New fiction books for February

Looking for something new to read? Take a look at our brand-new books for February! All of these books and more are available to borrow for free with your library card.

The Frozen People

Ali Dawson and her cold case team investigate crimes so old, they're frozen - or so their inside joke goes. Most people don't know that they travel back in time to complete their research. The latest assignment sees Ali venture back farther than they have dared before: to 1850s London in order to clear the name of Cain Templeton, the eccentric great-grandfather of MP Isaac Templeton. Rumour has it that Cain was part of a sinister group called The Collectors; to become a member, you had to kill a woman. Fearing for her safety in the middle of a freezing Victorian winter, Ali finds herself stuck in time, unable to make her way back to her life, her beloved colleagues, and her son, Finn, who suddenly finds himself in legal trouble in the present day. Could the two cases be connected?

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We Do Not Part

One morning in December, Kyungha is called to her friend Inseon's hospital bedside. Airlifted to Seoul for an operation following a wood-chopping accident, Inseon is bedridden and begs Kyungha to take the first plane to her home on Jeju Island to feed her pet bird, who will quickly die unless it receives food. Unfortunately, as Kyungha arrives a snowstorm hits. Lost in a world of snow, she begins to wonder if she will arrive in time to save the bird - or even survive the terrible cold that envelops her with every step. But she doesn't yet suspect the darkness which awaits her at her friend's house. There, the long-buried story of Inseon's family surges into light, in dreams and memories passed from mother to daughter, and in a painstakingly assembled archive, documenting the terrible massacre seventy years before that saw 30,000 Jeju civilians murdered.

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The Sirens

Sisters separated by hundreds of years. Voices that can't be drowned out. Lucy is running from what she's done, attacking that boy in her sleep. Pursued by nightmares, she makes for her big sister's house. But when she arrives, Jess is nowhere to be found. The clifftop town is strange and full of rumours. A dozen men disappeared, without a trace. Women's voices murmuring on the waves. A foundling discovered in a sea-swept cave. As Lucy searches for Jess, her dreams draw ever closer. She can see a great ship in 1800, and two sisters bound together in its hull. She sees a world where men always seem to get their way. And something in her body wants to fight back. A wave is building. The past is a lure. Could the answer to who she is - and what's happening to her - lie in this quiet, sea-soaked town? Could it lie 200 years deep in the past?

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The Woman in the Wallpaper

Paris, 1789. The Oberst Factory, which crafts exquisite wallpaper for the most fashionable French homes, is a place shrouded in mystery. When sisters Lara and Sofi arrive there for work, they quickly form a friendship with Josef Oberst, the motherless heir to the factory. Whilst Sofi's political fervour intensifies, Lara is disturbed by the uncanny way her life appears mirrored in the wallpaper. Meanwhile Hortense, Josef's spoilt aristocratic wife, is similarly unnerved by the scenes that line the walls of her new home. As revolution blazes across France, the lives of Sofi, Lara and Hortense are set to collide in unimaginable and irrevocable ways. Can they change what lies ahead, or are some patterns destined to be repeated?

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We All Live Here

Welcome to the Kennedy household: There's Lila who wrote a bestseller about keeping your marriage alive. Now divorced, she watches her ex play happy families with another woman. There's Bill - her stepdad - who moved in after Lila's mum died. Celie, Lila's eldest, hates school. Hates it so much she's stopped going. Violet is nine and sings age-inappropriate rap songs, laughs at fart jokes and Lila dearly hopes she'll never, ever change. Lastly, there's Truant the dog. He's just taken a bite out of the American actor who's suddenly landed on the Kennedy's doorstep. This is Gene - Lila's estranged father, he walked out on Lila and her mum years ago - and wherever he goes domestic discord follows. Because Gene's presence changes things in unexpected ways. Soon the girls discover a kindred spirit in a man always chasing life's joys. Something is happening to the Kennedy household - but what is it? And will it break, or save, their family?

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The Boy From the Sea

In a close-knit community on Ireland's west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach. Named Brendan by Ambrose Bonnar, the fisherman who adopts him, the baby captivates the town and the boy he grows to be will captivate them still - no one can quite fathom Brendan Bonnar. For Christine, Ambrose's wife, Brendan brings both love and worry. For their existing son, his new brother's arrival is the start of a life-long rivalry. And though Ambrose brings Brendan into his home out of love, it is a decision that will fracture his family and force this man - more comfortable at sea than on land - to try to understand himself and those he cares for.

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From London With Love

It's 1968 and it's cold when Felicity arrives in London to stay with her mother, improve her English, do a secretarial course - and meet a suitable man. She is already missing her home in Provence and her father and his new wife and their extended family. But it's only for a year she tells herself - and then she can go back to France and do what she really wants and become a painter. And then she bumps into Oliver who is quite the most interesting young man she has ever met. He lives on a barge for one thing and has a collection of jobs, but his passion is looking for hidden treasures along the shores of the river Thames. In a word, he's a mudlarker - and before long Felicity is mudlarking too. She is also pursuing her dreams and painting scenery for Oliver's actor friends. But is Oliver a 'suitable man' of whom her mother will approve? Felicity knows she will not.

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Old Soul

When two grieving strangers meet by chance in Osaka airport they uncover a disturbing connection. Jake's best friend and Mariko's twin brother each died, 6,000 miles apart, in brutal and unfathomable circumstances. Each encountered a mesmerising, dark-haired woman in the days before their deaths. A woman who came looking for Mariko - and then disappeared. Jake, who has carried his loss and guilt for a decade, finds himself compelled to follow the trail set by Mariko's revelations. It's a trail that weaves across continents and centuries, leading back to the many who have died - in strange and terrifying and eerily similar ways - and those they left behind: bewildered, disbelieved, yet resolutely sure of what they saw. And, at the centre of it all, there is the same beguiling woman. Her name may have changed, but her purpose has never wavered.

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The City Changes Its Face

1995. London. Outside the filthy window, the city rushes by. But up in the flat, there is only Eily and Stephen, nineteen and thirty-nine. The total obsession of new love.Eighteen months later, a rainy Camden night. Eily and Stephen retrace the course of their two-year romance now their world is merging with the common place and ties from the past are intruding. Stephen has reconnected with his long-lost teenage daughter Grace. Eily thinks about the future and their flat feels different. The city changes its face.

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Black Woods, Blue Sky

Birdie's keeping it together, of course she is. So she's a little hungover on her shifts, and has to bring her daughter to the lodge while she waits tables, but Emaleen never goes hungry. It's a tough town to be a single mother, and Birdie just needs to get by. And then Birdie meets Arthur, who is quieter than most men, but makes her want to listen; who is gentle with Emaleen, and understands Birdie's fascination with the mountains in whose shadow they live. When Arthur asks Birdie and Emaleen to leave the lodge and make a home, just the three of them, in his off-grid cabin, Birdie's answer, in a heartbeat, is yes. Out in the wilderness Birdie's days are harsher and richer than she ever imagined possible. Here she will feel truly at one with nature. Here she, and Emaleen, will learn the whole, fearful truth about Arthur.

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