February’s books feature new Toni Morrison, a sapphic love tale and a criticism of Mexican history

When you make a purchase using links on our site, The Week may earn a commission. All reviews are written independently by our editorial team.

February might be the shortest month of the year, but it features plenty of days to add books to your 2026 ‘to be read’ list. Just in time for Black History Month, we have previously unpublished work from the late literary icon Toni Morrison. For readers seeking the butterflies of Valentine’s Day, there is a dark romance by Cristina Rivera Garza.

‘Autobiography of Cotton’ by Cristina Rivera Garza; translated by Christina MacSweeney

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza is back with another genre-bending book. It is set in Estación Camarón, a “cotton farming region in northern Mexico,” said The New York Times.

The novel examines the region “by way of family history and literary criticism to reveal a legacy of inequality and ecological destruction.” The book is a “fusion of fiction and nonfiction that excavates both national and family history,” said The Wall Street Journal. Her novel is “one of restless movement and passionate hope.” (out now, $17, Graywolf Press, Amazon)

‘Heap Earth Upon It’ by Chloe Michelle Howarth

The follow-up to Chloe Michelle Howarth’s “Sunburn” has been pitched by its publisher as a “new take on sapphic obsession for fans of ‘All Our Wives Under the Sea.’” The story follows a pair of siblings who move to the Irish town of Ballycrea in 1965 and are hiding secrets. The siblings are taken under the wing of a wealthy couple, and one of the sisters soon becomes obsessed with the wife. Howarth’s highly anticipated sophomore release is “an engrossing chronicle of restlessness and desire,” said Publishers Weekly. (out now, $21, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon’ by Toni Morrison

It has been seven years since her death, but Toni Morrison “still has more to say,” said the Times. This nonfiction collection of previously unpublished work is a “compilation of lectures for a class she taught at Princeton University on the American literary canon” that explores classics by “Melville, Twain, Faulkner, Poe, Willa Cather, Flannery O’Connor and others.” Through her “original, often dazzling close readings,” Morrison shows how the “idea of race has been a primal force in the nation’s literature — shaping, disfiguring and, sometimes, liberating language and the imagination.” (out now, $32, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘The People Can Fly: American Promise, Black Prodigies and the Greatest Miracle of All Time’ by Joshua Bennett

In his “personal and clear-eyed examination of Black prodigies,” MIT professor Joshua Bennett “movingly shows that true genius is nurtured and protected by love,” said BookPage. Bennett illustrates that “genius is no solitary struggle,” citing poets like Gwendolyn Brooks, whose work is “not only a testament to innate talent bolstered by a rich literary education, but also the culmination of parental affirmation and community care.”

The book “stands firm in the often unacknowledged truth”: To be Black and gifted is to “experience the tension between hypervisibility and invisibility.” (out now, $30, Hachette Book Group, Amazon)

‘Kin’ by Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones returns, eight years after her acclaimed novel “An American Marriage,” with a “historical tale of friendship and family,” said the Times. The novel follows Niecy and Annie, two orphans living in Jim Crow Louisiana, who bond as children.

When they grow older, they realize they both still “yearn for the family they never knew,” said the Times, and take “alternate paths to uncovering, or building, the life they didn’t have.” Said Kirkus Reviews, ”Kin’ is “beautifully written and powerfully compelling.” (Feb. 24, $32, Penguin Random House, Amazon)