“I want people to finish this book feeling a bit better about human beings and life in general,” says Jojo Moyes about her 18th novel, We All Live Here, published by Pamela Dorman/Viking on Feb. 11.

Moyes has been publishing fiction since 2002, but she really broke out a decade later with Me Before You, the story of a man embittered by life after an accident renders him quadriplegic, and the aimless young waitress who is hired to be his caregiver. The book was a romance, a cathartic tear-jerker, and a hit that went straight to the top of bestseller lists in the U.K. and then the U.S.

“I love when I read a book that can make me feel something, whether it makes me laugh or cry,” Moyes told Kirkus in a recent interview, and that’s exactly how readers will feel about We All Live Here, which centers on a middle-aged woman forging an unlikely new family after her husband leaves her and her mother dies. In a starred review, our critic calls it a “moving, realistic look at one woman’s post-divorce family life that manages to be both poignant and funny.”

At a time when the headlines are full of bad news—wildfires, plane crashes, and political mayhem—readers are craving books that comfort. For some, that means sexy fantasy fiction full of dragons and romance (Rebecca Yarros’ Onyx Storm sold 2.7 million copies in its first week on sale); for others, tales like Moyes’ are just what the doctor ordered: real, recognizable characters facing real-life situations with humor and heart.

For still others, comfort is a cat—or a cat book. Few have embraced this genre more fervently than the Japanese, for whom cat books exemplify what is called iyashikei, or “healing type” works (often anime or manga). Take, for example, Syou Ishida’s We’ll Prescribe You a Cat (Berkley, 2024). The novel, translated into English by E. Madison Shimoda, concerns the fictional Kokoro Clinic for the Soul in Kyoto, where struggling patients are prescribed cats to cure what ails them. A sequel, We’ll Prescribe You Another Cat, is scheduled for U.S. publication this fall.

If the cat lounging inside a giant pill bottle on the cover of Ishida’s book regards the viewer with feline skepticism, the kittens on the cover of Kiyoshi Shigematsu’s The Blanket Cats (Putnam, Feb. 25) are straight-up adorable. In this collection of tales, translated by Jesse Kirkwood, a Tokyo pet shop sends customers home with one of seven special cats, each wrapped in a blanket, to be returned after three days. These cats may not solve all the humans’ problems, but the coziness of the setup is undiminished.

Finally, what’s more comforting to a book lover than a book set in a bookstore? (If the shop has a cat, so much the better.) In Hwang Bo-Reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop, translated from Korean by Shanna Tan (Bloomsbury, Feb. 20), the protagonist leaves her high-powered corporate job to open a neighborhood bookstore where the regulars are like family. Isn’t that the best kind of fantasy?

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.