Paperbacks to Look Out For in February 2026: Part Two

The second part of February’s paperback preview kicks off with an unusual choice for me. Jon Hickey’s debut, Big Chief, is set on the fictional Passage Rouge Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin in the run up to a crucial election for Mitch Caddo and his best friend Tribal President Mack Beck who run the Reservation’s government including the profitable Golden Eagle Casino and Hotel. When a national politician gets involved, things get dirty, relations made more fraught given that her aide is Mack’s sister and Mitch’s ex. ‘Thrilling and timely, Big Chief is an unforgettable story about the search for belonging—to an ancestral and spiritual home, to a family, and to a sovereign people at a moment of great historical importance’ according to the blurb. It’s the setting that attracts me to this one.

I loved Virginia Feito’s deliciously dark Mrs March, one of my 2021 favourites. Victorian Psycho sounds even more gothic. Arriving at Ensor House, ready to teach her two charges and stamp out any urges to indulge in her previous outlandish behaviour, Winifred Notty finds herself failing to stick to her plan. ‘Whether creeping across the moonlit lawns in her undergarments or gently tormenting the house staff, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until her chillingly dark imagination breaches the feeble boundary of reality on Christmas morning. Wielding her signature sardonic wit and a penchant for the gorgeously macabre, Virginia Feito returns with a vengeance in Victorian Psycho’ promises the blurb. Annabel gave this one a resounding thumbs up at Shiny New Books

Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin’s Ordinary Saints is the first of three Irish titles, one of which I’ve already read. Faced with the news that her beloved brother, tragically killed in an accident, is being considered for sainthood, Jay thinks it’s time to leave London and her girlfriend, travelling home to confront all that she’s been trying to avoid. ‘Inspired by the author’s own devout upbringing, Ordinary Saints is a brilliant debut novel from a fresh, exciting new voice which asks – who gets to decide how we are remembered – and who we will become?’ according to the blurb. Sounds intriguing.

Elaine Garvey’s The Wardrobe Department follows Mairéad who works in a rundown West End theatre in the early 2000s, dodging groping hands and a bullying producer while learning her trade. She finds herself torn between building a new urban life and a nostalgia for her rural Irish home. ‘Told with rare honesty and equal measures of warmth and bite, The Wardrobe Department is a story about reckoning with the past, finding the courage to change the present – and asking what comes next’ says the blurb whetting my appetite as does Cathy’s review at 746 Books. You can read it here.

Loss, anger, grief and disappointment run through the six stories that make up Northern Irish writer Liadan Ní Chuinn’s powerful debut collection, Every One Still Here, several of which are linked by the legacy of the Troubles. Intergenerational trauma is explored through visceral memories of a father’s decline interwoven with his son’s questioning of the past while a young man is faced with his cousin’s fury when he raises their family’s experience and its effects on both them and their parents. Difficult to read, at times, this is a striking collection, thoroughly deserving of the praise heaped upon it by the likes of Wendy Erskine and Louise Kennedy. 

That’s it for February. A click on a title will take you either to my review or to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. New fiction is here and here.