Five books we can't wait to read in February

If it seems to you like tons of books are showing up on store and library shelves all of a sudden, you’re not wrong.

Last year’s presidential election disrupted publishers’ schedules. Apparently, like TV programmers loathe to debut new series in the middle of big events like the Olympics, publishers are worried new titles will get lost in the midst of wall-to-wall election coverage. Which means there were fewer than usual big titles last fall, generally the book world’s busiest time, and there are many more this winter and spring. Which is good news for readers, obviously.

There are tons of exciting titles on the way, and here are five coming next month:

Gentlemen of the Woods, Willa Hammitt Brown

This one has “cabin bookshelf” written all over it. It’ll be fun to pick up in between hikes and dips in the lake, to browse through its quirky stories about lumberjack life. Packed with eye-opening illustrations and photos, “Gentlemen” begins with Paul Bunyan and the manly, mythical image of lumberjacks that character helped create. But then it deconstructs the myth to reveal what lumberjack life was really like (several plaintive letters home from jacks paint a grim picture), what the world really thought about the men who kept the timber industry going (the word “transients” pops up often), their impact on Native culture and on the environment. The word “gentlemen” is used fairly loosely in the title and in the book that publisher University of Minnesota Press bills as “compulsively readable.” (Feb. 18)

The Queens of Crime, Marie Benedict

The writer of “The Mystery of Mrs. Christie,” which imagined what happened during the real-life 11 days in 1926 during which nobody knew where mystery writer Agatha Christie was, returns with another book that features the English legend. She plays a supporting role in “Queens,” inspired by a real-life case that fascinated Christie’s fellow crime writer, Dorothy L. Sayers. In the novel, the two join forces with three other female mystery writers to investigate the murder of a woman who disappeared while on vacation in France and whose body later turned up in a forest. Fun fact: In real life, both Sayers and Christie served as presidents of the Detection Club, which admitted male and female writers but was said to be dismissive of the latter. (Feb. 11)

Pure Innocent Fun, Ira Madison III

The host of the wickedly clever podcast “Keep It” has crafted a book of essays about pop culture and his formative years as a Black gay kid, growing up in Milwaukee. The topics explored by Madison, who’s also a critic, actor and TV writer (”So Help Me Todd”), range from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” to “Clueless” to listening to NSYNC. He’ll have more to say about books, music, movies and TV when he appears at Queermunity, in conversation with Minnesota writer, professor and podcaster Chris Stedman. That event is at 7 p.m. Feb. 12 at 3036 Hennepin Av. S. (above Magers & Quinn, which is hosting it and selling books by Madison and Stedman). The $40 admission includes a signed copy of “Pure Innocent Fun.” (Feb. 4)

Show Don’t Tell, Curtis Sittenfeld

The Minneapolis writer follows up her wildly popular “Romantic Comedy” with a collection of stories she says are about women facing big choices, including a compulsively chatty writing student waiting to find out if she won a big prize, a woman who has become a minor Karen (perhaps deservedly) in “White Women LOL” and a mini-sequel to Sittenfeld’s debut novel “Prep,” in which that book’s main character returns to school for a class reunion. It’s Sittenfeld’s first story collection since “You Think It, I’ll Say It,” which the Star Tribune called “a treat.” (Feb. 25)

Unforgivable, Kevin Lewis O’Neill

Subtitled “An Abusive Priest and the Church That Sent Him Abroad,” O’Neill’s book focuses on the late David A. Roney, who was credibly accused of abuse by a Willmar girl in the 1960s and was the subject of several subsequent lawsuits. The New Ulm diocese of the Roman Catholic Church responded by “offshoring” him, sending him to Guatemala, where he worked around numerous children and, according to the book, essentially adopted one. Despite honing in on a specific case, O’Neill — a religion professor at the University of Toronto — has indicated his book is meant to shed light on the larger social issue and the practice of offshoring. (Feb. 25)