Five Fresh Fiction Picks That Everyone Will Be Talking About

"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links."

This month's fresh crop of novels and short stories includes five superstars: breathtaking exhibitions of the power of fiction to leap centuries and continents and even the bounds of reality. For February-haters, these books will make bad weather and sappy holidays a distant dream.

This season’s new crop of novels and short stories includes five superstars: breathtaking exhibitions of the power of fiction to leap centuries and continents and even the bounds of reality. For mud-season haters, these books will make bad weather and sappy holidays a distant dream.

Leaving, by Roxana Robinson

They were lovers long ago, in college, but when they run into each other at an opera house in Manhattan as a long-married architect and a divorced grandmother, they are shocked to realize their connection is even more powerful than it was back then. What they don’t realize at first, as their hearts and bodies come slowly back to life, as daily lives that once seemed perfectly acceptable become unbearably dreary, is that they are no longer free to easily change their circumstances. Somehow balancing operatic intensity with deeply intelligent emotional realism (particularly with regard to the role of adult children in their parents’ lives), Robinson’s novel reinvents our understanding of the possibilities, and limits, of midlife. Sorry, we're not going to talk about the ending.

The Bullet Swallower, by Elizabeth Gonzalez James

Quentin Tarantino meets One Hundred Years of Solitude in this technicolor fable of a Mexican family cursed by the greed of its ancestors and haunted by an ageless (but not heartless) spirit sent to claim their crooked souls. Part of the story unfolds in 1895, when Antonio Sonoro crosses the border into Texas to rob a train, runs afoul of local lawmen, and survives a gunshot wound to the face that earns him the nickname that titles the book. But even worse: He’s adopted by an unwelcome but un-losable sidekick, a dandy British sharpshooter. Another thread is set in the 1960s, when Mexican movie star and family man Jaime Sonoro uncovers the evil genealogy of his clan—and with it, what he imagines could be the role of his dreams. Remember to breathe as this gleefully gory melodrama thunders toward its fateful climax.

The Fox Wife, by Yangsze Choo

This utterly captivating novel revolves around the idea that there are foxes among us—magical shape-shifting creatures who appear as humans, only better-looking, cleverer, and much more agile. Choo’s bewitching heroine, Snow, is one of them, and when we first meet her, she’s on a mission to avenge the death of her baby daughter, which involves going undercover as a servant to a kind old lady and tracking a shady photographer across early-20th-century Manchuria and Japan. Snow—who candidly assures us, “I am not a good girl at all”—is on a collision course with private investigator Bao, hired to look into the death of a young woman in the pleasure district. Bao has a superhuman skill of his own: He can hear lies. And he doesn’t believe in foxes. Yet. So lively and sharp-edged, it unfolds almost like an animated cartoon in your head.

Neighbors and Other Stories, by Diane Oliver

You’ll want to put this collection of short stories, written by a preternaturally gifted 22-year-old Black woman who died in a motorcycle accident in 1966 one month before her graduation from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, on your shelf alongside Toni and Zora—yes, it’s that good. As a time capsule of the civil rights period, it reveals from the inside the heartbreaking experiment that was desegregation. The title story concerns a Black family agonizing over whether to send their child to be the first to cross the color line at school. Another shadows four teenagers as they take a table in a department store restaurant; a third follows a Black girl to a white women’s college. A story about a teenager on a European exchange program where she is a curiosity of zoo-like proportions is deepened by a poignant sense of the bright life that was cut short.

The Best That You Can Do, by Amina Gautier

Gautier's prizewinning short-story collection reflects the acrobatic range of a writer who has made the form her own, seamlessly integrating social commentary into her storytelling. The first of five sections, “Quarter Rican,” contains linked stories, many very brief, brimming with the life of a mixed-race family scattered over households and generations, the youngest of which think “Police la di da” is one of the lines of the Spanish Christmas song. The last section, “Caretaking,” examines the relationship between a Jamaican caretaker and her frail client, sprinkling in scenes from Mrs. McAllister’s long life in Brooklyn, some nostalgic and some stone-cold. Between these two near-novellas, many stories sparkle with sharp, of-the-moment details—at a club with the password “Becky,” white girls’ tears are on tap; at a Juneteenth family reunion, the main event is a piñata called Karen.

You Might Also Like

• Watch Oprah Talk About Longevity with Dr. Peter Attia

• Why Are Americans So Bad at Getting Old?

• Yes, You Really Can Make Your Skin Cells Younger