Welcome to January 1, 2018, the day we talk about February’s forthcoming books. It’s the perfect way to welcome in a new year, looking forward to exciting new books. Do you want to see what February has to offer?

19 Souls is the first in J.D. Allen’s new Sin City Investigations series. Private investigator Jim Bean’s latest client, Sophie Evers, asks him to find her brother, Daniel. But, Daniel isn’t really Sophie’s brother. She’s obsessed with the man, and even goes as far as to kill Daniel’s real sister so she can create the perfect life with the man she loves. And, it doesn’t matter how many people she has to kill to get her man. (Release date is Feb. 8.)

Life in Rockton is getting even more dangerous in Kelley Armstrong’s This Fallen Prey. The longer dangerous criminal Oliver Brady stays in town, the more people seem to die around him. When evidence piles up that someone inside Rockton is working as his accomplice, police detective Casey Duncan tries to discover who Brady really is, and what crimes he has really committed. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

The latest Kate Shackleton mystery by Frances Brody is Death in the Stars. In Yorkshire in 1927, eclipse fever grips the nation. Theatre star Selina Fellini asks sleuth Kate Shackleton to accompany her to a viewing party. During the party, Selina’s friend and co-star disappears, and is later found dead. Kate discovers two other members of the theatre troupe died in mysterious circumstances. Now, she’s on the case. (Release date is Feb. 13.)

The Girl with the Flamenco Tattoo is Bill Brooks’ first contemporary crime novel. A small town sheriff with higher aspirations must solve a murder when he has no experience with a murder investigation. Who is the dead girl known only as the girl with the Flamenco Tattoo, and who killed her? (Release date is Feb. 16.)

Melodie Campbell’s The B-Team: The Case of the Angry First Wife is written for Orca Books, a Canadian publisher who specializes in high interest, low reading level for adults. In this case, the author introduces a team of vigilantes. Del runs the team, but her Great Aunt Kitty, a retired cat burglar, came up with the idea. She based it on the A-Team, but this group hopes to help seniors who have been scammed. Then, Kitty accepts a case against Del’s wishes, recovering a diamond necklace for the first wife from the second. Now, it’s the B-Team that has been scammed. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

Oklahoma farm wife Alafair Tucker welcomes her son Gee Dub home from The Great War in Doris Casey’s Forty Dead Men. But, Gee Dub doesn’t seem entirely home until he finds a young woman walking across the fields. He’s intrigued by her story of marriage to a soldier from the local area, but the family and the local sheriff are shocked to find out she wasn’t the only one to marry him. When the missing man is found dead, Gee Dub tops the suspect list. But, Alafair won’t let one of her children take the fall for someone else’s crime. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

Dreaming in Chocolate by Susan Bishop Crispell is going to be a tearjerker. Penelope Dalton is ticking off items on a her eight-year-old daughter’s bucket list before Ella dies. With an endless supply of magical gifts and recipes from her family’s hot chocolate cafe, Penelope can give her daughter everything. But, she’s reluctant to to give her the dad Ella never knew. Noah Gregory is her biological dad, and the only person Penelope knows to have proved her true love hot chocolate wrong. He’s back in town, and Penelope fears he’ll either break her daughter’s heart, or her own. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

The Woman in the Water by Charles Finch is a prequel to the Charles Lenox mysteries. The body of a young woman is found on the banks of the Thames, left by a madman who claims to have committed the “perfect crime.” This is the very first case for one of London’s most brilliant minds, Charles Lenox. (Release date is Feb. 20.)

Swiss-American police officer Agnes Luthl is still recovering from injuries sustained on her last case when she’s asked to investigate the date of a Swiss watchmaker who’d just made a revolutionary discovery. That’s in Tracee de Hahn’s second in the series, A Well-Timed Murder. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

J. Jefferson Farjeon’s Seven Dead was originally published in 1939. Now, it’s re-released as part of the British Library Crime Classics, published in the U.S. by Poisoned Pen Press, with a wonderful introduction by Martin Edwards. When a petty thief tries housebreaking, he finds seven dead bodies in a locked room. Detective Inspector Kendall teams up with a passing yachtsman, Thomas Hazeldean, to solve the intriguing mystery. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

Raspberry Danish Murder is Joanne Fluke’s new Hannah Swensen mystery. With Hannah’s new husband, Ross, missing, the bitter woman throws herself into Thanksgiving preparations. But, Ross’ assistant doesn’t get to sample Hannah’s latest recipe. Instead, the man who is driving Ross’ car and using his desk at work, is murdered. Which man was the target? (Release date is Feb. 27.)

How to Stop Time by Matt Haig is the story of a man who looks ordinary. But, Tom Hazard has a secret. He’s been alive for centuries. He has lived history, but now he just wants to live an ordinary life. So, he moves back to London to become a history teacher. But, a captivating French teacher seems fascinated by him. But, the Albatross Society, the secretive group that protects people like Tom, has one major rule: Never fall in love. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

Sue Halpern’s novel Summer Hours at the Robbers Library is already calling to me. Why are people drawn to libraries? Head librarian Kit craves peace at a place where she doesn’t have to talk about the calamitous events in her life. Fifteen-year-old, homeschooled Sunny is sentenced to the library. After being arrested for shoplifting a dictionary, the judge assigns her to community service at the library. She coaxes Kit out of her isolation, and the library becomes the heart of the small town, with a cast of offbeat regulars. (Release date is Feb. 27.)

Alaska in 1974 is the setting for Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone. Alaska is untamed, unpredictable. And, for the Allbright family, the best course of action is to move off the grid, away from the frightening changes in the world. There, they hope to find peace, restoration, freedom. But, there’s danger everywhere. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

Five women go on a corporate retreat. Only four return in Jane Harper’s Force of Nature. The author of The Dry brings back Federal Police Agent Aaron Falk who has a special interest in finding the missing woman. She was his whistleblower, scheduled to help him bring down the company she works for and the people she works with. His investigation takes him deep in to the bushland, a place of secrets. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

John Hart returns to the people and world of his novel The Last Child for his new book, The Hush. Since childhood, Johnny Merrimon and Jack Cross have been best friends. Ten years have passed, and their haunted past still bind them. Shut off from the world, Johnny lives alone on six thousand acres in a forgotten and mysterious place. But, Jack senses darkness and danger, along with a truth that could destroy their friendship forever. (Release date is Feb. 27.)

Sara Sue Hoklotubbe’s latest mystery is Betrayal at the Buffalo Ranch. Sadie Walela is horrified to learn her new neighbor offers rich customers a chance to kill buffalo for fun. No good will come from this, and murder soon follows. The sheriff’s department can’t prove a link to the Buffalo Ranch, but he suspects it. Then, a rare white buffalo calf disappears, and more violence occurs. (Release date is Feb. 20.)

Comedian Laurie Kilmartin turns her attention to the death of people we love in the nonfiction entry, Dead People Suck: A Guide for Survivors of the Newly Departed. When her father died, she wasn’t ready to let him go. It’s a humorous guide to grief that includes some excellent suggestions as to what to say to people who lost a loved one. (Release date is Feb. 13.)

As Bright as Heaven by Susan Meissner takes readers to a city of promise, Philadelphia in 1918. Even as young men head off to war, there are opportunities for a fresh start, and Pauline Bright, her husband, and three daughters hope to have a better life. But months after they arrive, the Spanish flu clads more than twelve thousand victims in Philadelphia alone. Even as they lose loved ones, they take in a baby, orphaned by the disease, who becomes their single source of hope. (Release date is Feb. 6.)

D.M. Quincy’s Murder in Mayfair was one of my top ten books of 2017. Now, adventurer Atlas Catesby is back in Murder in Bloomsbury. When Lilliana requests Atlas help again, he can’t resist. The ne’er-do-well brother of Lilliana’s maid died of arsenic poisoning. While authorities rule the death an accident, Lilliana suspects otherwise. As they unravel a bizarre trail of secrets and lies, they find themselves on the trail of a ruthless killer who intends to get to them first. (Release date is Feb. 13.)

Leslie Wheeler kicks off a new series with Rattlesnake Hill.  When Kathryn Stinson rents a place in New Nottingham in the Berkshires, she’s hoping to find answers to a family mystery. Who is the beauty in an old photograph? But, instead of answers, she finds more questions and stories about murder and love triangles. (Release date is Feb. 16.)

There are so many February releases, and it’s a short month! These are the other books in my February collection. What books are you anticipating?

The Sea Beast Takes a Lover by Michael Andreasen
The Ghost Notebooks by Ben Dolnick
The Storm King by Brendan Duffy
Promise by Minrose Gwin
Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August by Oliver Holmes
A Prairie Girl’s Faith: The Spiritual Legacy of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Stephen W. Hines
Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth
Tarnished City by Vic James
Sirens by Joseph Knox
My Name is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd
Where the Wild Cherries Grow by Laura Madeleine
The Queen of Hearts by Kimmery Martin
Only Child by Rhiannon Navin
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O’Farrell
Winter Sisters by Robin Oliveira
Girl Unknown by Karen Perry
Best of Luck by Corinne Scott
The Art of Vanishing: A Memoir of Wanderlust by Laura Smith
The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats by Daniel Stone
The Gone World by Tom Sweterlitsch
DEROS by John A. Vanek
The Neighborhood by Mario Vargas Llosa
The Greek Wall by Nicolas Verdan
The Story of Our Lives by Helen Warner
Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover
Mister Tender’s Girl by Carter Wilson
Rosie Colored Glasses by Brianna Wolfson