Quizlit’s Book of the Month February 2026 is the latest mesmerizing short story collection Good and Evil and Other Stories from the wonderful Argentinian author Samanta Schweblin.
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Book of the Month February 2026
Good and Evil and Other Stories by Samanta Schweblin
The strange and explosive new collection from the incomparable imagination of Samanta Schweblin, a master of the short story.
A gripping blend of the raw, the astonishing and the tragic, every story is as perfectly unexpected as a snare: tightly, exquisitely wound, ready to snap at a touch.
Here, a young father is haunted by the consequences of a moment of distraction; tragedy is complicated by the inexplicable appearance of an injured horse; an attempted poisoning leads two writers to startling conclusions; and, a lonely woman’s charity is rewarded with home-invasion. And in the shocking opening story, a mother surfaces from the depths of the lake behind her house, where she saw something awful yet alluring.
Guilt, grief, and relationships severed permeate this mesmerising collection – but so do unspeakable bonds of family, love, and longing, each sinister and beautiful. Step by step these unnerving stories lure us into the shadows to confront the monsters of everyday life – ourselves.
“Samanta Schweblin is one of the most exciting writers in the world.” —George Saunders, author of Lincoln in the Bardo
“Beautifully translated by Megan McDowell, in prose that shimmers with a sort of menacing lyricism, the stories of Good and Evil are powerfully evocative and unsettling. They seem to hover, indeed like fever dreams, between the reassuring familiarities of domestic life and the stark, unpredictable, visionary flights of the unconscious.” —Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times Book Review
“[A] doyenne of speculative fiction depicts characters and situations that straddle pleasure and the uncanny, a 21st-century Twilight Zone.” —Boston Globe
“[Schweblin’s] worlds tend to be inescapably off—disconcertingly akimbo and bathed in unplaceable menace. Best not to let your guard down.” —NPR
“[A] haunting, surreal collection. . . . A stunning read that will work its way into your heart and make a home there.” —People
Best Samanta Schweblin Books to Read
Fever Dream
A young woman named Amanda lies dying in a rural hospital clinic. A boy named David sits beside her. She’s not his mother. He’s not her child. The two seem anxious and, at David’s ever more insistent prompting, Amanda recounts a series of events from the apparently recent past.
As David pushes her to recall whatever trauma has landed her in her terminal state, he unwittingly opens a chest of horrors, and suddenly the terrifying nature of their reality is brought into shocking focus.
One of the freshest new voices to come out of the Spanish language, Samanta Schweblin creates an aura of strange and deeply unsettling psychological menace in this cautionary tale of maternal love, broken souls and the power and desperation of family.
Seven Empty Houses
The seven houses in these seven stories are strange. A person is missing, or a truth, or memory; some rooms are enticing, some unmoored, others empty. But in Samanta Schweblin’s tense, visionary tales, something always creeps back in: a ghost, a fight, trespassers, a list of things to do before you die, or the fallibility of parents.
Seven Empty Houses offers an entry point into a fiercely original mind, and a slingshot into Schweblin’s destabilizing, exhilarating literary world. In each story, the twists and turns will unnerve and surprise: Schweblin never takes the expected path and instead digs under the skin and reveals uncomfortable truths about our sense of home, of belonging, and of the fragility of our connections with others. This is a masterwork from one of our most brilliant modern writers.
If you enjoyed Book of the Month February 2026, check out 5 Wonderful New Books for February 2026
