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12 Debuts to Cozy Up with This February

What better month to snuggle up with a good book than February? And what better book to snuggle with than an anticipated debut!

Below are a dozen exceptional books that will publish in February, all by first time authors, including four novels, two story collections, four nonfiction works and two books for younger readers.

These books are selected from our February Preview issue, that profiles almost 90 notable books publishing next month,

Enjoy!

Davina, BookBrowse editor


The Snow Child The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Novel, 400 pages
Publishers February 1
Reagan Arthur

Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart - he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone - but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees....
Full description & reviews


A Good American A Good American by Alex George

Novel, 400 pages
Publishes February 7
Amy Einhorn Books

It is 1904. When Frederick and Jette must flee her disapproving mother, where better to go than America, the land of the new? Originally set to board a boat to New York, at the last minute, they take one destined for New Orleans instead ("What's the difference? They're both new"), and later find themselves, more by chance than by design, in the small town of Beatrice, Missouri. Not speaking a word of English, they embark on their new life together...
Full description and reviews, including 21 reviews by BookBrowse members


Red Plenty Red Plenty by Francis Spufford

Novel, 448 pages
Publishes February 14,
Graywolf Press

Red Plenty is history, it's fiction, it's as ambitious as Sputnik, as uncompromising as an Aeroflot flight attendant, and as different from what you were expecting as a glass of Soviet champagne....
Full description & reviews


No One is Here Except All of Us No One is Here Except All of Us by Ramona Ausubel

Novel, 336 pages
February 2
Riverhead Books

In 1939, the families in a remote Jewish village in Romania feel the war close in on them. Their tribe has moved and escaped for thousands of years - across oceans, deserts, and mountains - but now, it seems, there is nowhere else to go. Danger is imminent in every direction, yet the territory of imagination and belief is limitless. At the suggestion of an eleven-year-old girl and a mysterious stranger who has washed up on the riverbank, the villagers decide to reinvent the world: deny any relationship with the known and start over from scratch. Destiny is unwritten. Time and history are forgotten. Jobs, husbands, a child, are reassigned. And for years, there is boundless hope. But the real world continues to unfold alongside the imagined one, eventually overtaking it, and soon our narrator - the girl, grown into a young mother - must flee her village, move from one world to the next, to find her husband and save her children, and propel them toward a real and hopeful future...
Browse an excerpt, reviews and more


Monstress: Stories Monstress: Stories by Lysley Tenorio

Stories, 240 pages
Publishes: January 31
Ecco

Already the worthy recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Whiting Writer's Award, and a Stegner Fellowship, Tenorio brilliantly explores the need to find connections, the melancholy of isolation, and the sometimes suffocating ties of family in tales that range from a California army base to a steamy moviehouse in Manilla, to the dangerous false glitter of Hollywood.
Full description & reviews


Drifting House Drifting House by Krys Lee

Stories, 224 pages
Publishes: February 2
Viking

Spanning Korea and the United States, from the postwar era to contemporary times, Krys Lee's stunning fiction debut, Drifting House, illuminates a people torn between the traumas of their collective past and the indignities and sorrows of their present.
Full description & reviews


Gypsy Boy: My Life in the Secret World of the Romany Gypsies Gypsy Boy: My Life in the Secret World of the Romany Gypsies by Mikey Walsh

Memoir, 288 pages
February 14
Thomas Dunne

Gypsy Boyshows, for the first time, what life is really like among the Romany Gypsies. A surprise #1 bestseller in Great Britain, this is a one-of-a-kind memoir of a little-seen world, one both fascinating and heartbreaking.
Full description & reviews


King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village King Peggy: An American Secretary, Her Royal Destiny, and the Inspiring Story of How She Changed an African Village by Peggielene Bartels & Eleanor Herman

Biography, 352 pages
February 21
Doubleday

The charming real-life fairy tale of an American secretary who discovers she has been chosen king of an impoverished fishing village on the west coast of Africa. King Peggy has the sweetness and quirkiness of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series and the hopeful sense of possibility of Half the Sky.
Full description & reviews, including 24 reviews by BookBrowse members


Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain

Psychology, Business, Advice. 352 pages
Publishes January 24
Crown

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking, reading to partying; who invent and create but prefer not to pitch their own ideas; who favor working on their own over brainstorming in teams. Although they are often labeled "quiet," it is to introverts we owe many of the great contributions to society - from Van Gogh's sunflowers to the invention of the personal computer. Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with the indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Susan Cain charts the rise of "the extrovert ideal" over the twentieth century and explores its far-reaching effects - how it helps to determine everything from how parishioners worship to who excels at Harvard Business School. And she draws on cutting-edge research on the biology and psychology of temperament to reveal how introverts can modulate their personalities according to circumstance, how to empower an introverted child, and how companies can harness the natural talents of introverts.
Full description & reviews


Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo

Social Science/Current Events, 288 pages
Publishes February 7
Random House

A brilliantly written, fast-paced book, based on three years of uncompromising reporting from Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport. With intelligence, humor, and deep insight into what connects human beings to one another in an era of tumultuous change, Behind the Beautiful Forevers carries the reader headlong into one of the twenty-first century's hidden worlds, and into the lives of people impossible to forget.
Full description & reviews, including 25 reviews by BookBrowse members


The Miseducation of Cameron Post The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth

Young Adults, 480 pages
Publishes February 7
Balzer + Bray

A stunning and unforgettable literary debut about discovering who you are and finding the courage to live life according to your own rules.
Full description & reviews



Wonder Wonder by R. J. Palacio

Ages 8+, 320 pages
February 14
Knopf Children's Books

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school - until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?
Full description & reviews

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