 Hi there today on Typical Books we're going to be talking about new releases, new books coming out in January. And there aren't a lot of them which is kind of nice because that makes my job really quick. And I get to talk about a couple books that came out previously and one book coming out in February. So I don't know what is on your list but it seemed to me that doing the new releases page on the Horror Writers Association website horror.org. There was a lot of books that were out in October that people were announcing in November and December and still here in January. Not a lot of books coming out in January. Even the February list is looking pretty slim. Now you can look all over the internet and get all kinds of books coming out in January but I mean specific types of horror books and not a lot caught my eye so far. But Metal Demon by Julie Heiner. This is an Alberta chapter horror writers association author and this book Metal Demon comes out from killers and demons and it came out in December on the 20th of December. So not too far along. Like we're only at this point about 12 days into January. It's not like the whole month has gone and December 20th wasn't that long ago. And get a load of this artwork. That's one thing that's really caught my eye here. Elaine is a demon feasting on death metal singers. Sage is the singer for soiled carcass. During a performance at Bad Idol, I guess that's the name of the bar, he blacks out and hits the stage. Images of a 666 year old face dripping in black ick or invade his mind as he relives a heroin infested past. Will he get a grip on his sanity or succumb to the demon invading his mind? When their worlds collide a possession of primal death metal extremes unfolds. So yeah, the cover may be this 666 year old demon. I don't know or it could be the death metal singer himself. You know it's just a lovely visage. Either way, on January 11th we have a craft book. And this, you'll find it on horror.org, the Horridges Association page under new releases as well. This is a craft book. It comes from Crystal Lake Publishing. It's called Shadows and Ink, Mastering the Art of Horror Writing and Publishing Volume 1. So I'm looking forward to the rest of this. So January 11th, the first volume comes out. I don't know much about it so I don't know when the other ones come out. But this says, dive into the dark and thrilling world of horror writing. Okidoki with Shadows and Ink, a comprehensive guide designed to transform your chilling tales into masterpieces that captivate and terrify. Authored by a seasoned and award-winning publisher editor in the genre, so it is just Joe Minehard. This book is your gateway to crafting stories that linger in the minds and nightmares of your audience. Yeah, ok, so hey, maybe if you're tired of reading books you can now write them. I know there's a lot of authors already that watch this channel, a lot of my friends and other writers do have booktube channels. So if you're interested in honing your craft, or if you've never written a short story and wanted to take a crack at it at the very least, or maybe you have a novel sitting in your heart, then Shadows and Ink. So before we get any deeper into this, I just need a little drink to wet my whistle. Morticia Adams, Funko Pop soda, putting the pop back in Funko Pop as it were. I was quite confused when my husband came by, he popped by, no pun intended, with this little tiny Morticia Adams who will now grace my shelf. She is cutting the tip off of a little rose as is her way and I really enjoy it. At the risk of becoming a lifestyle channel, this is the only Funko Pop I really like. We have a couple in the house, very few, we're not big Funko Pop fans, and this doesn't even look like a Funko Pop. So I think that's the thing I like the most about it, and the can, I mean as packaging, that's super cool. So I digress. Back to books coming out in January. So another book that caught my eye that was not on the list of the HWA stuff, so I don't know, but I recognize this author's name. This is a January 8th release called Perverted Little Freak by Rick Wood, and the title caught my eye as you should know. And the cover, oh my god, the cover doesn't the look remind you of the very end of Sleepaway Camp when Angela is doing the scream, the quite famous scream that frozen in time kind of scream on the beach. That's what this look reminds me of. This cover, unbelievable. I love this, I love everything about this. Though Adam doesn't think she's boring, she met him on the internet and she really likes him, so she arranges to meet him. But Adam isn't who he says he is. He lures her to a hotel room with promises of romance, then locks the door and brutally assaults her. Briani is forced to act and kills him in a violent act of self-defense. That's a great beginning to a book. I hope that's not the whole story. If that's the whole story, they're really gonna have to pull the taffy during the however many pages of Perverted Little Freak, but I am very interested. This comes out from Blood Splatter Books. I don't recognize the name of that publisher. I swear I recognize the name of this author, Rick Wood, but I love the title, Perverted Little Freak. I love the cover. This is fantastic. This harkens back to some sort of 80s exploitation horror that I just need to sink my teeth into. And the very next day, January 9th, if you think that I don't take horror seriously by loving a book like Perverted Little Freak, we have Rose Murray's Baby, a rerelease of Rose Murray's Baby. Now, of course, this has been released before Ira Levin's classic Rose Murray's Baby, a gorgeous book. This is a one with a very interesting cover, very plain, very typographic cover, the upside down carriage at this time, a little bit of a twist on it. Maybe this is the 2024 irony kicking in with this cover, but I love the cover, a very, very graphic cover. Rose Murray Woodhouse, as we all know, and her struggling actor husband guy are thrilled to move into the Bramford, a sought after Manhattan apartment building prize for his Victorian details and gargoyle facade, and become acquainted with their overly attentive neighbors, the cast ofette's unspoken tensions enter into the young couple's relationship with a forward by Chuck Palinac and an afterward by R.L. Stein. So I think that that is the real selling thing here, the real feature. If you have been sleeping on Rose Murray's Baby, call a doctor, it's probably suffocated. And haven't read it yet, I mean rather, definitely pick up this new copy. Like, what more would you want than an intro from, of all people, Chuck Palinac. That's not who I would have pegged for the intro, but I'm very excited to read it. And R.L. Stein, I was talking with my husband just recently about some books you pick up simply for that afterward or the forward, whatever it is, and you can't find that essay as it is anywhere else really. So I think this is one of those you'll need to pick it up to see what these great authors have to say about this classic piece of horror fiction. On January 12th, coming from Cemetery Dance, we have The Winslow Sisters by Michael Aronovitz. And I like the cover of this as well. Talking typographically, we have a really cool stretched out serif font that kind of fades in a gradient from teal aquamarine kind of blue to verdant kind of green, like a kelly green. And that's an unsettling combination of blues and greens if you ask me with some kind of floating heads, weird juxtapositions on the cover. I like it. It's a shadowy intriguing cover. It's kind of cliche, horror wise, but I like the color combinations with this font quite a lot. So serial killer Michael Leonard Robinson murdered 13 college co-eds in early 2018, impaling them on flagpoles and leaving them on highway construction job sites for the purpose of haunting the dawn rush hour. Yikes. Police called him the scarecrow killer until he revealed in an otherwise cryptic note left for police on March 13th, 2018, that he thought of his dolls more as sculptures. Okay, it almost reads like I'm talking like a true crime story and thank god it's not. At least I hope it's not. If it is, let me know in the comments because wow, very intriguing to read this, like the cover. I'm not sure I've heard of anything else by this author. I'll have to check out Sumitari Dance website and see for more. Coming up on January 16th, we have Best Horror of the Year, number 15 edited by Ellen Datlow. We look forward to this every year. I don't really collect them. I have quite a few on my shelves, but I do need them all. I need more. I want to have them all. And according to the description from Ellen Datlow, the Venerable Queen of Horror Anthologies per The New York Times, comes a new entry in the series that has brought you thrilling stories from Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and the best horror stories available on the list of a bunch of other authors that have been in previous incarnations, but the TOC, the Table of Contents, is published on Ellen Datlow's website if you're interested. And this features Angela Slatter, Jeffrey Ford, Gary Kilworth, Stephen Tose, Livia Llewellyn, Stephen Duffy, Tanan Rivedu, Andy Davidson, Daniela Tomova, Allison Littlewood, Jordan Shively, David Surface, Gemma Files, Gary McMahon, Gemma Amor, Stephanie M. Vitovich, Charlie Hughes, Margo Langan, Luigi Mussolino, James D. Jenkins, Jacob Stephen Moore, and John Langan. So yeah, a really great list this year. I didn't trip up on pronouncing too many of those names. So yeah, looking forward to it as ever, every single year. Best Horror of the Year, volume 15, with the cool cover. It's not the coolest cover of all the best horror covers, there has been cooler. Maybe it is just like a 20-24 thing. We're all kind of heading into this year kind of like, man. On January 16th, from Delacorte, we have A Place for Vanishing by Anne Freistat. And this is an author that is new to me. I've never heard of them before. The house was supposed to be a fresh start. That's what Libby's mom said. And after Libby's recent bipolar diagnosis, the tragedy that preceded it, Libby knows that she and her family need to find a new normal. But Libby's new home turns out to be anything but normal. Scores of bugs haunt the winding halls. Towering stained glass windows feature strange and sectile designs. And the garden teems with impossibly blue roses. And then there are the rumors. The locals, including the mysterious boy next door, tell stories about disappearances tied to this house, stretching back over a century to its very first owners. Owners who supposedly hosted legendary masked séances on its grounds. It's like every line in that description just got more and more intriguing to me. I like the cover. It's pretty plain, very colorful, but neat, typographically speaking. I like the use of that kind of hard edge, Verdana style San Serif font as ever. But yeah, it's an interesting juxtaposition of blah happening on the cover with like insects and flowers. Everyone likes a little bit of color, even me from time to time. And that's really it. There's not a lot coming out in this month. So I'm going to jump to February where maybe next month when I do another one of these videos, I will talk about it all over again. But there's a new Dean Coons book coming out and I don't know how often Dean Coons releases books, but it seems like it's been a bit to me like or it just has he released a book every single year and I've been totally out to lunch on that. It feels like he hasn't put out a book in 10 years, but I'll have to look and see if I'm right because when I saw this I thought wow, it feels like a blast from the past because he's been writing so long. We have quite a few masters of horror here. We've talked about Ira 11 and we've talked about all the ones that are featured in the best horror of the year, volume 15. But we have Dean Coons, a really great classic horror author that I have not read enough of, but I'm going to pick up the Bad Weather friend. It's coming February 1st. Benny Katzpa's perpetually sunny disposition is tested when he loses his job, his reputation, his fiance and his favorite chair. He's not paranoid. Someone is out to get him. He just doesn't know who or why. Then Benny receives an inheritance from an uncle he's never heard of. A giant crate and a video message. Oh, this is such horror cliche already, but he's the master, right? He'll steer us straight. All will be well in time. So how strange, though it's a blessing, his uncle promises, stranger yet is what's inside the crate. He's a seven foot tall, self-described Bad Weather friend named Spike, whose mission is to help people who are just too good for this world. He'll deal with them. This might be satisfying if Spike wasn't such a menacing presence with terrifying techniques of intimidation. So I guess Benny Katzpa, interesting name, finds out who is out to get him and sticks Spike on him. But I'm just inferring that from a kind of poorly written synopsis. It's interestingly written at the beginning, but the end just sort of gets kind of all over the place, I think. But hey, really plain, sans-sera, bold typography over a multi-colored cover that reminds me almost of Mr. Mercedes or something like that or Insomnia. It's like it has some Stephen King vibes in that weird shadowy picture for whatever reason. But it is a departure for me because I've never read a lot of Dean Coons. Dean Coons used to be in the house all the time when I was a kid. Maybe I'll jump into some older Dean Coons. Now of course I haven't finished reading all the books on my 25 Read What You Own Challenge yet, so I won't be like picking this up. It's pre-ordered and anything else that I'd pre-ordered is just sitting in stasis right now until I finish reading. Right now I'm reading The Only One Left by Riley Sager and enjoying it so very much. That came as a book of the month club selection like two months ago, so I'm finishing reading that and then I'll have a tally soon. So my next video will be catching up on what I read of the 25 books off my shelf, how many more I have yet to go, and then by then will probably be in February. So there'll be more new horror releases to come. Are any of these already on your list or have you read them already via something like Nat Galley or Advance Reader copies? Let me know in the comments below. Thank you very much for watching and have an oaky spooky day.