5 New Books to Read in February to Crush Your Winter Blues

The award-winning author of Glassworks is back with a captivating queer love story set in Gilded Age New York, Weaving a tale of ambition, secrecy, and unconventional love, the novel focuses on three people from very different backgrounds: Vivian Lesperance, Oscar Schmidt, and Squire Clancy as they navigate capitalism, gendered expectations, and the soap business. Vivian reaches the pinnacle of power building Clancy & Schmidt while operating behind the image of both men, but when exposure threatens them, they all become aware of how much they have to lose. The prose is lush and evocative, reminiscent of Fitzgerald with a Shakespearean chorus that moves the story along. The story seeps with possibility and you’ll soon fall in love with the cast of odd and honest souls. We never expected to be so captivated by the ins and outs of the early 20th-century soap market, but we were hanging on every word. —Gigi Clarke

When we meet Abe and Jane, Jane is on her death bed and they’re spending her final days recounting their fifty years together: the good, the bad, and the park that saw them through it all. From the outside their love story seems like a fairy tale two artists create a life together buoyed by love and creativity, finding success in their respective fields and a home in the changing seasons of Central Park. But telling their story—to themselves and each other—means telling it all: Jane’s postpartum depression and strained relationship with their son and Abe’s affair with his student. The lyrical novel plays with perspective, most chapters include what the couple recalled from Abe’s perspective with Jane referred to as “you,” but it also lends full and empathetic points of view to Jane, their son, the young student in love with Abe, and even—between each changed perspective— the voice of Central Park itself and the eclectic cast of other lovers who have called its brambling paths their own. A love letter to the panorama of life—and love—in New York City. —Elena Cavender

This August will mark the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and this captivating debut finally captures the catastrophe on a scale that is at once human and global, following the ripples of impact through an individual family and across the international stage, Faced with a prophecy that if her daughter, Amina, follows her dream of leaving Ibadan, Nigeria for the United States, she’ll be met with grave danger, Esther makes the heavy decision to let her go when she wins a visa lottery. Amina settles in New Orleans and works hard to build a life for herself and her own daughter—only to have it washed away by the famous floodwaters and the subsequent disastrous failure at the Superdome. Weaving together traditional Yorbu religion with modern disaster, the narrative moves seamlessly between the distinctive voices of the mother, the daughter, and Iyanifa, the Nigerian high priestess who acts as a “conduit of the Oracle of Knowledge.” Despite its grave subject matter, The Edge of Water lingers on moments of hope and beauty ultimately telling a powerful story of mother-daughter love. —E.C

The latest from the queen of romantic realism is an unlikely, second-chance love story set in a crowded house in the “leafy part” of North London. At its start, nothing is going Lila Kennedy’s way. Facing the humiliation of publishing a self-help book detailing how to repair your marriage just weeks before her husband left her for another school mom, Lila is determined to start dating ASAP so that she can bounce back with a sexy memoir about how fulfilling middle-aged, single life can be. But while she’s trying to find space in her life for a new man, she has to find space in her house for two old ones: her health-nut stepdad, reeling from her mother’s recent death, and her biological father, a washed-up, cash-strapped former actor. On her “healing journey,” she encounters a rugged gardener and an elusive school dad and grapples with turning her life into sellable stories. Moyes paints a vibrant, blended family teeming with humorous situations and heartfelt insight. It’s perfect for those familiar with the oddities of living with aging relatives and those seeking love amidst life’s chaos. —E.C.

Bamford’s eerie debut novel takes place during a single day in June of 1989, when the youngest of ten cousins vanishes during a family birthday party and the remaining nine venture into the woods behind the house. Switching between the perspectives of the adults and the children, we see strange shapes emerge in the woods, begin to piece together family secrets, and must, as readers, choose who to believe. Told in poetic, semi-collective narration, Idle Grounds is a chilling exploration of privilege, memory, and the unsettling weight of inherited history. It’s a spiraling tale that you’ll feel compelled to finish in one sitting, quick-moving and innovative. Bamford shines light into the inner lives of children- their strange fixations and values—and makes you feel like a child yourself, immersed in a world where everything feels a bit scary and a bit magical. —G.C