Five of the hottest books we can’t wait to read in January

Maybe you received a book store gift card over the holiday season? Maybe you’re looking for ideas on how to spend it? Read on, to learn about some exciting titles that will show up in stores and on library shelves in the next month, including a true crime investigation and, first up, the latest twistathon from British novelist Alice Feeney.

Beautiful Ugly, Alice Feeney

Truth be told, Feeney’s thrillers have not all been home runs but this one gets her back on the things-men-and-women-do-to-each-other track where her best work lives. A man is on the phone with his wife while she’s driving. He hears her stop and get out of the car and then doesn’t see or hear from her for a year, during which she’s declared a missing person. Still grieving, he visits a remote Scottish island and discovers a woman who looks exactly like his wife. Expect brisk writing and twists aplenty in the latest from the author of “I Know Who You Are” and “His & Hers” and, to the extent that we believe cover blurbs, note that mystery writer Harlan Coben is already claiming this is Feeney’s “best book yet.” Jan. 14

The Life of Herod the Great, Zora Neale Hurston

Hurston’s “Their Eyes Were Watching God” is one of the great works of the 20th century and, although she died in 1960, her estate keeps releasing new material. (Her “Barracoon” is either one of the finest books of the 1920s, when she worked on it, or of 2018, when it was finally published.) This unfinished novel about the biblical king argues that we’ve had it all wrong: Herod was not a cartoony villain but a great leader of Judea, one of the few who was determined to better the lives of his subjects rather than his own. Although Harlem Renaissance leader Hurston set aside “Herod” in the 1950s, this edition of the never-before-published work includes letters written by her that should help readers figure out where she intended the story to go. Also included is an essay about Hurston’s writing, which once seemed very much of its time but has proved to be for all time. Jan. 28

The Sinners All Bow, Kate Winkler Dawson

The tantalizing subtitle of historian Dawson’s nonfiction book hints at lots of good stuff: “Two Authors, One Murder and the Real Hester Prynne.” Inspired by a true crime, and a 19th-century scholar’s attempts to get to the bottom of it, “Sinners” begins with Sarah Maria Cornell, whose body was discovered in a field in 1832. Was she murdered or did she take her own life? And what, if anything, does all of that have to do with the prominent minister with whom she was said to be having an affair? Nathaniel Hawthorne repurposed the bones of the true crime in his classic “The Scarlet Letter,” but now Dawson claims to have cracked the centuries-old case. Jan. 7

Slow Train Coming, Todd Almond

“Girl From the North Country,” an innovative musical inspired by the songs of Bob Dylan, opened on Broadway in 2020, just a week before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered the nation’s theaters (I was in New York City when the mayor declared a state of emergency, less than two days after opening night). Set in a Duluth boarding house during the Depression, it finally re-opened two years later and eventually launched a national tour that started in Minneapolis. Todd Almond, who memorably appeared in the New York productions as a character who sings Dylan’s “Duquesne Whistle,” has the behind-the-scenes skinny on the development of “Girl,” which was conceived by playwright/filmmaker Conor McPherson. Almond interviews creators and fellow cast members to tell both its story and the story of Broadway’s attempts to rebound from some of its darkest (literally) years. Hopefully, he also has intel on the filmed version of the musical, in which he appears but which seems to be in movie limbo. Jan. 21

Tartufo, Kira Jane Buxton

Much like “Chocolat,” it’s a well-populated, character-driven comic novel set in a small town with a title taken from a delicious, foreign treat. This time, we’re in a fading Italian tourist village that has lost business to more popular destinations. The characters, including a despairing mayor and a restaurateur with no diners, bemoan their fates until a truffle hunter discovers that the village is sitting on a giant truffle, the unearthing of which could either save or destroy it. Seattle-based Buxton, who turned the apocalypse and a crow into comic gold in “Hollow Kingdom,” moves on to kinder, gentler territory with this follow-up. Jan. 28