New Releases: February 22, 2022

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

THE SWIMMERS, Julie Otsuka. When a crack appears in the bottom of a local pool, it forever changes the lives of the obsessed swimmers who frequent the pool. “It’s a brilliant and disarming dive into the characters’ inner worlds,” writes Publisher’s Weekly in a starred review. “Exquisite,” says Rachel Khong in the New York Times. Aggregated critical reviews, Bookshop.

BENEATH THE STAIRS, Jennifer Fawcett. Two decades after an incident in a mysterious house left two best friends traumatized, one friend returns to their small town after the other attempts suicide. “A poignant haunted house tale about guilt, grief, and the nightmares of adolescence that follow us into adulthood. Fawcett delivers genuine scares in this chilling, mesmerizing debut,” says Rachel Harrison. Bookshop.

WILDCAT, Amelia Morris. A new mother forms a friendship with a lauded writer after her relationship with her best friend begins to show cracks. “‘Wildcat’ was a book I couldn’t set…