Who isn’t feeling battered by the weather these days? There are antidotes, of course. You can take refuge in seed catalogs and count the days till baseball comes back. And, as always, there are books to read. Here are some of the best in fiction — enough to keep you busy until it’s time to cut the grass.
“Swamplandia!”by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95). Miami native Russell leads us into the Everglades with 13-year-old Ava Bigtree as she mourns her mother while trying to keep her family together and save their business, a gator-rasslin’ park called Swamplandia. February
“The Complaints”by Ian Rankin (Little, Brown, $24.99). What does a master crime writer do when he retires the character who made him famous? Rankin introduces us to his Rebus replacement, Malcolm Fox, a detective who goes after crooked cops. March
“The Tiger’s Wife,”by Tea Obreht (Random House, $25). The supernatural and the all-too-natural mix and mingle in a much-anticipated debut novel set in the Balkans. Obreht tells the story of a young woman trying to find the reason for her grandfather’s death on a mysterious trip. March
“Nude Walker,”by Bathsheba Monk (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $25). In a rundown, flood-threatened Pennsylvania steel town, an unlikely love story grows out of the feud between Lebanese immigrants and the resident gentry in Monk’s first novel. March
“The Troubled Man,”by Henning Mankell (Alfred A. Knopf, $25.95). The Swedish mystery master’s troubled detective, as always his own worst enemy, investigates the death of his daughter’s prospective father-in-law. March
“What You See in the Dark,”by Manuel Munoz (Algonquin, $23.95). In this debut novel, shoe-store clerk Teresa hopes to sing her way out of sleepy Bakersfield, Calif., in the late 1950s. Her romance with the hottest guy in town, whose mother owns a motel, is overshadowed by the arrival of a famous director and actress looking for a location to film a picture about a motel murder. March
“The Pale King: An Unfinished Novel,”by David Foster Wallace (Little, Brown, $27.99). This is the major work that Wallace, author of the outstanding novel “Infinite Jest” (1996), left incomplete at the time of his death in 2008. Even unfinished, Wallace’s last dance with irony, set in an IRS center in Peoria, Ill., comes to nearly 500 pages. April
“When the Thrill Is Gone,”by Walter Mosley (Riverhead, $26.95). The thrill is definitely not gone for fans of Mosley, who brings back New York PI Leonid McGill for another outing. McGill’s beautiful client is lying, his wife is cheating, his son is involved in a dubious moneymaking scheme, and his friend has cancer — the typical obstacle course for Mosley characters. March
“On Black Sisters Street,”by Chika Unigwe (Random House, $25). African writer Unigwe’s American publication debut tells the story of four women who move to Belgium from Africa and end up working in the sex trade in Antwerp. When one of them is murdered, the surviving three must depend on one another for support. May
“The Story of a Beautiful Girl,”by Rachel Simon (Grand Central, $24.99). Simon’s elegant tale of love centers on the struggles of a couple — a white woman with a speech impediment and an African-American man who is deaf — to stay together in a world that seems bound to keep them apart. May
