a web of conspiracy, coercion and danger. With the scribe Seth, attempting to sell his knowledge of the tombs to the mysterious tomb robbers The Jackal and The Fox in return for water, the most precious commodity in the drought stricken Lands, and ex musician Oblek who should have been killed along with the rest of the Archon's retinue to accompany him to the underworld, a twisting turning tale of intrigue begins as the group are pursued by the nefarious general Argelin and treachery within the Nine.

In The Archon Oblek and Seth travel with the new Archon Alexos to the Mountains of the Moon in an attempt to find the Well of Songs and undo the wrong a previous Archon did which plunged the Two Lands into drought. The land they travel across is marked with great shapes of animals incised into the ground in the manner of the Nazca lines in Peru but these are more than just lines in the ground. Fisher blends history, imagination and mystery in a fascinating fast paced story.