With Revolutionary-era escapes and Regency scandal, Hong Kong protests, gothic fantasy and aristocratic rot, these new titles explore who gets remembered, who gets erased and the cost of pushing back.
‘The Free and the Dead: The Untold Story of the Black Seminole Chief, the Indigenous Rebel, and America’s Forgotten War’ by Jamie Holmes
This account of the antebellum-era Seminole Wars considers the perspectives of Indigenous people and their free Black allies as they worked both collaboratively and independently to fight United States land seizure and re-enslavement. Holmes shows how President Andrew Jackson and other leaders reframed the conflict for political convenience, collapsing diverse groups into a single enemy — “All Indigenous people were ‘Indians,’ and all Indians in the Florida territory were ‘Seminoles’” — to justify expansion and rally soldiers. Figures such as Osceola and the Black Seminole leader Abraham emerge as strategic rebels rather than myths. At the same time, the government suppressed reports of Black resistance to avoid inspiring followers. The result is a buried history of solidarity, resistance and deliberate forgetting. (One Signal, Feb. 3)
‘The Escapes of David George: An Odyssey of Slavery, Freedom, and the American Revolution’ by Gregory E. O’Malley
David George’s unusual story reveals both his relentless defiance and the near impossibility of freedom for an enslaved person during the Revolutionary era. After fleeing from a Virginia plantation in 1762 at 19, George spent years as a serial captive, escaping and being recaptured across colonial and Indigenous worlds. His continued quest for freedom in a young country resulted in extraordinary circumstances over the following decades: He founded what may have been the first Black Baptist church; he joined the British Army, where he was promised liberty; he escaped with his family to a refugee camp in Nova Scotia and finally settled in an antislavery colony in Sierra Leone. O’Malley’s meticulous evaluation of historical evidence and context provides an enlightening and thrilling narrative that underscores how bondage was enforced by an entire society, not a single enslaver. (St. Martin’s, Feb. 3)
‘Everyday Movement’ by Gigi L. Leung, translated by Jennifer Feeley
The lives of four young people in Hong Kong fracture as they participate in democracy protests. Consumed with anxious thoughts about the brutality she witnesses as protesters clash with police, Ah Lei struggles to engage in everyday life, while her college roommate, Panda, believes “people who think too much usually aren’t very happy.” Ah Mak, once content to remain invisible, becomes radicalized at the movement’s front lines yet grows numb at work, while his girlfriend, Chan Yuek, misreads restraint as lack of love, only to carry regret for years. Shaped by Leung’s time as a Hong Kong university student during the 2019 protests — an experience that drove her to Taiwan to finish the novel — the story centers on ordinary people pulled into extraordinary violence and the ways in which their choices reshape their identity long after the streets are empty. (Riverhead, Feb. 10)
‘Rebel of the Regency: The Scandalous Saga of Caroline of Brunswick, Britain’s Queen Without a Crown’ by Ann Foster
Foster — host of the feminist history podcast “Vulgar History” — reclaims Caroline of Brunswick, the German princess who became Britain’s most inconvenient queen. Written with a blend of scholarship, feminism and pop-culture savvy, the book reframes Caroline not as a greedy, scandal-hungry trope but as a sharp, contradictory woman who “came out swinging immediately” against a disastrous marriage to the debt-ridden Prince of Wales, a.k.a. “Prinny.” Foster relays Regency-era antics using today’s language to make power dynamics legible for contemporary readers, likening Prinny’s relentless letter-writing to “love bombing” and his Byronic theatrics to early-2000s emo culture. In doing so, she modernizes the historical record — much like Alexis Coe did with “You Never Forget Your First: A Biography of George Washington” — arguing Caroline was erased because she was too public, too political and ultimately too “vulgar” for Victorian respectability. (Hanover Square, Feb. 10)
‘Weavingshaw’ by Heba Al-Wasity
Leena Al-Sayer is a sharp, resilient young woman navigating life as a refugee while caring for her imprisoned father and rebellious brother. Cursed with the ability to communicate with ghosts, Leena has kept her unusual burden to herself, but when her brother becomes ill, she’s forced to negotiate with the dangerous Saint of Silence, a brooding man who trades in secrets, truth and power. Their path leads to Weavingshaw, a crumbling ancestral estate where ghosts, demons and politics intertwine, and Leena realizes that dark forces are controlling the country. Along with the story’s lush atmosphere and slow-burning romance, Al-Wasity’s engaging gothic tale highlights the struggle for acceptance and freedom. (Del Rey, Feb. 24)
‘One of Us’ by Elizabeth Day
Day’s sharp, funny novel revolves around the Fitzmaurices, an aristocratic British family whose tendrils of power encircle everyone in their orbit as they gather for a funeral of one of their own. Day skewers privilege with biting wit. When one character refers to a woman as “deathly” dull, her friend retorts that the comparison is unfair: “Death would never wear that skirt.” A disgraced politician, meanwhile, is willing to literally clean up sewage on reality television for a shot at redemption. However, beneath the droll dialogue and satirical takes, the book delves into darker issues when characters struggle to break free of destructive patterns. Wealth and status are endlessly traded, defended and justified as inheritance, even as the consequences hollow out everyone involved. (Viking, Feb. 24)
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