Tracy Carr
Special to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger
Feb. 3, 2026, 4:36 a.m. CT
- February’s new book releases span multiple genres, including thrillers, historical non-fiction, and memoirs.
- Notable authors with new books include Lauren Groff, Tayari Jones, and Mary Kubica.
- Non-fiction topics range from the life of Hannibal Lecter to the history of the American toy industry.
- Several memoirs explore themes of race, survival, and family history.
February might be the year’s shortest month, but its new releases didn’t get the memo to hold back. February’s new releases include a twisty thriller, an exploration of slavery in colonial America, a deep dive into Hannibal Lecter and new books by reader favorites Lauren Groff and Tayari Jones.
Feb. 3:
Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives
- By Lucy Mangan (Pegasus)
- This ode to books and reading chronicles the author’s love affair with words and how the right book can be formative during life’s changes.
It’s Not Her
- By Mary Kubica (Park Row)
- On a family vacation, Courtney discovers that her brother and sister-in-law are dead in their cottage — and her niece is missing. Kubica returns with another twisty thriller, complete with murder, betrayal, and un-guessable twists.
The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution
- By Gregory E. O’Malley (St. Martin’s Press)
- O’Malley brings to life the unexplored story of colonial-era slavery and one man’s decades-long quest for the freedoms promised by the Founding Fathers.
Feb. 10:
Frog and Other Essays
- By Anne Fadiman (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
- Fadiman, whose “Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader” made her a favorite of the bookish, returns to essays in “Frog,” in which she examines a variety of topics, including the titular amphibian and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Hannibal Lecter: A Life
- By Brian Raferty (Simon & Schuster)
- This “biography” of Thomas Harris’s best-known creation, Hannibal Lecter, examines both character and author (including interviews with Lecter portrayer Brian Cox) in a deep-dive that “The Silence of the Lambs” fans won’t want to miss.
The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race, and Family
- By Dorothy Roberts (Atria)
- Roberts’ parents, a white anthropologist father and Black Jamaican mother, studied interracial marriage both in and out of the home, conducting research and over 500 interviews with interracial couples. Roberts uses her lived experience and her parents’ research (along with a shocking discovery made while sorting her father’s papers) to create this thoughtful memoir.
Feb. 17:
A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides
- By Gisèle Pelicot (Penguin Press)
- Pelicot, a victim of unspeakable sexual abuse at the hands of her husband and the fifty men he invited to participate, waived her right to remain anonymous during the abusers’ 2024 trial. Her long-anticipated memoir details her story of survival, resilience, and a call for survivors not to feel shame for what happened to them.
Playmakers: The Jewish Entrepreneurs Who Created the Toy Industry in America
- By Michael Kimmel (W.W. Norton & Company)
- The fascinating story reveals that the American toy industry and its concept of the enchanted, idealized childhood (complete with toys for every child’s interest) was largely created by those who were on the outside of it: poor, first-generation Jewish immigrants who founded the Ideal Toy Corporation, Hasbro, Mattel and others.
The Astral Library
- By Kate Quinn (William Morrow)
- Fans of Quinn’s historical fiction novels “The Rose Code” and “The Briar Club” will be interested that she’s back, but this time in a new genre. “The Astral Library” is about a down-on-her-luck woman who discovers a secret library behind a hidden door in the Boston Public Library and enters an escapist world, complete with a sharp-tongued guardian and of course, a mysterious enemy.
Feb. 24:
- Brawler: Stories
- By Lauren Groff (Riverhead Books)
- The nine stories in Groff’s new book range in tone, place, and style — but they all pierce the reader’s heart and mind. While evocative of Flannery O’Connor at times, Groff’s stories could only be her own.
Kin
- By Tayari Jones (Knopf)
- Two friends from Honeysuckle, Louisiana pursue wildly different futures in Jones’s latest novel. Vernice and Annie are both motherless, one raised by her grandmother and one by her aunt, and remain fiercely devoted to each other and their past despite their radically different presents.
The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs
- By Beth Ann Fennelly (W.W. Norton & Company)
- Fennelly, a professor at the University of Mississippi, returns to the micro-memoir as a followup to 2017’s “Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs.” In this new, more intimate collection, Fennelly digs deeper, being somehow even more honest, hilarious, and heartbreaking than before.
— Tracy Carr is the editor of Conversations with Ellen Gilchrist. She lives in Jackson.
