If you’re like us, you resolved to read more in the new year. Don’t worry if you haven’t turned many pages yet—you still have 336 days left. And we’re here to help: While January can suffer from a post-holiday publication lull, it’s a great time room for cooler, less conventional entries. This month, we’ve got a debut from a promising new fantasy writer, an anti-Internet manifesto, and more. January is an aspirational month, and these titles represent new literary directions. If 2015 is to be a year of reading, any one of them would make a great place to start.
The Full-Length Debut: Daniel José Older, Half-Resurrection Blues
Release: January 6
For a genre in which anything is theoretically possible, fantasy has always been dominated by white people. So we need more books like Daniel José Older’s Half-Resurrection Blues, the first in a new series. Fans will recognize the character of Carlos Delacruz from Salsa Nocturna, Older’s 2012 collection of “ghost noir” stories: An “inbetweener” for the New York Council of the Dead, Carlos must negotiate that tricky space between alive and dead. Nothing about this book is dead, though; it’s urban fantasy that actually feels relevant and alive. (Also, check out Older’s fantastic BuzzFeed essay on diversity in publishing.)
The Counterintuitive Opinion: Andrew Keen, The Internet Is Not the Answer
Release: January 6
Whoever’s writing book titles these days is making phenomenal use of “not.” Just a couple of months after Tom Doctoroff argued that social media is hurting brand marketing in the exquisitely titled Twitter is Not a Strategy, tech commentator Andrew Keen is ready to denounce the whole shebang in The Internet is Not the Answer. For Keen, the Internet is a negative feedback loop that punishes its users—economically, socially, psychologically. Sure, this kind of tech naysaying is classic provocation, but it’s necessary. (Also, we told you so.)
The Literary One: Rachel Cusk, Outline
Release: January 13
Two things can happen when you make your main character a creative writing instructor: (1) The novel undermines itself in an act of creative meta-destruction, or (2) it challenges and expands the form. Rachel Cusk’s much-praised Outline does the latter. In an artistic age that supposedly values subversion and ambiguity, the novel remains the very definition of convention. Cusk’s “novel in ten conversations” shows what you can do with a little imagination and a lot of style.
The Blockbuster: Nick Cutter, The Deep
Release: January 13
The bottom of the ocean remains the scariest place on planet Earth, so setting any novel there all but guarantees sleepless nights. Cutter is no stranger to unpacking isolation’s frightening properties—in his debut, The Troop, a scoutmaster and his charges face peril in the Canadian wilderness—and in his latest, the fate of humanity depends on research being done in a lab located eight miles underwater. When that lab goes silent, a fact-finding mission is dispatched, and (surprise!) they find more than facts in those icy black depths. By the end, we’ll all need rescuing.
The International One: Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, The Rabbit Back Literature Society
Release: January 20
We’re guessing you probably haven’t read any Finnish fantasy. (Swedish neo-noir, sure.) We certainly haven’t, but that changes with Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen’s The Rabbit Back Literature Society, translated by Lola M. Rogers. When a secret group of writers recruits a new member, questions form faster than they can be answered.
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