10 books to read in February: A tribute to Toni Morrison, Gavin Newsom's new memoir and other new releases

Newly released books bespeak existent concerns, and truthful it is nary astonishment that February’s choices see titles astir intersectionality, protestation and authorities arsenic our state faces pugnacious questions astir civilian rights. It’s besides not astonishing that authors, whether novelists oregon journalists oregon activists, person discovered originative ways to attack topics that scope from good eating to 1 of our finest writers, Toni Morrison. Happy reading!

Fiction:

Bad Asians: A Novel
By Lillian Li
Henry Holt: 336 pp., $29
(Feb. 17)

When a high-school frenemy convinces 4 post-college besties successful suburban Maryland to fto her marque a documentary astir them, it goes viral, and each millennial hellhole breaks loose. Grace Li crafts a movie pitting Diana, Justin, Vivian and Errol against each different and against their Chinese families’ expectations. But the existent enactment takes spot later, aft each person has had to contend with their ain actions successful the aftermath of shock, embarrassment and betrayal.

Brawler: Stories
By Lauren Groff
Riverhead: 288 pp., $29
(Feb. 24)

Groff’s 2018 Story Prize-winning collection, “Florida,” focused connected perspectives of young women, galore of them mothers, successful that peculiar state. In “Brawler,” the superb author’s protagonists and locations are much various, and often coping with harrowing transitions, similar Joanie successful “To Sunland,” who chooses to determination into a radical home, oregon Chip successful “What’s the Time, Mr. Wolf?,” a merchandise of his upbringing with nary relation successful a caller era.

So Old, So Young: A Novel
By Grant Ginder
Gallery/Scout Press: 384 pp., $30
(Feb. 17)

Like a younger mentation of the caller “Four Seasons” adaptation, Ginder’s University of Pennsylvania 2006 friends conscionable up crossed the years — archetypal successful 2008 New York City, past 2014 Cancún, 2018 Amagansett, 2022 New Jersey and 2024 Manhattan. The penning is terrifically comic and besides grounded, anecdotes filled with slapstick but nary punchlines, befitting a communicative that includes hookups, weddings, children, a ceremonial and an unknowable future.

Evil Genius: A Novel
By Claire Oshetsky
Ecco: 240 pp., $29
(Feb. 17)

Set successful 1970s San Francisco, this turn-of-the-thumbscrews-tense caller upends noir conventions, placing a drab 19-year-old telephone operator, Celia Dent, halfway stage. Celia’s matrimony to the older Drew is truthful miserable she fantasizes astir stabbing him done the eardrum with a nail file. When her workfellow Vivianne is murdered, Celia becomes obsessed. Mutilated manner dolls and existent corpses accumulate arsenic Celia deems herself “magnificent.”

The Reservation: A Novel
By Rebecca Kauffman
Counterpoint: 272 pp., $27
(Feb. 24)

Twenty-two rib-eye steaks are missing from the freezer astatine Aunt Orsa’s, the lone fine-dining constitution successful a Midwestern assemblage municipality and Orsa’s nephew and operations adjunct Danny has to find retired what happened earlier a celebrated author’s event. Yes, it’s a mash-up of locked-room enigma and “The Bear,” but it’s besides a beautifully crafted caller successful stories that reveals characters’ indispensable loneliness close beside their cravings for existent connection.

Nonfiction:

Bonfire of the Murdochs: How the Epic Fight to Control the Last Great Media Dynasty Broke a Family — and the World
By Gabriel Sherman
Simon & Schuster: 256 pp., $29
(Feb. 3)

Impossible not to notation “Succession” — a bid that could easy person been a docudrama — fixed however overmuch and often Rupert Murdoch acceptable his 4 children against each different arsenic they battled for their billion-dollar-plus shreds of his dynasty. Sherman opens with that 2023 suit by Lachlan Murdoch against his siblings, past traces the household concern from its Australian paper origins done rag-trade domination to its existent grip connected right-wing media.

The Chosen and the Damned: Native Americans and the Making of Race successful the United States
By David J. Silverman
Bloomsbury: 512 pp., $36
(Feb. 10)

In aboriginal voyages to the New World, Euro Americans brought their ideas astir identity, spirituality, ethnicity and tegument colour arsenic they archetypal encountered Native Americans. Historian Silverman shows however the European presumption of Christian believers arsenic “chosen” versus unbelievers arsenic “damned” has shaped our nation’s past alongside the enslavement and power of peoples from Africa. It’s a potent reminder of Western European hegemony.

On Morrison
By Namwali Serpell
Hogarth: 384 pp., $32
(Feb. 17)

Herself a lauded novelist, Serpell examines Toni Morrison’s oeuvre with the rigor of an world and the admiration of a chap creative. She dives into Morrison’s published enactment and archives, seeking not conscionable the writer’s ideas connected contention and identity, but the foundations of however she turned those ideas into art. While this is unquestionably a enactment of scholarship, it’s refreshingly jargon-free and accessible to astir readers of Morrison’s novels and essays.

Get Home Safe: A Guide to Self-Defense and Building Our Collective Power
By Rana Abdelhamid
Algonquin Books: 320 pp., $22
(Feb. 24)

Abdelhamid, informally known arsenic “The Mayor of Queens,” experienced a hate-based onslaught arsenic a teenager, aft which she founded Malikah, an anti-violence organization. Her caller publication provides a blueprint for immoderate marginalized assemblage focused connected the information of its members, and however safer communities tin assistance those radical to make power astatine antithetic levels of neighborhood, municipal, authorities and national governance.

Young Man successful a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery
By Gavin Newsom
Penguin Press: 304 pp., $30
(Feb. 24)

Gov. Newsom says this reflective communicative is “Not your mean governmental publication astatine all,” however, tin immoderate person assertion their memoir is not astatine each political? It’s casual to see, from the mode helium centers his communicative arsenic a sixth-generation Californian who has ne'er lived anyplace else, that he’s a politician, and a bully one. It’s tougher to spot wherever he’ll instrumentality his content successful an open-arms argumentation if helium chooses to tally for an bureau that takes him to unrecorded crossed the country.

Patrick is simply a freelance professional and writer of the memoir “Life B.”