A lot of what I've been reading lately is manga; my personal collection is not large, but combined with my local library and Barnes and Noble, my gamut runs from sweet Sailor Moon and CardCaptor Sakura to Higurashi, which I like to refer to as 'Stephen King's harem anime'. C'mon, you've got the harem set-up with the brutal, supernatural murder mystery stuff so it fits.

My current favorite series is Crimson Hero by Takanashi Mitsuba, a shojo series about volleyball. I first found this in Shojo Beat a couple years ago and later figured out how to found the full thing (so far) on scanlation sites online. It's still on-going, 71 chapters in 19 volumes.

The main character is Nobara Sumiyoshi, 15 years old, kinda tomboy, and loves playing volleyball. She's not exactly suited to be the next hostess of her family's traditional-style restaurant so she basically moves out and ends up as the dorm mother for the boys' volleyball scholarship players. There's only four guys there and one, Haibuki, is a childhood friend that's carrying a torch from her, but he can be a bit of a jerk in expressing himself. The main guy that Nobara falls for is Yuushin: tall, kinda a tough guy, but really nice to pretty much everyone. He rejects Nobara at first, but then ends up falling for her. And then the drama really gets going; lots and lots of drama. It is shojo, after all.

But mostly it's about Nobara and the girls' volleyball team that she has to build from the ground up. Seriously, at first there wasn't one, but she manages to find and befriend several other girls and her kind of brash, can-do attitude gets them all to believe in themselves and prove to everyone that the girls' team can and will do just as well in the various tournaments as the guys. Even if you're not into sports manga, it's a good series and I'd recommend it; it's made me laugh and occasionally cry, especially lately.