“My hope for this book is that people are inspired either to discover or rediscover Dante. And, if all goes well, they will simultaneously appreciate some of the incredible art that Dante has inspired for the last 700 years” – Dan Brown

After an anxious wait for his fans Dan Brown finally published his new Robert Langdon novel, Inferno, today.

His huge hit bestseller The Da Vinci Code was published in 2003 and sold 80 million copies worldwide. Since that publication his fans have been furiously trying to discern where the next novel would take place. Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon is once again on a mission in Inferno, this time to prevent a deadly virus from spreading around the globe. He visits historical landmarks in Florence, Venice and Istanbul and has to decipher mysterious codes that allude to passages from Dante.

The plot for Inferno has been kept so secret that 11 people working on translations were reportedly confined to an underground bunker in Italy.

There is no doubt that this will be the hottest book of the year. Buy a copy now from your local Collins Booksellers store or online.

The book trade received exciting news today with Ben Ball, the Publishing Director at Penguin Books Australia announcing that Tim Winton will publish a new novel on the 14th of October.

Here is part of that announcement….

“I’m delighted to be able to announce that on October 14 this year we will be publishing a new novel by Tim Winton, his first since the Miles Franklin Award-winning Breath. Each new work from Tim is a major event in Australian publishing and a privilege to be involved with. Eyrie is one of the very few books I’ve ever read that can genuinely be said to change the way you look at the world. It goes straight at the big questions, and like the greatest contemporary novels, expands its readers’ understanding of what it’s like to be alive now.

Eyrie tells the story of Tom Keely, a man who’s lost his bearings in middle age and is now holed up in a flat at the top of a grim highrise, looking down on the world he’s fallen out of love with. He’s cut himself off, until one day he runs into some neighbours: a woman he used to know when they were kids, and her introverted young boy. The encounter shakes him up in a way he doesn’t understand. Despite himself, Keely lets them in. What follows is a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times – funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting – populated by unforgettable characters. It asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing.” – Ben Ball, Publishing Director, Penguin Books Australia

Winton is one of Australia’s most esteemed writers and one of our most loved. He has penned many works for both adults and children, with his works being adapted for stage and screen.

Most recently Winton’s novel Cloudstreet was voted by the public to the number one spot on The First Tuesday Book Club poll of the ’10 Aussie books you must read before you die’. In 1995, Winton’s The Riders was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction, as later was his 2002 book, Dirt Music. Both are currently being adapted for film. He has won many other prizes, including the Miles Franklin Award a record four times: for Shallows (1984), Cloudstreet (1992), Dirt Music (2002) and Breath (2009).

Now we begin the excited countdown to October 14th and the release of Eyrie.