Read on to discover our 2018 February Fiction picks and tell us in the comments below if you will be checking one (or several) out!

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah | Goodreads

Alaska, 1974. A story of a family in crisis struggling to survive at the edge of the world, it is also a story of young and enduring love. Cora Allbright and her husband Ernt, a recently returned Vietnam veteran scarred by the war, uproot their thirteen-year-old daughter Leni to start a new life in Alaska. Utterly unprepared for the weather and the isolation, but welcomed by the close-knit community, they fight to build a home in this harsh, beautiful wilderness.

As Bright As Heaven by Susan Meissner | Goodreads

In 1918, Philadelphia was a city teeming with promise. Into this bustling town, came Pauline Bright and her husband, filled with hope that they could now give their three daughters a chance at a better life. But then the Spanish Flu reaches the shores of America. As the pandemic claims more than twelve thousand victims in their adopted city, they find their lives left with a world that looks nothing like the one they knew.

The Storm King by Brendan Duffy | Goodreads

Nate McHale has assembled the kind of life most people would envy after becoming a respected New York City surgeon, devoted husband, and loving father. Then a body is discovered deep in the forests that surround Greystone Lake, his childhood home. This discovery brings up tragedy from his youth causing him to reconnect with estranged friends and old enemies. Without a doubt, a reckoning is coming–one that will lay bare the lies that lifelong friends have told themselves and unleash a vengeance that may consume them all.

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara | Goodreads

It’s 1980 in New York City, seventeen-year-old Angel comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. She soon falls in love with Hector, who soon dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone. Recruiting others, they must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them.

The Friend by Sigrid Nunez | Goodreads

When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane traumatized by the inexplicable disappearance of its master, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building. Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog’s care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unraveling.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones | Goodreads

Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself taking comfort in Andre, her childhood friend. After five years, Roy’s conviction is suddenly overturned, and he returns to Atlanta ready to resume their life together.

Sunburn by Laura Lippman | Goodreads

They meet at a local tavern in the small town of Belleville, Delaware. Polly is set on heading west. Adam says he’s also passing through. However, they both stay and abandon themselves to a steamy, inexorable affair. Still, each holds something back from the other—dangerous, even lethal, secrets. Then someone dies.

The French Girl by Lexie Elliott | Goodreads

They were six university students from Oxford–friends and sometimes more than friends–spending an idyllic week together in a French farmhouse. It was supposed to be the perfect summer getaway–until they met Severine, the girl next door. Now, a decade later, the case is reopened when Severine’s body is found in the well behind the farmhouse.

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi | Goodreads

An extraordinary debut novel, Freshwater explores the surreal experience of having a fractured self. It centers around a young Nigerian woman, Ada, who develops separate selves within her as a result of being born “with one foot on the other side.” Unsettling, heartwrenching, dark, and powerful, Freshwater is a sharp evocation of a rare way of experiencing the world, one that illuminates how we all construct our identities.

Punishment by Scott J. Holliday | Goodreads

Detroit-based homicide detective John Barnes has seen it all—literally. Thanks to a technologically advanced machine, detectives have access to the memories of the living, the dying, and the recently dead. But extracting victims’ experiences firsthand and personally reliving everything up to the final, brutal moments of their lives—the sights, the sounds, the scents, the pain—is also the punishment reserved for the criminals themselves. But Barnes has had enough…until a masked serial killer known as Calavera strikes a little too close to home.

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton | Goodreads

At a gala party thrown by her parents, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed–again. She’s been murdered hundreds of times, and each day, Aiden Bishop is too late to save her. Doomed to repeat the same day over and over, Aiden’s only escape is to solve Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder and conquer the shadows of an enemy he struggles to even comprehend–but nothing and no one are quite what they seem.

Sadness Is a White Bird by Moriel Rothman-Zecher | Goodreads

In this lyrical and searing debut novel written by a rising literary star and MacDowell Fellow, a young man is preparing to serve in the Israeli army while also trying to reconcile his close relationship to two Palestinian siblings with his deeply ingrained loyalties to family and country.

Like the sound of any of these books? Tell us in the comments below!

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