Well, that was the longest January ever…
But February always arrives sooner or later, and thankfully we have plenty to look forward to when it comes to new books. From a number of exciting debuts, gothic tales, and releases from some of our favorite Chicago authors, the shortest month of the year is absolutely packed to the brim for readers.
Ready to find your next literary love? Check out some of the books we’re eagerly anticipating!
Original Sins: The (Mis)Education of Black and Native Children and the Construction of American Racism
By Eve L. Ewing
One World
We are huge fans of Eve L. Ewing’s work here at the Chicago Review of Books, and for obvious reasons. Ewing is one of Chicago’s most important living writers, chronicling the sociological makeup of our city and modern America. In Original Sins, she turns her attention to the American education system and the ways in which it has been weaponized to create and uphold racial hierarchies, in turn preparing children to expect unequal treatment throughout their lives. Like all of her work, Ewing is both decisive and incisive in her critique, arguing that within the DNA of our American schools sits an insidious mechanism to maintain inequality in our society.
People of Means
By Nancy Johnson
William Morrow & Company
Chicago author Nancy Johnson follows up her delightful debut The Kindest Lie with People of Means, a thrilling literary journey about a mother and daughter seeking justice and following their dreams in 1960s Nashville and 1990s Chicago. This time-spanning trip follows two unforgettable women who face the ugliness of racism and injustice to forge a new path forward for themselves and their family. Johnson’s writing is consistently compelling, and People of Means follows this trend—get comfortable, because you’re sure to fly through it once you start reading.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
By Omar El Akkad
Knopf Publishing Group
Three weeks after the bombardment of Gaza began, Omar El Akkad tweeted “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have been against this.” His latest book, which expands upon this poignant message, is an urgent call for justice throughout the world and a deconstruction of the lies that exist within the promises offered by the West. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is both vulnerable and necessary, calling together those who want something better than what the West has served up to continue the fight for a more just future.
True Failure
By Alex Higley
Coffee House Press
Ben just lost his job, but chooses to not tell his wife Tara. Instead of going to work, he decides to devote his time to auditioning for a widely popular reality TV show known as Big Shot, where he’ll have the chance to pitch his unique entrepreneurial idea. Alex Higley’s True Failure is a raucous romp with an anti-capitalist edge, cutting deep into the inadequacies of modern life and the hollow center of living your life believing that we are destined to either be successes or failures.
Bear County, Michigan: Stories
By John Counts
Triquarterly Books
Bear County, Michigan is simultaneously familiar and utterly new in its sharp execution. In these darkly funny and deeply felt stories, John Counts takes readers to an unforgettable fictional Great Lakes coastal town in northern Michigan and introduces us to a cast of characters who are desperate to make a life out of what little has been offered to them. It has long been an open secret that the Michigan literary scene is filled with undeniable literary talent, and with Bear County, Michigan, John Counts announces it from the rooftops. Counts is a prime example of Michigan’s modern literary renaissance.
A Forty Year Kiss
By Nickolas Butler
Sourcebooks Landmark
Make your way north to Wisconsin in Nickolas Butler’s latest novel. When Charlie returns to the state forty years after divorcing Vivian, he must try to reconnect with his ex-wife in hopes of picking up the broken pieces of their past. But with forty years of separation comes forty years of new relationships, new opportunities, and bitter old memories left to sour. A Forty Year Kiss is utterly charming and hopeful even in its darkest moments, making for an entertaining love story you’re sure to enjoy.
Gliff
By Ali Smith
Pantheon Books
Ali Smith is well known for resisting the constraints of genre, and in Gliff she once again aims high and reaches the peak of possibility in fiction. At its heart, Gliff is about an uncertain near future, two children, and a horse. What else, you ask? Well, you’ll just have to see. Ali Smith’s work is better experienced than described, and in her latest she perfectly captures the feeling of transience and uncertain new beginnings.
The Lamb
By Lucy Rose
Harper
Part folk tale, horror story, and love story all in one, The Lamb is truly a spectacular stew. The novel follows Margot and Mama, who live by a forest and collect people who stray too far from the road. But Mama’s appetite is insatiable, and ultimately she picks apart their bodies before they can leave. When they take in Eden, Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family and make a bid for her freedom. The Lamb is a shocking and surreal gothic tale that will leave you glued to the passing pages.
Waiting for the Long Night Moon
By Amanda Peters
Catapult
We may be jumping ahead a bit, but we anticipate that Amanda Peters’s book will be one of the best short story collections of 2025. Waiting for the Long Night Moon explores the Indigenous experience from a wide perspective in time and space—from contact with the first European settlers to the forced removal of Indigenous children and the present-day fight for the right to clean water. This memorable collection doesn’t shy away from the full spectrum of emotion. At times sad and disturbing, Waiting for the Long Night Moon is always redemptive and unafraid to find the possibilities for joy within a long history of grief.
Covert Joy
By Clarice Lispector
New Directions
If you haven’t yet read the greatest Brazilian writer of the twentieth century, now is your perfect opportunity. This new selection of Clarice Lispector’s best and best-loved stories highlight her undeniable brilliance. Lyrical, forceful, and unafraid to veer into the void, Lispector’s work deserves your attention, and Covert Joy is the ideal entry into her captivating worlds.
Death Takes Me
By Cristina Rivera Garza
Translated by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker
Hogarth Press
From Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza comes Death Takes Me, a dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence. When a professor also named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon a corpse of a mutilated man in a dark alley and reports it to the police, she must uncover the mystery of a small poetic message left at the scene of the crime. Death Takes Me bravely subverts the traditional crime narrative of gendered violence to reveal a surreal and often horrific world of desire and sexuality.
Reading the Waves
By Lidia Yuknavitch
Riverhead Books
We can’t deny the allure of books about reading and writing, so Lidia Yuknavitch’s new memoir has to be here in this list. Drawing on her background and family trauma, Yuknavitch explores how her creative life has helped her come to understand the power literature and storytelling have to reframe memories. Reading the Waves is endlessly hopeful—a rare treat these days—and shows us how what we read can help us come to better understand ourselves and our pain.
