Are you ready to talk about January book releases? I’ve been somewhat disappointed in some of the books of 2022, so I’m looking forward to 2023 releases. Although, I’ll tell you right up front. There are a lot of dark books coming out in January, and I’m not a fan of dark or psychological suspense or domestic suspense. And, sometimes, I just can’t annotate every cozy mystery. Don’t be surprised if the list at the bottom is longer than the list of books I annotate. There are some well-known and popular authors on the bottom list. I just don’t read their books, but many of you do, so don’t forget to check that list.

Here’s a story that’s a little different; Peter Blauner’s Picture in the Sand. It’s a sweeping intergenerational saga told through a grandfather’s passionate letters to his grandson, passing on the story of his political rebellion in 1950s Egypt in order to save his grandson’s life in a post-9/11 world. When Alex Hassan gets accepted to an Ivy League university, his middle-class Egyptian-American family is filled with pride and excitement. But that joy turns to shock when they discover that he’s run off to the Middle East to join a holy war instead. When he refuses to communicate with everyone else, his loving grandfather Ali emails him one last plea. If Alex will stay in touch, his grandfather will share with Alex – and only Alex – a manuscript containing the secret story of his own life that he’s kept hidden from his family, until now. It’s the tale of his romantic and heartbreaking past rooted in Hollywood and the post-revolutionary Egypt of the 1950s, when young Ali was a movie fanatic who attained a dream job working for the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille on the set of his epic film, The Ten Commandments. But Ali’s vision of a golden future as an American movie mogul gets upended when he is unwittingly caught up in a web of politics, espionage, and real-life events that change the course of history. (Release date is Jan. 3.)

Gelett Burgess’ The Master of Mysteries is another book in the Library of Congress Crime Classics series. Packed with two dozen stories, The Master of Mysteries offers a twentieth-century, mystical twist on the classic consulting detective genre made popular by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. With Astro, the self-proclaimed “seer of secrets,” author Gelett Burgess gives us a detective just as observant and brilliant as Sherlock Holmes―but with feelings. Astro, the Seer of Secrets, and his lovely assistant, Valeska, sound more like a magic act than a private detection team. Astro hides his powers of observation and reasoning beneath a turban and a cape, pretending to read palms and consult crystals while in fact keenly observing details that most people―police included―miss. Valeska, his beautiful blonde protégé, assists Astro with his investigations, all the while honing her own skills. Called upon by believers and skeptics both, they adeptly recover what is missing―a rare Shakespeare folio, a missing husband, a kidnapped child―while also solving actual murders. But it is their burgeoning romance, and their mutual zeal to work pro bono where matters of the heart are at stake, that set this crime-solving duo apart. (Release date is Jan. 3.)

A #1 bestseller in Sweden, Christopffer Carlsson’s Blaze Me a Sun marks the American debut of the youngest winner of the Best Swedish Crime Novel of the Year award, the top prize for Swedish crime writers whose past winners include Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell. In February 1986, the Halland police receive a call from a man who claims to have attacked his first victim. I’m going to do it again, he says before the line cuts off. By the time police officer Sven Jörgensson reaches the crime scene, the woman is taking her last breath. For Sven, this will prove a decisive moment. On the same night, Sweden plunges into a state of shock after the murder of the prime minister. Could there possibly be a connection? As Sven becomes obsessed with the case, two more fall victim. For years, Sven remains haunted by the murders he cannot solve, fearing the killer will strike again. Having failed to catch him, Sven retires from the police, passing his obsession to his son, who has joined the force to be closer to his father. Decades later, the case unexpectedly resurfaces when a novelist returns home to Halland amid a failed marriage and a sputtering career. The writer befriends the retired police officer, who helps the novelist—our narrator—unspool the many strands of this engrossing tale about a community confronting its shames and legacies. (Release date is Jan. 3.)

Finlay Donovan Jumps the Gun is the latest by Elle Cosimano. Finlay Donovan has been in messes before―after all, she’s an author and single mom who’s a pro at getting out bloodstains for rather unexpected reasons―but none quite like this. After she and her nanny/partner-in-crime Vero accidentally destroyed a luxury car that they may have “borrowed” in the process of saving the life of Finlay’s ex-husband, the Russian mob got her out of debt. But now Finlay owes them Still running the show from behind bars, mob boss Feliks has a task for Finlay: find a contract killer before the cops do. Problem is, the killer might be an officer. (Release date is Jan. 31.)

It’s not too early to start thinking about St. Patrick’s Day at the end of January, is it? Maddie Day’s Four Leaf Cleaver is the latest Country Store Mystery set in South Lick, Indiana. There’s no mistaking Saint Patrick’s Day at Pans ’N Pancakes. Robbie may only be Irish by marriage to Abe O’Neill, but the shelves of vintage cookware in her southern Indiana store are draped with glittery shamrocks and Kelly-green garlands and her restaurant is serving shepherd’s pie and Guinness Beer brownies. The big event, however, is a televised cooking competition to be filmed on site. Unfortunately, someone’s luck has run out. Before the cameras start rolling, tough-as-nails producer Tara O’Hara Moore is found upstairs in her B&B room, bludgeoned apparently by the heavy hilt of a cleaver left by her side. Now, not only does Robbie have a store full of festive decorations, she’s got a store full of suspects . . (Release date is Jan. 24.)

Vicki Delany’s eighth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery is The Game is A Footnote. Scarlet House, now a historical re-enactment museum, is the oldest building in West London, Massachusetts. When things start moving around on their own, board members suggest that Gemma Doyle, owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, might be able to get to the bottom of it.  Gemma doesn’t believe in ghosts, but she agrees to ‘eliminate the impossible’. But when Gemma and Jayne stumble across a dead body on the property, they’re forced to consider an all too physical threat.  Gemma and Jayne suspect foul play as they start to uncover more secrets about the museum. With the museum being a revolving door for potential killers, they have plenty of options for who might be the actual culprit. (Release date is Jan. 10.)

I’ll tell you a secret. I’ve already read some of the books on this list. Some I know I’ll never get a chance to read. Then, there are a select few that I hoard, hoping I’ll get to them. These all go in the back bedroom. Heather Fawcett’s novel, Emily Wilde’s Encylopaedia of Faeries is one of those books, on the TBR pile in the back room. Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people. So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, muddle Emily’s research, and utterly confound and frustrate her. But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones—the most elusive of all faeries—lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she’ll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all—her own heart. (Release date is Jan. 10.)

There have been tons of World War II novels, including mysteries, in recent years. But, there’s something different about Stephanie Graves’ mysteries featuring British pigeoneer Olive Bright. A Courage Undimmed is the third in the series. As the weather turns bitterly cold in the dark days of November 1941, fewer pigeons are being conscripted for missions into occupied Europe and Olive fears her covert program may be dropped altogether. In fact, the new CO of the Baker Street intelligence operation at Brickendonbury Manor, Major Blighty, has expressed his doubts regarding her birds—not to mention Olive herself—and assigned her to a far more insignificant role: escort to a visiting officer of the Royal Navy Intelligence Special Branch.  She’s none too keen on her assignment or her charge—the aloof and arrogant Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming—but the last place she expects to accompany him is to a séance. Self-proclaimed medium Velda Dunbar—new to the village of Pipley—has drawn fascination and skepticism after a very public channeling of a doomed seaman aboard the HMS Bartholomew, which she claims has sunk. Fleming remains tight-lipped about his reason for attending her séance, but his arrival with Olive raises eyebrows as she is still maintaining the ruse of dating Captain Jameson Aldridge. When murder occurs before her very eyes, Olive must trust her own instincts and not rule out anyone as a suspect—including the secretive Fleming—for one of them is harboring a hidden deadly agenda. (Release date is Jan. 24.)

Exiles is the latest from Australian author Jane Harper. Federal Investigator Aaron Falk is on his way to a small town deep in Southern Australian wine country for the christening of an old friend’s baby. But mystery follows him, even on vacation. This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of Kim Gillespie’s disappearance. One year ago, at a busy town festival on a warm spring night, Kim safely tucked her sleeping baby into her stroller, then vanished into the crowd. No one has seen her since. When Kim’s older daughter makes a plea for anyone with information about her missing mom to come forward, Falk and his old buddy Raco can’t leave the case alone. As Falk soaks up life in the lush valley, he is welcomed into the tight-knit circle of Kim’s friends and loved ones. But the group may be more fractured than it seems. Between Falk’s closest friend, the missing mother, and a woman he’s drawn to, dark questions linger as long-ago truths begin to emerge. What would make a mother abandon her child? What happened to Kim Gillespie? (Release date is Jan. 31.)

There’s an exception to everything. Jessica Johns’ Bad Cree may have horror elements, but it’s also a debut from an author who is a member of Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. So, I’m including it on this part of the list. In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home. When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow’s head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears. Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too—a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina—Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone. Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams—and make them more dangerous. (Release date is Jan. 10.)

Snuffed Out is the first Magic Candle Shop Mystery by Valona Jones. 30-year-old fraternal twins Tabby and Sage Winslow own The Book and Candle Shop in Savannah. Sage is hot-headed and impulsive while Tabby is calm and collected, making them the perfect partnership. When  one of their customers is found murdered, from a blow to the head, that partnership is put to the test. Blithe McAdam had been seen in a heated argument with shop clerk Gerard, which immediately makes him suspect number one. The twins are convinced of Gerard’s innocence and start digging into Blithe’s past. But no one is cooperating. The neighbor who found the body isn’t talking, medical examiner Quig won’t give any details about the autopsy, and nasty rumors begin surfacing about the drowning of Blithe’s father years earlier—evidence that could seal Gerard’s fate. (Release date is Jan. 10.)

Once in a while, I’ll even through in a nonfiction title, such as Tracy Kidder’s Rough Sleepers. Kidder’s the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains, although I read several of his early books. Tracy Kidder has been described by The Baltimore Sun as a “master of the nonfiction narrative.” In Rough Sleepers, Kidder shows how one person can make a difference, as he tells the story of Dr. Jim O’Connell, a gifted man who invented ways to create a community of care for Boston’s unhoused population, including those who sleep on the streets—the “rough sleepers.” When Jim O’Connell graduated from Harvard Medical School and was nearing the end of his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, the chief of medicine made a proposal: Would he defer a prestigious fellowship and spend a year helping to create an organization to bring health care to homeless citizens? Jim took the job because he felt he couldn’t refuse. But that year turned into his life’s calling. Tracy Kidder spent five years following Dr. O’Connell and his colleagues as they served their thousands of homeless patients. In this illuminating book we travel with O’Connell as he navigates the city, offering medical care, socks, soup, empathy, humor, and friendship to some of the city’s most endangered citizens. He emphasizes a style of medicine in which patients come first, joined with their providers in what he calls “a system of friends.”  (Release date is Jan. 17.)

Let’s talk about Paul Levine’s Jake Lassiter series for a minute. Early Grave is only available as a Kindle, Audible or Audio CD. But, Early Grave is the final novel of the series that began with the international bestseller To Speak for the Dead in 1990. When his godson suffers a catastrophic injury in a high school football game, lawyer Jake Lassiter sues to abolish the sport and becomes Public Enemy Number One. The former NFL linebacker also battles CTE, the fatal brain disease. With his personal life in tatters, he’s in couple’s therapy with fiancée Dr. Melissa Gold and vows to live long enough to fix his relationship and achieve justice for his godson. (Release date is Jan. 10.)

Fatal Fascinator is the latest Hat Shop Mystery by Jenn McKinlay. It’s wedding season and Viv’s longtime frenemy Piper May is getting married. She convinces Viv and Scarlett to take on the job of designing the headpieces for her “wedding of the year.” The well-to-do bride and her entourage are delighted to have Viv and Scarlett as their famous hat designer guests, but the hat-making pair are really just looking forward to a getaway at a castle in Sussex. It is to be a weekend full of events, culminating in the big ceremony. Unfortunately, on the first night of the festivities, the groom is found murdered, and the joyous holiday becomes the stuff of nightmares as no one is allowed to leave the castle until the investigation is complete. Although Scarlett assures Harrison Wentworth, her fiancé, that she and Viv will stay out of harm’s way, circumstances force them to step in when a secret affair between the deceased groom and a bridesmaid comes to light, and the murderer takes another life. Scarlett and Viv vow to unveil the killer’s identity before the wedding adds another to its death toll. (Release date is Jan. 3.)

Amy Patricia Meade’s Tish Tarragon cozy series is one that just gets better over time. The latest is Of Mushrooms and Matrimony. Literary caterer and owner of Cookin’ the Books café Tish Tarragon is pushing thoughts of her impending eviction aside to prepare an appetising welcome buffet for a wedding weekend at Abbingdon Green Bed and Breakfast. While there, Tish witnesses one of the guests, controversial TV chef and restaurant critic, Gunner Randall, threatening staff after missing breakfast and making do with a mushroom omelet. When Randall is found dead the following day, it soon becomes clear that poisoned mushrooms were behind his demise. With no shortage of potential suspects and motives, can Tish and her new beau, Sheriff Clemson Reade, uncover who was enraged enough with the unsavory star to silence him for good? (Release date is Jan. 3.)

Jeri Westerson introduces a new historical mystery series with Courting Dragons. Will Somers is jester to Henry VIII, but it will be interesting to see how the series goes because Will actually was jester to all of the Tudors after Henry VIII. 1529, London. Jester Will Somers enjoys an enviable position at the court of Henry VIII. As the king’s entertainer, chief gossip-monger, spy and loyal adviser, he knows all of the king’s secrets – and almost everyone else’s within the walls of Greenwich Palace. But when Will discovers the body of Spanish count Don Gonzalo while walking his trusted sidekick Nosewise in the courtyard gardens, and a blackmail note arrives soon after demanding information about the king, is one of his own closely guarded secrets about to be exposed? Trouble is afoot at the palace. Are the king’s enemies plotting a move against him? Will must draw on all his wit and ingenuity to get to the bottom of the treacherous and deadly goings-on at the court before further tragedy strikes . . . (Release date is Jan. 3.)

I find the setting of Iris Yamashita’s debut, City Under One Roof, to be fascinating because a similar setting actually exists. There is an Alaskan town in which everyone in town lives in the same building, and Yamashita uses that for her mystery. A stranded detective tries to solve a murder in a tiny Alaskan town where everyone lives in a single high-rise building, in this gripping debut by an Academy Award–nominated screenwriter. When a local teenager discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the shore of the small town of Point Mettier, Alaska, Cara Kennedy is on the case. A detective from Anchorage, she has her own motives for investigating the possible murder in this isolated place, which can be accessed only by a tunnel. After a blizzard causes the tunnel to close indefinitely, Cara is stuck among the odd and suspicious residents of the town—all 205 of whom live in the same high-rise building and are as icy as the weather. Cara teams up with Point Mettier police officer Joe Barkowski, but before long the investigation is upended by fearsome gang members from a nearby native village. Haunted by her past, Cara soon discovers that everyone in this town has something to hide. Will she be able to unravel their secrets before she unravels?” (Release date is Jan. 10.)

NOTE: I also have a copy of Art Taylor’s collection of short stories, The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions, which will be published by Crippen & Landru in January. But, there’s no cover art for it yet. Martin Edwards wrote the introduction. I have not yet read the collection by Taylor, an Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, Macavity and Derringer Award winner.

Don’t forget to check these titles as well!

Amidon, Stephen – Locust Lane (1/17)
Bardugo, Leigh – Hell Bent (1/10)
Carroll, Jonathan – Mr. Breakfast (1/17)
Collins, Kate – Gone but Not for Garden (1/24)
Cotterill, Colin – The Motion Picture Teller (1/17)
Ellis, Bret Easton – The Shards (1/17)
Golden, Christopher – All Hallows (1/24)
Goodman, Allegra – Sam (1/3)
Hall, Traci – Murder at a Scottish Wedding (1/24)
Hawkins, Rachel – The Villa (1/3)
Hendrix, Grady – How to Sell a Haunted House (1/17)
Houston, Victoria – Hidden in the Pines (1/10)
Irish Coffee Murder by Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Barbara Ross (1/24)
Irons, Maya Moore & Jonathan Irons – Love & Justice (1/17)
Kapoor, Deepti – Age of Vice (1/3)
Kaufman, Michael – The Last Resort (1/10)
Korsmeyer, Carolyn – Little Follies (1/19)
Laestadius, Ann-Helen – Stolen (!/31)
Markert, J.H. – The Nightmare Man (1/10)
Marshall, Kate Alice – What Lies in the Woods (1/17)
Maxwell, Alyssa – A Fashionable Fatality (1/24)
Minnicks, Jamila – Moonrise Over New Jessup (1/10)
Murphy, Kitty – Death in Heels (1/1)
Newitz, Annalee – The Terraformers (1/31)
Pari, Susanne – In the Time of Our History (1/3)
Pylvainen, Hanna – The End of Drum-Time (1/24)
Reyes, Ana – The House in the Pines (1/3)
Riedel, Josh – Please Report Your Bug Here (1/17)
Rowland, Laura Joh – River of Fallen Angels (1/10)
Rubin, Rick – The Creative Act: A Way of Being (1/17)
Rumfitt, Alison – Tell Me I’m Worthless (1/17)
Schafler, Katherine Morgan – The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control (1/17)
Shroff, Parini – The Bandit Queens (1/3)
Tanamachi, Cara – The Second You’re Single (1/31)
Thomas, Kai – In the Upper Country (1/10)
Willingham, Stacy – All the Dangerous Things (1/10)
Winslow, De’Shawn Charles – Decent People (1/17)
Young, Louisa – Twelve Months and a Day (1/31)