Fresh Reads: 12 Great Books Arriving in February 2021

Organizational psychologist Adam Grant explores the very concepts of knowing, learning, and reconsidering in Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know. It’s all about the science of changing minds, whether that means unlearning your own biases or persuading others to see a new perspective. Out Feb. 2.

Bestselling author Hannah is back, this time with a story of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression in The Four Winds. Elsa, a Texas woman, is faced with an impossible choice: stay and try to save her land and community as it seems like nature itself is turning against them all, or venture to California for a risky chance at a better life. Out Feb. 2.

Samatha Young’s Much Ado About You is a cozy rom-com about a hard-working professional who, passed over for a promotion at work, impulsively books an immersive vacation. She winds up staying at (and helping to run) a bookshop in a quaint English village, where she falls for the area and for a charming farm owner. Out Feb. 2.

Jane Harper’s thriller The Survivors is set in a coastal town, where a young man returns home, still haunted by the knowledge of a mysterious tragedy many years ago. When a body washes up on the beach, old wounds are reopened and questions that never were answered threaten to unravel everything. Out Feb. 2.

A new entry into the YA game, The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna is a warrior-women story with a new spin. After a ceremony reveals that 16-year-old Deka is different from the rest of her village in a way that puts her at incredible risk, she’s offered the choice to join an all-women army that is preparing to face the empire’s greatest threat. Out Feb. 9.

Slightly magical but not so much so that it overtakes the whole thing, Madeleine Henry’s The Love Proof is a decades-spanning story about a physics prodigy who falls madly in love, then returns to the world of science after a heartbreak to prove that there’s real, hard science connecting the nature of love, time, and all reality. Out Feb. 9.

Who says science and rom-coms can’t go together? The historical romantic comedy A Lady’s Formula for Love by Elizabeth Everett centers on Violet, a genius who’s founded a secret society for female scientists, and Arthur, the protection officer assigned to look after Violet as she embarks on a secret mission for the Crown. Out Feb. 9.

For fans of mythology and folklore, Genevieve Gornichec’s The Witch’s Heart is something fresh and thrilling. Norse mythology gets a twist in this retelling of the story of Angrboda, a mythological woman and powerful witch whose connection and conflict with the gods of Asgard is central to the apocalyptic lore of Ragnarok. Out Feb. 9.

Based on a true story of heroic librarians, The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles follows a Parisian librarian who aids the French Resistance at great personal cost, interwoven with the tale of a lonely teenager in 1980s Montana who has an unexpected connection to her solitary neighbor. Out Feb. 9.

Think of Christina McDonald’s Do No Harm as something resembling a female-led, inverted Breaking Bad thriller about a mother who begins dealing drugs to pay for her son’s cancer treatment. After a deal goes wrong and someone ends up dead, Emma winds up on the run, being chased by her own husband, a police detective. Out Feb. 16.

The Genome Odyssey is all about genetics, but for the everyman/woman/person. Dr. Euan Angus Ashley takes real cases and real human stories and melds them with accessible(ish) explanations of breakthrough genome tech. If you’ve ever been curious but intimidated by the idea of genetic research, this is for you! Out Feb. 23.

Kate Clayborn’s Love at First is a modern rom-com with just the right level of foes-to-romance. After inheriting an unwanted apartment from his estranged uncle, Will attempts to sell it off, but faces opposition from the building’s other residents, led by the determined, loyal leader Nora. Their amusing back-and-forth of sabotage slowly turns into a deeper understanding of each other and their families’ histories. Out Feb. 23.