Like Dan Brown’s Inferno, The Ninth Circle finds inspiration in Dante’s classic work. This novel, though, follows young man’s coming-of-age as he travels with a circus through nine states, falls in love with the Bearded Lady, and encounters performers who possess magical abilities along the way.

While The Ninth Circle is film-exec-turned-editor Brendan Deneen’s first prose novel, he’s already an established graphic novelist and playwright, having written Scatterbrain and contributed to Flash Gordon and Casper the Friendly Ghost. At Macmillan Publisher’s, Deneen edits The Walking Dead novels by Robert Kirkman and the novelized sequel to the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All.