The Best New Book Releases Out February 20, 2024

Now, this, this is the one. This epic, nearly 600-paged, sweeping multi-generational tome starts with Saint, an enigma by all meanings of the word, whose righteous fury and conjuring ability destroy plantations all over Arkansas in the 1830s. She brings the people newly freed by the destruction to a haven of her own making that she names Ours. It’s in Ours that Saint both shields — and maybe even entombs — her flock, protecting them from outsiders with her conjuring. But then her mind starts to slip, and her memories betray her. The fault lines in her creation are like beacons to other outside conjurors, and Ours becomes vulnerable. The narrative, bolstered by effervescent prose, Black spirituality, mythology, and surrealism, sweeps over four decades, showing what love can do to you.

This reimagining of Zorro (!!), set in the 16th century, sees the fearsome Pantera fighting back against the tyranny of the Spanish in what’s called New Spain. Magical and skilled at swordplay, Pantera is low-key impossible to kill, but she also has a secret. During the day, she’s the guarded Leonora de Las Casas Tlazohtzin, who’s been promised to the heir to the Spanish throne. No matter — the prophecy given her by a seer predicts that she’ll die young. And, when an ancient, destructive prophecy looks like it’s coming to fruition, she plans to go out swingin’.

It’s 1927 in New York in this new comic. Prohibition is in full swing, and Hazel Crenshaw is just trying to make it. If she can keep her head down and run her business, she’ll be able to take care of her little sister without a problem. But her business involves the New York gangs that soon morph into the mafia…and some other entity. Once her farm is attacked, she realizes that her involvement with the criminal underground has put her at risk for something much more frightening.

As a Cambodian refugee, Nguon has lost everyone and everything she knows to the revolutions, civil wars, and mass killings of the 1970s. Here, she recounts her experience as a young girl during such a terribly chaotic time, showing how she later survived in refugee camps by cooking in a brothel, sewing silk, and more. Through recipes for things like pâté de foie, banh sung noodles, and chicken lime soup from her mother’s kitchen, Nguon reclaims her country and heritage.

I’ve been looking forward to this Sri Lankan-inspired gothic story coming out for a while now. In it, Amara is the daughter of a traditional demon-priest, who was respected by the other townspeople before the new religion that came in with the British colonizers condemned tradition. Now, men are being attacked in the jungle, and Amara’s father stands accused. She’ll have to solve the mystery of the strange happenings to clear her father’s name…but there’s also the issue of the connection she has to what’s going on.

This genre-blending YA thriller/mystery/gothic horror has a lot going for it. It starts with Becca — Nora’s estranged bestie — disappearing along with three others in a small town. Nora tries to find out what happened to everyone and comes up against something odd: turns out Becca left her messages to decode before she disappeared. These decoded clues bring Nora to local folklore that involves a goddess of mysterious origins, who was part of the games Becca and Nora played as kids.