To be honest, my list for this year’s anticipated titles already numbers in the dozens, but these 10 currently stick out, for various reasons. In no particular order…

• THE BOOK OF THE DEAD – Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child promise to tie up all the loose ends of BRIMSTONE and DANCE OF DEATH with this concluding chapter of their Agent Pendergast trilogy, which they say was really like one big book broken into three. That’s made the wait even harder. I have yet to read anything these guys have written that I didn’t love. (June 6)

• DEAN KOONTZ’S FRANKENSTEIN: BOOK THREE – We don’t know its subtitle. We don’t know who’s co-writing it. We don’t even know when exactly it’s coming out. But given that we loved BOOK ONE and BOOK TWO, we know we’ll eat it up just as soon as it arrives. Quite possibly my favorite book series of this decade. (Summerish)

• CELL – Because it’s about cell phones that turn people into zombies. But mostly because it marks Stephen King’s return to his pure-horror roots. (Jan. 24)

• TWISTED – As you may have read, we found Jay Bonansinga’s chilling FROZEN to be the best paperback original of the year. TWISTED will continue the strange, supernatural-science investigations of FBI profiler Ulysses Grove, this time involving a hurricane (timely, no?). (Summer)

• THRILLER: STORIES TO KEEP YOU UP ALL NIGHT – It’s no secret I love a good anthology, and this one has a lineup that makes me salivate: the aforementioned Preston & Child, F. Paul Wilson, David Morrell, Ted Bell, Lee Child … damn, we’re going to be spoiled. Even if it weren’t the first all-thriller anthology as it proclaims itself to be, it’d still be special. (May 22)

• THE SOLOMON KEY – Here’s the one book I wouldn’t be surprised get pushed to 2007: Dan Brown’s sequel to THE DA VINCI CODE, a small novel that has quietly struggled to find an audience. Little is known about SOLOMON, except that it’s another adventure for DA VINCI’s Prof. Robert Langdon and involves Freemasonry. Even in the face of all the recent backlash, I’m not ashamed to say I loved DA VINCI for the fun, fast ride that it was. (Before Christmas)

• SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY: VOL. 1 – I have to put one graphic novel on this list, and hands down, that honor goes to Grant Morrison’s SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY. Because I don’t buy single-issue comic books, I’ve missed out on Morrison’s bizarro-fantasy-epic-mythology-revisionist project, comprised of seven four-part limited series, each focused on a different character, including such obscure DC characters as The Bulleteer, Mr. Miracle, Zatanna, Shining Knight and Frankenstein. This will collect the first bunch of issues. I’m anxious to see how it all plays out, especially since a stand-alone issue #0 kicking off the series introduced a bunch of characters, only to kill them off on the last page by a giant spider. (Jan. 11)

• THE MYTH HUNTERS – I’m a little leery when authors say, “Here’s Book One of my new series!” After all, what if no one bites? As with any, that could happen with Christopher Golden’s THE MYTH HUNTERS, but I doubt it. It just sounds too cool, a dark fantasy melding of murder and myth – in this case, Jack Frost. (Jan. 31)

• GRIMM REAPINGS – This is R. Patrick Gates’ long-awaited sequel to GRIMM MEMORIALS, a horror novel so whacked-out and out-there that I’d call it the best horror novel of 2005, if only it weren’t originally released 15 years prior. I’m not sure how he’s going to pull off another one, but with all that haggard witch sex trickery from the first time around, I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. (February)

• HORROR: THE BEST OF 2005 – So long overdue it hurts. (February)

And what about you?