10 new books to read in February

In 2022, acclaimed British-Pakistani writer Hanif Kureishi (Buddha Of Suburbia, My Beautiful Laundrette) experienced a devastating fall that left him paralyzed from the neck down. It didn’t stop him from writing, though: While in the hospital, he dictated his thoughts to his wife and sons, publishing a Substack newsletter about his experiences. Those hospital dispatches form the basis of Shattered, Kureishi’s new memoir that explores his fall, his recovery, and how he rebuilt his life in the aftermath.

Virginia Feito burst onto the literary scene in 2021 with her debut novel Mrs. March, displaying an uncanny ability to convey a woman’s psychological unraveling. Her second novel, Victorian Psycho, pushes even further. It does exactly what it says on the tin: Winifred Notty lands a prime gig as the Pounds family’s new governess at their palatial estate in the English countryside. Too bad the parents are vile, the children are brats, and Winifred’s got a secret violent past that she’s not doing a very good job of repressing. A24 has already snatched up the film rights with Margaret Qualley set to star.

Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for his 1997 film Taste Of Cherry. He died in 2016, leaving behind a legacy of highly acclaimed work. In Where Is Abbas Kiarostami? Toward A Postcolonial Film Philosophy, scholar Hamid Dabashi critically examines Kiarostami’s body of work as a whole, proposing a new way of understanding Kiarostami’s films—and film philosophy in general.

In her second novel, People Of Means, Nancy Johnson tells the intersecting stories of Freda, a Black woman attending Fisk University in 1959, and her daughter, Tulip, a rising public relations star in 1992 Chicago. Both Freda and Tulip face critical moments of social change: Freda with the Jim Crow South reaching a boiling point, and Tulip with the Rodney King verdict. They must each decide how to engage with the fight for equality—and what they’re willing to put on the line for it.

If you’re still mourning the loss of BookTok, Brynne Weaver’s latest book will probably only amplify your grief. Scythe And Sparrow is the final novel in the Ruinous Love trilogy; the first two, Butcher And Blackbird and Leather And Lark, were TikTok sensations as readers pored over the delicious, ludicrous premises and plot twists. In the final entry, doctor Fionn Kane is trying to start over in small-town Nebraska after his relationship in Boston falls apart. Rose Evans, a motorcycle stunt performer at a traveling circus, is just looking to let off some steam with a quick murder before getting the hell out of dodge, but she ends up with a broken leg instead. As Fionn nurses her back to health, the two become entangled in a dark romance.

In Nick Newman’s adult fiction debut (he writes children’s books under the name Nicholas Bowling), two sisters live in an isolated garden. They don’t know anything outside its walls; they have only ever known each other and the plants they tend. But when they find a boy hiding inside their sanctuary, they must confront the world outside for the first time.

We’ve only been catching up to the brilliance of Cristina Rivera Garza in the U.S. over the past few years, but she’s been a literary sensation in her native Mexico for decades. English translations of her past works are few and far between, but hopefully that will change soon, given that her 2023 memoir, Liliana’s Invincible Summer: A Sister’s Search For Justice, won the Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography, bringing her international recognition. But even if her archives are slower to get translations, at least we’re getting her latest novel, Death Takes Me, in a timely manner. The book follows a professor—named Cristina Rivera Garza, in a meta twist—who discovers a man’s mutilated corpse and finds herself entangled in the police investigation of a serial killer obsessed with poetry.

In his debut novel, Daniel D’Addario, a chief correspondent at Variety, takes aim at the industry he’s spent years covering. The Talent follows five actresses nominated for the biggest award of the year as they navigate their own professional ambitions while also reckoning with what they owe each other. The sudden spotlight from their nominations forces each of them to do some serious self-reflection, leading to uncomfortable revelations and existential questions about the nature of fame.