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Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
11 New Books to Read in February
Credit - Spend the shortest month of the year with a book that is worth your time. The best new books to read in February include best-seller Ali Hazelwood's latest romance, transgender activist Jennifer Finney Boylan's second memoir, and Virginia Feito's blood-soaked sophomore novel about a sociopathic governess. Get ready to fall in love with critic Sarah Chihaya's debut memoir, which looks at her obsession with books, or Cristina Rivera Garza's subversive thriller about a poetry-obsessed serial killer. Allegra Goodman uses the true story of Marguerite de La Rocque, a French noblewoman who was abandoned in 16th century Canada, as inspiration for her new novel, Isola. And Rich Benjamin's debut memoir is a deeply reported love letter to his mom, the daughter of Haitian politician Daniel Fignolé. Here, the 11 new books you should read in February. In 2003, Jennifer Finney Boylan released her groundbreaking first memoir She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, which chronicled the earliest years of her gender transition. More than two decades later, she is once again reflecting on what it means to be a trans person in America. With Cleavage, her new memoir-in-essays, she examines the growing gender divide at this critical juncture in the U.S. She reflects on the differences between manhood and womanhood as she has experienced them since her transition in 2000, as well as the experiences of those who exist outside the binary, in hopes of narrowing the gap between us all. Buy Now: Cleavage on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble In 2019, essayist Sarah Chihaya had a nervous breakdown that coincided with a bout of the titular anxiety disorder, which causes someone to have an intense and irrational fear of books and writing. With her memoir, Chihaya explores her lifelong struggle with mental illness and obsession with books—specifically those she refers to as 'Life Ruiners,' the literature that became integral to her being, sometimes in a negative way. She shares how those books, which range from Anne of Green Gables to The Last Samurai, fueled her descent into madness — and how they helped her find her way out. Buy Now: Bibliophobia on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Virginia Feito's grisly follow-up to her 2021 debut, Mrs. March, centers on a sociopathic English governess with a taste for vengeance. When Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House, she plans to do nothing more than teach the children how to read and write. But as Christmas rolls around, she succumbs to her bloodthirsty ways in this tongue-in-cheek thriller set to become an A24 film starring The Substance's Margaret Qualley. Buy Now: Victorian Psycho on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Three years after the release of her best-selling novel, Sam, Allegra Goodman returns with a thrilling tale of resilience inspired by the true story of Marguerite de La Rocque, the 16th-century French noblewoman who was abandoned on a deserted island. In Isola, Marguerite's jealous guardian accuses her of having an affair with his servant. He dumps her and her lover on a hidden isle off the coast of Canada that is full of polar bears and little else. In order to survive, Marguerite must do what she's never had to before: fend for herself. Buy Now: Isola on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Take a dive into the Deep End, Ali Hazelwood's steamy new romance set in the world of collegiate swimming. Scarlett Vandermeer is a talented Stanford diver who is recovering from an injury that almost ended her career and far too busy studying to become a doctor to even think about dating. That is, until she meets Lukas Blomqvist, a popular competitive swimmer and her best friend's former crush. They couldn't be more different on paper—he's the life of the party, she's more likely to be found in the library—but they both share an interest in BDSM. When the two embark upon a mutually beneficial and consensual sexual relationship, Scarlett questions whether she's looking for more than just a good time. Buy Now: Deep End on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble With his debut essay collection, Pure Innocent Fun, Ira Madison III takes the pop culture that made him who he is today very seriously. Across 16 essays, the critic, TV writer, and host of the Keep It podcast writes about the effect Oprah's weight-loss odyssey, Jennifer Hudson's American Idol loss, and his genuine love of Coldplay had on him while growing up as a gay Black man in Milwaukee. As he gives new consideration to the cultural touchstones of his youth, he explores how each helped him find his critical voice as an adult. Buy Now: Pure Innocent Fun on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble In his debut memoir, Talk to Me, cultural critic Rich Benjamin unearths the secrets of his family's hidden past in hopes of better understanding his mother. In 1957, a coup ended the presidency of his grandfather, the Haitian folk hero Daniel Fignolé, and shattered the lives of the entire family. But no one, including Benjamin's mom, an advocate for children who was often cold to her own son, ever talked about the events of that time. Through intense research, Benjamin looks to understand the far-reaching consequences of the devastating political event. Buy Now: Talk to Me on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Alligator Tears, the follow-up to Edgar Gomez's 2022 memoir, High-Risk Homesexual, offers a look at the author's experience growing up poor, queer, and Latinx in Florida. Across 10 essays, he chronicles years of working thankless jobs, including a stint as a flip-flop salesman, and the difficult choices his family had to make to get by, including whether or not to call an ambulance they knew they couldn't afford. Throughout the book, he also shares how he was able to crawl his way out of poverty through a mix of hard, often low-paying work and more than a few well-timed scams. Buy Now: Alligator Tears on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Kelsey McKinney, the former host of the Normal Gossip podcast, uses her latest book to explore society's obsession with hearsay — and why that's not such a bad thing. Well, until it is. You Didn't Hear This From Me, a mix of cultural criticism, modern history, and personal memoir, breaks down the differences between harmless rumors and outright lies in order to show the important role gossip plays in human connection. Buy Now: You Didn't Hear This From Me on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble With The World After Gaza, award-winning journalist Pankaj Mishra looks to reevaluate, recontextualize, and reframe the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. He does this by taking a closer look at how the Holocaust became a way for the U.S. and other Western nations to justify Israel's actions. From there, Mishra explores how the selective reading of global history is hardening us to the tragedies happening not only in Gaza, but also all around the world. Buy Now: The World After Gaza on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza's 2007 lyrical novel, newly translated from the original Spanish by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker, is a serial killer tale with a twist. Death Takes Me begins with a literature professor finding the body of a mutilated man only to discover that she has an odd connection to the crime scene. The police find lines of poetry from the late real-life Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, who she has studied for years. As more bodies pile up, the professor is enlisted to help catch the poetry-obsessed murderer. But when she starts receiving cryptic notes from the mysterious killer, she begins to worry that she could be the next victim. Buy Now: Death Takes Me on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Contact us at letters@
New York Times
30-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
20 Books Coming in February
Gliff Briar and Rose, the teenage siblings at the center of Smith's latest novel, may have fairy-tale names, but their world is a sinister version of our own, where citizens deemed undesirable are labeled 'Unverifiables.' Squatting in an abandoned house, the siblings must navigate this digitally advanced surveillance state's cruelties alone, discovering, in Smith's characteristically brainy tale — the first in a two-book series — small means of resistance and hope. Source Code The title promises the origin story of a programming whiz, but Gates's memoir — the first of a projected three — incorporates plenty of analog detail along with the digital as he retraces a Seattle boyhood steeped in hiking, camping, competitive card-playing (under the tutelage of a grandmother who'd intuitively mastered 'probabilities, decision trees and game theory') and his auspicious friendships with a posse of preternaturally gifted young men who saw the future of computing in a lumbering 1960s mainframe. Isola A 16th-century French noblewoman and her lover are abandoned on a Canadian island in Goodman's historical novel. Orphaned at the age of 3, the woman is the heir to a fortune — until she is cheated of her inheritance by her cruel guardian and marooned. With grim prospects in an Arctic climate, she and her partner must find ways to survive the winter and hold out hope for rescue. Memorial Days Brooks and her husband, Tony Horwitz, had been reporters in war zones, but nothing prepared her for his sudden death, at just 60, after three decades together. Four years later, she journeyed to a remote island near Tasmania 'to do the unfinished work of grieving.' This memoir is her report back, at once a spare accounting of tragic detail and an appreciation of the healing properties of solitude. Cleavage In her latest memoir, Boylan opens up about aging, parenthood and marriage — and the differences between coming out as trans in 2000 and today, with gender on the front lines of political debate. Boylan has a unique perspective, having navigated the world in two genders, and she augments her own experience with a big-picture examination of what it means to be who you are. Soft Core Mordant and sharp-eyed, Ruth is a stripper new to the scene who coolly observes the neon-lit club where she works, and the gentrifying San Francisco where she plays, in Newell's second novel. The author, a Bay Area professional dominatrix, serves up insider details — the ground rules of the dressing room are especially rich — and stirs in a mystery: Why does Ruth (stage name Baby) keep seeing her missing ex-boyfriend all over town? The Bones Beneath My Skin Everything in Nate's life is going wrong — his parents are dead, his journalism career in shambles — when he arrives at his family's old vacation cabin hoping to escape. Instead, he is greeted by a strange little girl and a wounded man who holds him at gunpoint. After forming a begrudging alliance with the intruders, Nate finds himself caught up in a web of car chases, government conspiracies and alien encounters, all wrapped around a heartwarming story of love and found family set in the 1990s. Rogues and Scholars This rollicking history of the modern London art market takes us from World War II to the present day, charting the shift from a business of decorous private transactions to the glitz, hype and rivalry we know today. Stourton, a longtime director at Sotheby's UK, brings an insider's authority to this story of big money, bigger egos and great art. Shattered The British writer Kureishi fell and injured himself in 2022 while in Rome; when he came to, he was almost completely paralyzed. This memoir tracks his grueling, humiliating and eventually inspiring recovery in wide-ranging dispatches, which are filled with dark humor and musings on his past and on life's many unpredictable events. Stone Yard Devotional Wood's Booker Prize-nominated novel is finally coming to the United States this month. The book follows an unnamed woman who absconds from her life to live at a remote convent in Australia. Once there, a series of dramas — including a plague of mice, the return of a beloved nun's remains after her tragic death and the appearance of a former classmate — all unsettle her understanding of peace and grace. Casualties of Truth A brutal history lesson in the guise of a thriller, Francis-Sharma's third novel, about the horrific legacies of South African apartheid, jumps back and forth between 1996 Johannesburg and 2018 Washington, D.C., where the wife in a wealthy Black 'power couple' encounters a shadowy figure from her past. Beneath the tightly plotted narrative, the author explores the nature and function of amnesty and human rights. Booster Shots Ratner, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist, has written a must-read on one of the major crises of our time: vaccine skepticism. Focusing on the history of measles, Ratner combines patient narrative and scientific research to examine the successful fight against this deadly childhood disease, the decreasing trust in government that has led to its preventable resurgence, and how we can — and must — correct course. Three Days in June How do divorced, socially awkward parents navigate their daughter's wedding weekend? Ask Anne Tyler. Her latest novel unfolds in the lead-up to the nuptials of Gail and Max Baines's only child. The pair approach the celebration as outsiders while puzzling over an 11th-hour bombshell that might derail the whole affair. Throw in a homeless cat and an exclusive spa day and you have the blueprint for a short, bittersweet Tyler original. Lorne 'Saturday Night Live' turns 50 this year, making it one of the longest-running shows on network television. But the man who created and still produces it, 80-year-old Lorne Michaels, whose distinctive brand of deadpan conceptual humor revolutionized American comedy, remains an elusive figure. For this panoramic biography, Morrison, the articles editor for The New Yorker, interviewed hundreds of writers and stars, along with Michaels himself, yielding an enthralling portrait of this country's pre-eminent maestro of funny. Nesting A mother of two young daughters (with a third child on the way) tries to escape a violent household in this Irish novelist's debut. Though he's the breadwinner of the family, Ciara's husband has taken away far more than he's provided: her financial and physical autonomy, her children's safety, her ability to trust herself. The novel deftly portrays an insidious aspect of domestic abuse: It's one thing to decide to leave, and it's another to maintain the strength to stay away. Nothing Serious By many measures, old college friends Edie and Peter seem destined to end up together. But this debut rom-com keeps putting obstacles in their way: behaving like siblings, crummy online dates, the dazzle of tech money, anxiety about middle age — and a mysterious death. Crush A polyamory tale for Generation X, Calhoun's autobiographical debut novel is about an unnamed Brooklyn writer who receives permission, even encouragement, from her husband to kiss other men. Discovering new aspects of pleasure and desire in middle age, she spends the rest of the book trying not to cheat on him with a hot, nerdy professor with whom she exchanges obscure and protracted emails about unconsummated love and Nietzsche. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This In this bracing memoir and manifesto, El Akkad examines the American and European responses to the Hamas-led massacre on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent devastation in Gaza, while looking back on his own life as a war correspondent and Arab immigrant in the West. With precision and passion, he compels readers to close the emotional distance between 'us' and 'them' and to consider the immense suffering of civilians with renewed urgency. Death Takes Me In 2024, Rivera Garza won a Pulitzer Prize for her memoir about her sister's murder. Now she returns to the subject of femicide from a new angle: a novel about a professor who is roped into a police investigation after a series of men are castrated and murdered. At the scene of each crime are feminist poems, each issuing warnings and raising questions of justice, violence and retribution. Air-Borne What is in the air we breathe? That is the question Zimmer, an award-winning New York Times science writer, sets out to answer in this brisk, lyrical tour of aerobiology — from germ warfare and the identification of airborne viruses to the proliferation of Covid and lifesaving discoveries that lend color and shape to the invisible.
