February 2026
In our fiction selection this month we’re globe-trotting from the comfort and safety of our couches, with dazzling novels that transport us from Ukraine to the Antarctic, Australia, Malaysia and India. Meanwhile in non-fiction we celebrate activism from behind bars with Roger Hallam, ground-breaking developments in cruelty-free meat with Bruce Friedrich, and the new global possible with Ani Dasgupta. And for poetry-lovers, we showcase a thrilling new anthology featuring a poem that will make your next pomegranate taste very special.
February 2026
Fiction
Endling by Maria Reva
Fierce and funny, this unforgettable novel charts the journey of three women and one extremely endangered snail through contemporary Ukraine. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and start a family of her own. What they don’t know is that Yeva already dates plenty of men – not for love, but to fund her work. She entertains Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism.
Nastia and her sister, Solomiya, are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator while secretly searching for their missing mother, who vanished after years of activism against the romance tours.
So begins a journey of a lifetime across a country on the brink of war: three angry women, a truckful of kidnapped bachelors, and Lefty, a last-of-his-kind snail with one final shot at perpetuating his species. Inventive, smart and a one of a kind road trip.
Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
Gripping, moving, and beautifully-wrought, McConagh’s tale of a woman stranded on a remote Antarctic island is a literary eco-thriller like no other. The island is many things: the locus of a threatened seed-vault, a nature sanctuary, a kind of prison – and the home of a grieving family whose members are not what they seem. Throw in a heart-breaking love story, a ruthless antagonist and vivid depictions of endangered wildlife, and the stage is set for a story that builds to fever pitch.
Every Version of You by Grace Chan
Set against the backdrop of the planet’s failing ecosystems in late-21st-century Australia, Tao-Yi and her partner Navin spend most of their time inside an immersive, consumerist virtual reality called Gaia. They log on, go to work, socialise and even eat in this digital utopia. Meanwhile, their ageing bodies lie suspended in pods inside cramped apartments.
Across the city, in the abandoned real world, Tao-Yi’s mother remains stubbornly offline, dwindling away between hospital visits and memories of her earlier life in Malaysia.
When a new technology is developed to permanently upload a human brain to Gaia, Tao-Yi must decide what is most important: a digital future or an authentic past.
This spellbinding novel unpicks the ties between life and technology to ask what truly makes us human, and what in our world is worth preserving.
Brilliant, clever and thoughtful.
The Tiger’s Share by Keshava Guha
Set against a backdrop of ecological collapse and political unrest, The Tiger’s Share is both a family and a state-of-the-nation novel unlike anything else in contemporary Indian fiction.
Tara, a successful Dehli lawyer, is everything her younger brother isn’t: dedicated, independent, thriving. When their beloved father retires, he summons them to a meeting. But what he has to say threatens to tear the family apart.
Tara’s friend Lila has it all: a great job, a lovely home, a beautiful family. But when Lila’s father dies unexpectedly, her brother wastes no time in claiming what he thinks is his.
Together, Tara and Lila are forced to confront the challenge that their ambition poses to patriarchal Delhi society.
‘A stylish and engaging tragi-comedy of manners . . . Keshava Guha is an astute and insightful observer of contemporary India’ Amitav Ghosh.
NON FICTION
Suicide by Roger Hallam
A hybrid of memoir and political manifesto, Suicide was written during the author’s imprisonment after the high-profile Whole Truth Five trial linked to Just Stop Oil. Hallam, one the founders of Extinction Rebellion, presents the defence he was banned from making in court, exposing the legal system’s failure to confront the climate crisis. Drawing on climate science, legal theory, and personal experience, he argues that the institutions meant to protect society are collapsing. In both his critique of modern thinking and his forceful call for direct action, he urges readers to rethink justice, duty, and truth in an age of ecological emergency.
Meat by Bruce Friedrich
A hopeful, research-driven exploration setting out how humanity can satisfy its appetite for meat without the environmental, health, and ethical damage caused by conventional animal agriculture. Friedrich, who founded the Good Food Institute, frames meat not as a problem to be abolished, but as a beloved food that can be replaced by plant-based and lab-grown meats which can match or surpass conventional meat in taste, safety, nutrition, and cost. Situating alternative proteins as part of “the next agricultural revolution,” he compares their adoption curve to transformative technologies like automobiles and smartphones. An optimistic, practical vision for a future where meat remains central to diets but is produced in ways that are kinder to the planet, animals, and people.
The New Global Possible by Ani Dasgupta
Global environmental leader Ani Dasgupta takes an honest look at lagging climate action and maps out what can be done to rebuild hope for the future.
In 2015, world leaders came together in Paris and signed an agreement to save the planet. Ten years later, we have made little progress on the ground, and the climate crisis is worse than ever. We’ve mostly figured out what we need to do, but not how to get it done—and time is running out.
In this groundbreaking new book, World Resources Institute President and CEO Ani Dasgupta explores how to orchestrate change at speed and scale. How do we get countries to keep working together on climate action when multilateralism is declining? How do we harness technological innovation to protect nature, rather than destroy it? How do we dismantle entrenched power structures and rapidly transition to a clean, resilient economy?
Based on conversations with more than one hundred leaders around the world, The New Global Possible weaves together stories of unusual partnerships, collaborative leadership, and lessons learned from failure. Mining the rich history of the climate movement, Dasgupta defines the narrow path to a hopeful future—one requiring all of our collective focus and determination—and offers a radical new practice for orchestrating change for good.
Poetry
Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority edited by Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf
Revitalising conversations around environmentalism and ecopoetics, this new gathering of African, Asian and Caribbean diaspora voices is both urgent and inspirational.
There has been a welcome surge of nature writing in recent years. Yet this has raised questions as to whose voices are privileged and heard in a space predominantly occupied by Western European traditions and authors. In Nature Matters, poets Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf seek to redress this imbalance.
Their genre-enriching anthology presents brand-new commissions alongside formative works from the past fifty years that invite us to reconsider nature poetry from global-majority perspectives. Image-rich and formally diverse, the poems explore fundamental and ecological themes including climate crisis and the Anthropocene; urban nature, solitude and alienation; protest and radical empathy; Indigenous wisdom and alternative histories.
Poem of the Month
How to cut a pomegranate
by Imtiaz Dharker
‘Never,’ said my father,
‘Never cut a pomegranate
through the heart. It will weep blood.
Treat it delicately, with respect.
Just slit the upper skin across four quarters.
This is a magic fruit,
so when you split it open, be prepared
for the jewels of the world to tumble out,
more precious than garnets,
more lustrous than rubies,
lit as if from inside.
Each jewel contains a living seed.
Separate one crystal.
Hold it up to catch the light.
Inside is a whole universe.
No common jewel can give you this.’
Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces
of pomegranate seeds.
The juice spurted out, bright crimson,
and stained my fingers, then my mouth.
I didn’t mind. The juice tasted of gardens
I had never seen, voluptuous
with myrtle, lemon, jasmine,
and alive with parrots’ wings.
The pomegranate reminded me
that somewhere I had another home.
Published in Nature Matters: Vital Poems from the Global Majority edited by Mona Arshi and Karen McCarthy Woolf
Contact our Librarian if you would like themed book lists to support teaching about climate change.
We’re always looking for ideas for books to add to our growing collection of literature on the climate and nature crisis. If would like to share ideas, please get in touch! Contact mattroselibrary@gmail.com.