As February unfurls, there is no shortage to the chaos and carnage that have come to define 2025 thus far, particularly in the United States, where it has become the norm to bemoan yet another constitutional crisis unfolding with little certainty that anything will be done to stop it, an America in which theocratic fascism looms more and more overtly and the mainstream media normalizes the imperial expansion desires of America into other sovereign nations, an America in which the arts, too, are under attack. It is, in short, a lot. And I’m tired of it already.

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But what I say each week remains true: that literature remains a light in the strangedark of the now and the to-come. And there are so many exciting and intriguing new titles out today that it would be a shame for them to be buried under the sad weight of politics. So, let us focus, instead, on the remarkable fiction, poetry, and nonfiction out today, with an especially robust showing of nonfiction. I’ve selected no less than twenty-six for your consideration.

Be safe and well, Dear Readers, and never let the state of the world diminish the power of art. Art endures, even in regimes that fail to understand its power—which, ultimately, is most regimes. Read on, always.

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Eric Puchner, Dream State
(Doubleday)

“Puchner’s exuberant, gritty, glittering new novel…is fresh, wise, funny, and compassionate….Cinematic from the outset, Dream State opens…upon a beloved old family homestead, site of a doomed wedding….What strikes most powerfully is Puchner’s bold inhabiting of each stage, over two generations, of all these sensibilities— especially of true, if embattled, affection between men….Dream State is a wonderful feast, and feat.”
–Boston Globe

Michelle de Kretser, Theory & Practice
(Soft Skull)

“An intriguing portrait of a writer as a young woman viscerally struggling between the lofty theories of her evolving feminist education and life’s realities as an immigrant daughter now a graduate student….Dissonance between theory and practice ultimately nurtures an astute writer’s mind of her own.”
–Booklist

Evie Wyld, The Echoes
(Knopf)

“The Echoes is a gorgeous, wise, furious meditation on the ways in which we carry both love and pain across decades and hemispheres. Each new layer is a revelation of compassion and understanding. Wyld is brilliant on girlhood, on grief, on intimacy’s terrible costs and its funny, messy grace. This is a jewel of a novel.”
–Fiona McFarlane

Haley Mlotek, No Fault: A Memoir of Romance and Divorce
(Viking)

“I’m haunted by the sophistication of Haley Mlotek’s insights and the tenderness with which they are delivered. No Fault is devastating because it is as full of pain as it is love. There is no other book on divorce or marriage—or romance—like this one.”
–Charlotte Shane

Adam Plunkett, Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry
(FSG)

“[A] fresh, expansive, and intimate account of Robert Frost’s life and poetry. Blending literary criticism and life writing in innovative ways, Plunkett offers new perspectives on Frost as a poet, friend, husband, lover, and father, and interrogates the damaging myths perpetuated by Frost’s past biographers. Erudite, meticulously researched, and beautifully written, Love and Need is a brilliant tribute to one of America’s most beloved, complex, and misunderstood poets.”
–Heather Clark

Bruce Robbins, Atrocity: A Literary History
(Stanford University Press)

“Robbins makes a humane and exhilarating case for the critical consciousness of atrocity. This is an essential, unsparing and often searing exploration of representations of violence that locates narratives of atrocity at the ethical heart of the humanities.”
–Patrick Deer

Sarah Lyn Rogers, Cosmic Tantrum
(Curbstone Books)

“[A] virtuosic riot of a collection. Sarah Lyn Rogers invokes pop culture symbols from Charlie Brown to ‘Little Edie’ Beale to Natalie Wood, from tarot cards to guided meditations, as she rages against society’s inherited myths. Defying the limits of form and language itself, Rogers asserts a shining new poetics of self-creation.”
–Electric Literature

Stephanie Niu, I Would Define the Sun
(Vanderbilt University Press)

“I Would Define the Sun offers both a realist and surrealist angle on its subjects: the depredations of climate change, consumerism, and the experience of living in two cultures: the Chinese one of her ancestry and the contemporary America she calls home. Niu has a sense of humor about the peculiarities of our age, and demonstrates an elegant sense of form in every poem.”
–Dana Levin

Rachel Richardson, Smother: Poems
(Norton)

“These poems were made at the nexus where the difficult, often thankless, faith-heavy job of artist meets the difficult, often thankless, faith-heavy job of mother: Rachel Richardson, with full heart, soul, and mind, bears witness as the world–literally and figuratively—burns around her and her children. Without the luxury of nihilism, she resists looking away, makes hope from scratch, and sings. Smother is a guide, a dare, a prayer, and a miracle.”
–Carrie Fountain

Elyse Durham, Maya & Natasha
(Mariner Books)

“Bravo, bravo, and flowers to the stage for this fascinating epic story of Cold War Russian ballet dancers. Using fact and fiction, Maya & Natasha shocks and compels from its dramatic opening scene during the siege of Leningrad to the final gesture, just before the closing curtain. A novel about being the best at one’s art by a writer at the best of hers.”
–Debra Spark

Nick Newman, The Garden
(Putnam)

“Nick Newman has spun the most haunting, gripping type of apocalyptic story: one that focuses on the fragile bonds of family and the dance between trust and survival. With shades of Shirley Jackson and Susanna Clarke, The Garden is a shapeshifting fable that will stay with you long after you leave it behind.”
–Sara Flannery Murphy

Madeleine Watts, Elegy, Southwest
(Simon & Schuster)

“Full of grit and a vivid, tender affection for the environments of the American West, Watts’ urgent novel weaves a lush landscape of grief and solace. I’ve rarely seen a writer capture the atmosphere of climate change and loss so vividly, or the frenzied urge to leap into some form of action—all in prose that kept me glued to its pages right to the bittersweet end.”
–Alexandra Kleeman

Susan Morrison, Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live
(Random House)

“Offers an engrossing story about [Lorne] Michaels’ rise, celebrity, and philosophy of comedy….[Susan] Morrison does a fine job of revealing a leader who keeps his cards close to the vest, which is both a temperament and a survival tactic. A top-shelf showbiz biography.”
–Kirkus Reviews

Victoria Amelina, Margaret Atwood (foreword), Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary
(St. Martin’s Press)

“his book would always have been important evidence that the Ukraine people were suffering criminal attack. Written by a poet, it is also a work of literature, published after the author lost her life doing her research. It is an icon of a young woman’s heroism.”
–Philippa Gregory

Sophie Lewis, Enemy Feminisms: TERFS, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation
(Haymarket)

“Where would we be without Sophie Lewis? In a more impoverished political world. This book is mandatory reading for anyone interested in a rough and compelling vision of the feminist past, present, and future. Honest, brutal, historically comprehensive, and brilliant.”
—Judith Butler

Lee Chang-Dong, Snowy Day and Other Stories (trans. Heinz Insu Fenkl, Yoosup Chang)
(Penguin Press)

“Lee Chang-dong is a masterful auteur—in these remarkable stories as much as in his renowned films. Though this collection pulses ominously with the turbulent ghosts of Korea’s recent history, I was left with an unusual sense of hopefulness. How his characters find their way to redemption still has me in awe. Unforgettable.”
–Ayad Akhtar

Roisín O’Donnell, Nesting
(Algonquin)

“Nesting is a perfect portrayal of the insidious nature of intimate partner abuse where the bruises are not physical, but violently emotional. I fell in love with the voice of Ciara as she sets out to create a new life against all odds for herself and her children. A story of bravery, love, and redemption, chock full of emotional suspense—I couldn’t look away. A high-wire act of a debut.”
–Chelsea Bieker

Emily J. Smith, Nothing Serious
(William Morrow)

“Nothing Serious is an unflinching and incisive look at modern dating, womanhood, friendship, and obsession. Smith’s unforgettable voice, wit, and cultural precision will make you crave her take on all contemporary quandaries. Her debut is cause to clear prime shelf space in eager anticipation of everything else she writes.”
–Courtney Preiss

Marcus Clayton, Pónk!
(Nightboat Books)

“On the frontlines, in the pit, at the community college, on stage, across the border, off the grid, and against the cops, ¡PÓNK! slams and wails with you. This book is punk as Prince and Anzaldúa, punk as dandelions and dreadlocks. Marcus Clayton redacts, shapeshifts, and testifies about music, race, education, labor, identity, and love.”
–Gabrielle Civil

Michael Hiltzik, Golden State: The Making of California
(Mariner Books)

“[A] monumental history of California brimming with fierce national implications for today. With astonishing detail and elegant prose, Hiltzik masterfully delineates Spain’s brutal conquest of Indigenous peoples in the early sixteenth century; the 1848 Gold Rush; the railroad revolution; the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and so much more. His accounts of Hollywood, Big Agriculture, and Silicon Valley innovation are superb…a compelling case that California is the heartbeat of our nation.”
–Douglas Brinkley

Morgan Falconer, How to Be Avant-Garde: Modern Artists and the Quest to End Art
(Norton)

“Chock full of engaging details and anecdotes, Morgan Falconer’s book takes us on a lively romp through many of the locales where twentieth-century vanguard figures sought to create a new relationship between art and life. How to be Avant-Garde should appeal both to those in search of a good read and to those intrigued by the vexing question of what it all meant.”
–Jerrold Seigel

Daniel Stone, American Poison: A Deadly Invention and the Woman Who Battled for Environmental Justice
(Dutton)

“American Poison brings to brilliant life one of the great public health heroes of the twentieth century, the fearless and wonderful Alice Hamilton…Stone builds his story of Hamilton around her fight to bring recognition to the dangers of leaded gasoline, in the face of bitter industry resistance. The book is…an essential environmental history…[and] a blazing torch of a tribute to people, like Hamilton, who fight unheralded to make the world safer.”
–Deborah Blum

Mallory O’Meara, Daughter of Daring: The Trick-Riding, Train-Leaping, Road-Racing Life of Helen Gibson, Hollywood’s First Stuntwoman
(Hanover Square Press)

“High-flying biography….Gibson’s death-defying feats astound, and O’Meara provides perceptive context on the era’s gender politics….It’s an enthralling tribute to an early Hollywood pioneer.”
–Publishers Weekly

Sarah Jones, Disposable: America’s Contempt for the Underclass
(Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster)

“In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich, [Jones] combines interviews and firsthand observation of poverty with deeply researched history….A full-throated, class-first critique of how the right-wing tendencies of American capitalism made the pandemic so devastating for the working poor….Jones brings…an unflinching focus on American capital, its unholy marriage to the political class, and the way that union has eroded ordinary people’s faith in authorities.”
–The New Republic

Katharine Stewart, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy
(Bloomsbury)

“A stunning, sweeping account of the coordinated movement to destroy the American experiment through dark money, political organizing, ideological distortion, thuggery, and authoritarianism, Money, Lies, and God is required reading for every person who wields a vote. Not since Dorothy Thompson has a writer documented fascist organizing so persuasively and cogently; this book places Katherine Stewart among the most significant journalists of her generation.”
–Kathleen Bellow

Sophia Balakian, Unsettled Families: Refugees, Humanitarianism, and the Politics of Kinship
(Stanford University Press)

“A deeply insightful, nuanced ethnography that brings together two critically important debates: one about refugees, and the other about families….In following the refugee resettlement program from Kenya to the US, by way of Somali and Congolese refugees, Balakian demonstrates how the borders of the nation-state are once again being remade by patrolling definitions of family…an essential read for those interested in justice for people on the move, offering unexpected insights.”
–Miriam Ticktin