New Book Releases: February 8, 2022

Each week, I’ll catalog the biggest and most exciting adult and YA fiction — and the occasional nonfiction — coming out that Tuesday.

WHEN WE LOST OUR HEADS, Heather O’Neill. A bizarre, delightful, brilliant novel about two wealthy best friends’ rise to power in 19th century Montreal. I adored this novel, which should be an essential read for anyone interested in a clever take on feminism and revolution. “A dazzling, delicious dream…penned with equal parts arsenic-laced icing and blood,” says Mona Awad. “I am struggling to say how much I loved this book…It is a beautiful, alarming, outraged, outrageous, dancing, laughing, shrieking, bellowing, howling, gobbling piece of wonder. What a joy!” says Edward Carey. Bookshop.

CLEAN AIR, Sarah Blake. In the years of a climate apocalypse in which the trees emit poisonous pollen, the humanity left lives in protective pods. When someone in a small town begins slashing the pods and allowing the people within to be poisoned, a woman becomes obsessed with finding — and understanding — the killer. From the author of the acclaimed Naamah. “The skillful blend of postapocalyptic science fiction, supernatural murder mystery, and domestic drama is unexpected and entirely engrossing,” writes Publisher’s Weekly. Bookshop.