Books We Can't Wait to Read: February 2023
February is fast approaching and we have another list of fiction and nonfiction books we can’t wait to read this month.
Fiction
Brutes by Dizz Tate — February 7 (Catapult)
Through a darkly beautiful and brutally compelling lens, Dizz Tate captures the violence, horrors, and manic joys of girlhood. Brutes is a novel about the seemingly unbreakable bonds in the "we" of young friendship, and the moment it is broken forever.
A Spell of Good Things by Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ — February 7 (Knopf)
A dazzling story of modern Nigeria and two families caught in the riptides of wealth, power, romantic obsession, and political corruption from the celebrated author of Stay with Me, "in the lineage of great works by Chinua Achebe and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie" (The New York Times).
When Trying to Return Home: Stories by Jennifer Maritza McCauley— February 7 (Counterpoint)
A dazzling debut collection spanning a century of Black American and Afro-Latino life in Puerto Rico, Pittsburgh, Louisiana, Miami, and beyond--and an evocative meditation on belonging, the meaning of home, and how we secure freedom on our own terms.
Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly— February 7 (Algonquin Books)
An accessible, character-driven story set in 2003 New York City about a genderqueer book conservator who feels trapped by her gender presentation, her ill-fitting relationship, and her artistic block, as she discovers a decades-old hidden queer love letter and becomes obsessed with tracking down its author.
Don't Fear the Reaper by Stephen Graham Jones — February 7 (Saga Press)
December 12th, 2019, Jade returns to the rural lake town of Proofrock the same day as convicted Indigenous serial killer Dark Mill South escapes into town to complete his revenge killings, in this riveting sequel to My Heart Is a Chainsaw from New York Times bestselling author, Stephen Graham Jones.
Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell — February 7 (Hogarth Press)
A woman's mysterious death puts her husband and son on a collision course with her demonic family in the first novel to be translated into English by the International Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Dangers of Smoking in Bed--"the most exciting discovery I've made in fiction for some time" (Kazuo Ishiguro).
Big Swiss by Jen Beagin — February 7 (Scribner)
A brilliantly original and funny novel about a sex therapist's transcriptionist who falls in love with a client while listening to her sessions. When they accidentally meet in real life, an explosive affair ensues.
Stealing by Margaret Verble— February 7 (Mariner Books)
A gripping, gut-punch of a novel about a Cherokee child removed from her family and sent to a Christian boarding school in the 1950s--an ambitious, eye-opening reckoning of history and small-town prejudices from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble.
My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin — February 14 ( Henry Holt & Company)
An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman's final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos--and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.
I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai — February 21 (Viking)
In I Have Some Questions for You, award-winning author Rebecca Makkai has crafted her most irresistible novel yet: a stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman's reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart. Timely, hypnotic, and populated with a cast of unforgettable characters, I Have Some Questions for You is at once a compulsive page-turner and a literary triumph.
Your Driver Is Waiting by Priya Guns — February 28 (Doubleday Books)
In this electrifyingly fierce and funny social satire--a gender-flipped reboot of the iconic 1970s film Taxi Driver--a ride share driver is barely holding it together on the hunt for love, dignity, and financial security...until she decides she's done waiting.
An Autobiography of Skin by Lakiesha Carr — February 28 (Pantheon Books)
An Autobiography of Skin is a dazzling and masterful portrait of interconnected generations in the South from a singular new voice, offering a raw and tender view into the interior lives of Black women. It is at once a powerful look at how experiences are carried inside the body, inside the flesh and skin, and a joyous testament to how healing can be found within--in love, mercy, gratitude, and freedom.
Nonfiction
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H — February 7 (Dial Press)
A queer hijabi Muslim immigrant survives her coming-of-age by drawing strength and hope from stories in the Quran in this daring, provocative, and radically hopeful memoir.
Wanting: Women Writing about Desire, edited by Margot Kahn and Kelly McMasters — February 14 (Catapult)
An intimate and empowering anthology of essays that explore the changing face of female desire in whip-smart, sensuous prose, with pieces by Tara Conklin, Camille Dungy, Melissa Febos, Lisa Taddeo, and others.
Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear by Erica Berry — February 21 (Flatiron Books)
For fans of Helen MacDonald's H is for Hawk and Mary Roach, Erica Berry's WOLFISH blends science, history, and cultural criticism in a years-long journey to understand our myths about wolves, and track one legendary wolf, OR-7, from the Wallowa Mountains of Oregon.
Sink: A Memoir by Joseph Earl Thomas — February 21 (Grand Central Publishing)
In a series of exacting and fierce vignettes, Thomas guides readers through the unceasing cruelty that defined his circumstances, laying bare the depths of his loneliness and illuminating the vital reprieve geek culture offered him. With remarkable tenderness and devastating clarity, he explores how lessons of toxic masculinity were drilled into his body and the way the cycle of violence permeated the very fabric of his environment. Even in the depths of isolation, there were unexpected moments of joy carved out, from summers where he was freed from the injurious structures of his surroundings to the first glimpses of kinship he caught on his journey to becoming a Pokémon master. SINK follows Thomas's coming-of-age towards an understanding of what it means to lose the desire to fit in--with his immediate peers, turbulent family, or the world--and how good it feels to build community, love, and salvation on your own terms.
