Amid winter’s deep chill we all yearn for an engrossing book and a fireside chair—or at least a quilt or electric blanket. February’s the month to hunker down with literary equivalents of Valentine’s Day chocolates, escaping from ice-glazed sidewalks into new worlds. The most exciting books coming out this month engage across genres: diaspora fictions; fantastical adventures; poignant memoirs; even a Nobel laureate’s readings of canonical authors.
Here, the 10 new books you should read in February.
The End of Romance, Lily Meyer (Feb. 3)
Sylvie Broder, the protagonist of Lily Meyer’s dark valentine of a novel, flees an abusive marriage and her family’s Holocaust-inflected history by indulging in flings that require minimal, if any, commitment—pleasures “without rules.” While pursuing a graduate degree at the University of Virginia, she treats herself to a buffet of men, but the tables turn on her romantic life when she falls in love with two different people: the large-hearted Robbie and the charismatic Abie. Meyer conjures a hothouse of academic passion and political tumult in one woman’s quest for self-acceptance.
Language as Liberation, Toni Morrison (Feb. 3)
We’ve long known the late Toni Morrison as a Nobel Prize-winning novelist and an astute cultural critic. Here we engage her as a scholar in a collection of Princeton University lectures enriched by marginalia, a beguiling testament to a prodigious mind in motion. American literature has been shaped by streams of influences from an array of continents and peoples, a “chaos” of imagery and rhythms as vibrant and volatile as the nation itself. Taking stock of works from writers like Herman Melville, William Faulkner, and Gertrude Stein, Morrison probes the “powerful presence of Africanist personae, discourse, and narrative” within our emerging canon.
Good People, Patmeena Sabit (Feb. 3)
In her propulsive debut novel, Patmeena Sabit tells of the Sharaf family’s odyssey from a war-pillaged Afghanistan to the affluent suburbs of northern Virginia, where they check off the American Dream list: high incomes, a luxurious home, and prestigious schools, with Zorah, the eldest daughter, casting a special glow across the expatriate community. Then a devastating tragedy scuttles those aspirations. Sabit eschews linear plot for a pastiche of perspective and genres—police procedural, diaspora narrative—reflecting the uneasy upheavals of our era while skewering common moral hypocrisies.
The Renovation, Kenan Orhan (Feb. 10)
An immigrant from Istanbul to Italy, Dilara is consumed with supporting her elderly father and emotionally fragile husband while overseeing a renovation of her bathroom, “slapdash sounds of tools clattering into their boxes and bags, a shushing bit of broom-work.” After the laborers finish, she steps into “the perfect tableau of a prison cell,” similar to a notorious jail in her home city. Then her men and her apartment reappear and all seems normal again . . . until it isn’t. Kenan Orhan unspools an eerie, evocative allegory that (literally) spans East and West.
Rebel English Academy, Mohammed Hanif (Feb. 17)
Pakistan, 1979: in the wake of the execution of its former Prime Minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the young nation is a cauldron of martial law and political confusion. The citizens of OK Town believe Bhutto is alive and will set his country right, a kind of hysteria that seeps into an English-language school whose head shelters a woman targeted by a government official, Captain Gul, determined to quash unrest. But Gul’s desires get in his way. Mohammed Hanif’s elegant, tensile novel exposes the long shadow of colonialism in a fable beautifully tailored to resonate in 2026.
American Struggle, Jon Meacham (Feb. 17)
As the nation’s 250th birthday approaches, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham curates an anthology of the American experiment through the writings of a diverse cast, among them the enslaved (and eventually emancipated) poet Phillis Wheatley; the railsplitter who saved the Union, Abraham Lincoln; and Brooklyn’s Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress. Meacham surveys the U.S.’s dark underbelly as well. He highlights inflammatory language from hero-turned-Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh; professional segregationist George Wallace; and present-day political leaders. “Anxiety and its manifestations ebb and flow in the public square,” Meacham writes in his introduction; he argues that it’s our sacred duty as citizens to navigate its currents and riptides.
A Hymn to Life, Gisèle Pelicot (Feb. 17)
In 2020, as Covid sprinted across the globe like a brushfire, Gisèle Pelicot grappled with an inexplicable crisis: she discovered that her husband of 50 years, Dominique, had orchestrated a succession of men to rape her while she was sedated. In her memoir, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver, Pelicot writes of how she recoiled from police photographs in disbelief; she only wanted back her retired bourgeois life in the South of France, a “little yellow house with blue shutters,” and her intimate roles of wife, mother, and grandmother. Four years later, she waived her right to anonymity in court to give voice to survivors of sexual violence everywhere. Hers is an odyssey through profound betrayal and dismay to becoming a fiery Marianne on the barricades, leading the charge for sweeping legal change.
The Astral Library, Kate Quinn (Feb. 17)
Raised in foster care with a knack for “poverty math,” Alix Watson, the 20-something narrator of Kate Quinn’s affecting fantasy novel, works as a part-time shelver at Boston’s Public Library. Homeless, she’s hunkering down there when she discovers a portal into a mirror library whose books are themselves doors into a chain of worlds, governed by their own rules and logic. With the help of the Astral Librarian, she darts between literary realms—Sherlock Holmes’ foggy London, Huck Finn’s Mississippi River—even as peril intrudes. The latest from the author of The Alice Network is a love letter to the seductive sorcery of books.
Unread, Oliver James (Feb. 24)
Over the decades, literacy rates have waxed and waned, depending on who had access to quality education; today tens of millions of Americans have graduated from high school unable to read simple declarative sentences. Oliver James, a personal trainer, faked it until 2021 when he announced in a TikTok post: ”What’s up? I can’t read.” went viral, and James began documenting his experience learning to read. In Unread, he charts his journey to a new self via 21 books that helped him unlock the mysteries of the written word, from E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl and Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist.
Kin, Tayari Jones (Feb. 24)
The bond of two motherless Black women, Vernice and Annie, anchors Tayari Jones’ bracing, textured follow-up to An American Marriage. Both raised in the Louisiana countryside, one leaves home in search of the mother who left her behind, while the other heads to the prestigious Spelman College. Along the way, both Vernice and Annie discover that the so-called New South retains fragments of the old, with racial and class tensions still flaring. There’s romantic longing and a desperate need to belong in Jones’s tale as she explores revelations at the heart of a lifelong friendship.
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