January 2014 New Book Releases

(from theexaminer.com)


While December ended 2013 with a bang, the new book release schedule for January looks like 2014 is going to get off to a slow start. The larger publishers have a fairly light release schedule for January but the independent publishers are there, as always, to pick up the slack.

DarkFuse is looking to carry the month with four books. January will see the completion of DarkFuse’s reprinting of Jeffrey J. Mariotte’s “The Border Trilogy” with the release of “Cold Black Hearts.” In addition to “Cold Black Hearts,” DarkFuse will release its normal monthly novel and two novellas. “Dream of the Serpent” by Alan Ryker is a dark, urban fantasy that is both heartbreaking and horrific in its story of love and loss. “Menace” by Gary Fry is another very strong novella by Fry with heavy overtones of Lovecraftian mythos while “Broken Sigil” by William Meikle is just a flat-out terrifying horror novella. As with all DarkFuse books, you cannot go wrong with any of these books and you can even pick up all four of them for less than $20 (actually $16.96 total for all four books). I could not find any new releases for my other favorite independent publisher, ChiZine Publications, although it is releasing “Gamification” and “C-Monkeys” by Keith Hollihan as single novellas in Kindle format rather than the previously released dual novella collection.

January 7 brings the release of “Life After Life” by Kate Atkinson which sounds intriguing as the story of a woman who is continuously dying. “Fear Nothing” by Lisa Gardner is the seventh book in the author’s Detective D.D. Warren series of books and “The Pagan Lord” by Bernard Cornwell is the seventh book in his epic “The Saxon Tales” series. James Patterson once again enters the romance genre on January 13th with “First Love” and Alan Bradley’s “The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches” is the sixth book starring Flavia De Luce. “Hunting Shadows” by Charles Todd is a new Inspector Ian Rutledge mystery novel schedule for release on January 21. The month then closes quietly with no books that catch my interest scheduled to be released on January 28th.

January looks to be a relatively quiet month in the world of books with little to look forward to from mainstream publishers and help up mostly by the independent press. If you only have time for one book in January, my pick of the month would be “Broken Sigil” by William Meikle for a very good and very scary story. As always, all of the books by DarkFuse are very good and are not to be missed. Since the publishing schedule is fairly light overall, January is a great month to browse through the back catalogue of DarkFuse and ChiZine Publications and catch up on a couple great books that you may have missed in 2013.