Dan Brown’s Inferno Gets Cover

Back in January, we told you about Dan Brown’s new book, Inferno, to be published in mid-May. Now, because everyone seems to be wanting to see it, we’re sharing the US cover. More impressive than this particular cover are the stats that have led us to thinking you might be interested:

The Da Vinci Code was published in 2003 and spent 144 weeks on The New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller

New in Paperback: Wife 22 by Melanie Gideon

Last year, January Magazine contributing editor, Monica Stark, loved Melanie Gideon’s debut novel, Wife 22, out in “Reader’s Circle Editon” paperback this week from Ballantine. The Reader’s Circle Edition includes a conversation with the author and a reading group guide. When the book came out in hardcover last May, Stark wrote:

The homage to Joseph Heller in the title of Melanie Gideon’s debut

Fiction: The Way of the Dog by Sam Savage

From the anonymous shadow of the living room window in his crumbling mansion, an old man watches the world. Once an uncelebrated painted and a collector of art, Harold Nivenson seems to witness the changing of the world while he himself feels oddly unchanged, impacted only by his past.

The Way of the Dog (Coffee House Press) is Sam Savage’s fourth novel, after Firmin: Adventures of a

New in Paperback: The Book of Lost Fragrances by MJ Rose

Last year, when M.J. Rose’s The Book of Lost Fragrances first came out, January Magazine editor Linda L. Richards couldn’t say enough about it:

Rose’s work tends to speak to me in special ways, something I’ve commented on in reviews over the years. Her writing seems to rap up all of the elements of story that just delight me. There is an elegance to her voice, even when the stories she shares

Fiction: Tiger Rag by Nicholas Christopher

You know it’s going to be a good year in fiction when the very first book you read in the year has the fine, sweet notes of Nicholas Christopher’s searing and beautiful Tiger Rag (Dial Press).

Jazz myths loom large in Tiger Rag, a book that is at least thinly based on  the life of jazz legend Buddy Bolden. I say “thinly” because, truly, not a lot is known about Bolden. His star burned hot, swift

Fiction: As Close As You’ll Ever Be by Seamus Scanlon

(Editor’s note: This review comes from New Yorker Marcelle Thiébaux, the
author of The Stag of Love and last year’s historical romance, Unruly Princess).

Seamus Scanlon’s 23 stunning tales in his debut collection, As Close As You’ll Ever Be (Cairn Press), feature
prize winners among them. About a third have appeared in literary magazines.

A Galway-born writer of bardic storytelling gifts, as

This Just In… Dissever by Colee Firman

Addison Sanders is pretty comfortable spending her days with her grandfather at his centuries old estate, nestled in the snowcapped mountains. But all that changes when she wakes up to find the entire estate has been moved to a mysterious tropical location, right in the middle of a busy tourist town on the ocean.

Addy is forced to untangle a web of lies and secrets spun over centuries,

Best Books of 2012: Fiction

This is the Best Fiction segment of January Magazine’s Best Books of 2012 feature. Also available are our picks for best non-fiction, best SF/F, best books for children and young adults,  best crime, mystery and thriller fiction of 2012, in two parts: one and two. As well, here are the best cookbooks of 2012. 

12.21 by Dustin Thomason (Dial)
12.21 is by one of the authors of The Rule of Four,

This Just In… Fifty Shades of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde and Nicole Audrey Spector

Meet artist Rosemary Hall and follow her inevitable downfall brought by her lust for the famous Dorian Gray -- a tale both familiar and new in this erotic mash up of one of the world’s most beloved novels.

First published to sensational scandal amidst accusations that the novel was hedonist, unclean and depicted distorted views of morality, The Picture of Dorian Gray was a hit back in the day.

New This Week: Lionheart by Sharon Kay Penman

Those who love to start into a new year with a book substantial enough to do some damage when dropped on their foot will enjoy Sharon Kay Penman’s critically acclaimed Lionheart, which came out in paperback on January 1st from Ballantine.

It’s 1189 and the newly crowned Richard II, son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, sets off from England to the Holy Land and the Crusades.

Penman’s skill

This Just In… The Kult by Shaun Jeffrey

People are predictable. That’s what makes them easy to kill.

Out of misguided loyalty, police officer Prosper Snow is goaded into helping his friends perform a copycat killing, but when the real killer comes after him, it's not only his life on the line, but his family's too. Now if he goes to his colleagues for help, he risks being arrested for murder. If he doesn't, he risks being killed.

“

Fiction: Me and the Devil by Nick Tosches

(Editor’s note: This review comes from Steve Nester, a resident of McKinney, Texas, and the host of Poets of the Tabloid Murder, a weekly Internet radio show heard on the Public Radio Exchange [PRX]. Nester is also a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Rap Sheet, Mystery Scene and Firsts Magazine.)

You’ll be relieved to learn that rumors you may have heard concerning Nick Tosches

Fiction: Husk by Corey Redekop

No one watching such things in Canada doubts his voice or his vision: Corey Redekop has emerged as one of the writers to pay attention to over the coming few years.

Redekop’s debut, Shelf Monkey, has been equally lauded and trampled, but the trampling has contained such vitriol, you just knew you had to pay attention. Notice of the other kind was sterling. The book was called one of the Top 40

New Today: Invisible by Carla Buckley

Carla Buckley’s particular blend of domestic drama and suburban suspense is quickly building her a staunch following. Her debut novel, The Things That Keep Us Here, was widely lauded and broadly acclaimed. Her sophomore effort, Invisible (Bantam) promises to please those earlier fans with a tale of secrets in a small town and the lives they hold there.

Sisters Dana and Julie were separated by a

Holiday Gift Guide: The Judge and the Lady by Marlyn Horsdal

Author, editor and one-time publisher, Marlyn Horsdal, pulls a page out of British Columbian history for her latest novel, The Judge and the Lady (Touchwood).



It is 1870 and beautiful Eleanor Wentworth arrives in the coastal city of Victoria from London just in time to lower her expectations. How can the fledgling city at the edge of frontier ever find its place in society? Though her first

New in Paperback: The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

It’s difficult to imagine the booklover who wouldn’t enjoy The Paris Wife (Ballantine), Paula McLain’s sad and searing look at Hemingway’s relationship with first wife Hadley. January editor Linda L. Richards reviewed the book in this space early last year. Wrote Richards:

McLain’s jazz age love story is perfect from the beginning. “The very first thing he does is fix me with those wonderfully

Holiday Gift Guide: Fifty Shames of Earl Grey by Fanny Merkin

The title warns you not to expect high art and, in case you were ever in doubt, the cover confirms it. Yes, this is a parody of Fifty Shades of Grey. Of course it is. But there is a surprise or two left in store: in a market that seems clotted with mashups and parodies, Fifty Shames of Earl Grey (Da Capo) actually exceeds all expectations.

This is due entirely to the rapier wit of author, Andrew

Fiction: A Book of Horrors edited by Stephen Jones

The purpose of the anthology A Book of Horrors (St. Martin’s Griffin) would seem to be, at least in part, to take a stab back at all those sparkly vampires. “What the hell happened to the horror genre?” editor Stephen Jones asks in his introduction. “These days our bloodsuckers are more likely to show their romantic nature, werewolves work for government organizations, phantoms are private

Fiction: Doppler by Erlend Loe

In a world gone mad for all literature with the smack of Scandanavia, Doppler (Anansi) seems at first like a sharply sweet joke. Canadian publisher, Anansi, calls Doppler an “enchanting, subversive, and very unusual story of one man and his moose.” Think of Doppler as Jonathan Livingston Seagull for the 21st century, but with a moose calf called Bongo, Scandinavian hipster attitude and a sharper

Fiction: The Little House Books: The Library of America Collection by Laura Ingalls Wilder, edited by Caroline Fraser

In 2012, books are easy and everywhere. They are downloadable and sometimes disposable. And even while the world goes mad and the book world rocks on its heels, there has never been a time where the entire planet has been more literate. And I can’t imagine there’s ever been a time when we talk about books quite this much.

Into this climate of literature that is easily and inexpensively available