Akashic: 256 pages, $26
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In a landfill in La Puente, fighters engage in bloody battle by piloting scrap metal machines called chompers while spectators eat tacos and drink boba; on a quiet residential street in the San Fernando Valley, an abused girl calls on a mysterious tree spirit for help. One of the sculptures of ancient mammoths in the La Brea Tar Pits up and disappears, and in El Sereno, a child is reunited with his mother after being detained by ICE … but is the child who returns the same as the one they took?