Can you believe that it is August already? The amount of time you spend at the beach may be winding down, but the joy of reading engaging and compelling books is just heating up! These August releases promises to deliver the wide range of genres that are suitable for those readers who just want to taste of everything. From a cookbook with a taste of the Scottish Highlands to a in-depth story of this century’s most musical family, get ready to dive into books that will make you forget that summer is coming to an end in the first place!
Featured Book of the Month
The Reading List By Sara Nisha Adams
“Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life in the London Borough of Ealing after losing his beloved wife. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his granddaughter, Priya, who hides in her room reading while he spends his evenings watching nature documentaries.
Aleisha is a bright but anxious teenager working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s a list of novels that she’s never heard of before. Intrigued, and a little bored with her slow job at the checkout desk, she impulsively decides to read every book on the list, one after the other. As each story gives up its magic, the books transport Aleisha from the painful realities she’s facing at home.
When Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm granddaughter, Aleisha passes along the reading list…hoping that it will be a lifeline for him too. Slowly, the shared books create a connection between two lonely souls, as fiction helps them escape their grief and everyday troubles and find joy again. (Credit: William Morrow)
Ghosts by Dolly Alderton
Nina Dean is not especially bothered that she’s single. She owns her own apartment, she’s about to publish her second book, she has a great relationship with her ex-boyfriend, and enough friends to keep her social calendar full and her hangovers plentiful. And when she downloads a dating app, she does the seemingly impossible: She meets a great guy on her first date. Max is handsome and built like a lumberjack; he has floppy blond hair and a stable job. But more surprising than anything else, Nina and Max have chemistry. Their conversations are witty and ironic, they both hate sports, they dance together like fools, they happily dig deep into the nuances of crappy music, and they create an entire universe of private jokes and chemical bliss.
But when Max ghosts her, Nina is forced to deal with everything she’s been trying so hard to ignore: her father’s Alzheimer’s is getting worse, and so is her mother’s denial of it; her editor hates her new book idea; and her best friend from childhood is icing her out. Funny, tender, and eminently, movingly relatable, Ghosts is a whip-smart tale of relationships and modern life. (Credit: Knopf Publishing Group)
The Seafood Shack: Food and Tales from the Scottish Highlands by Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick
Welcome to The Seafood Shack, a small food truck in Ullapool in the Scottish Highlands. It’s here that Kirsty Scobie and Fenella Renwick take whatever their fishermen friends bring them each day and serve it up for their ever-growing band of loyal customers.
Join them and discover how easy it is to cook mouthwatering seafood with over 80 down-to-earth recipes, plus essential tips on how to responsibly source, prepare, dissect, fillet, and cook white fish, smoked fish, and shellfish. The recipes are punctuated with tall tales from the fishermen who go out on fine days and foul to catch this fantastic produce from the clear and icy North Atlantic waters.
Whether it’s their signature haddock wrap for a mid-week dinner or their garlic & thyme langoustines for a weekend party treat, this is food that is simple and quick, but more importantly fresh, delicious to eat and an absolute joy to cook. (Credit: Interlink Books)
This Book is Feminist by Jamia Wilson and illustrated by Aurelia Durand
Who has power? Who creates the rules? How do identities intersect?
In this next book in the Empower the Future series, explore the points where gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and culture meet. Learn from author Jamia Wilson’s lived experience, read the statistics, and gain strength in quotes from feminist firebrands and activists. Along the way, respond to calls to action and form your own views on the ‘F’ word.
This book is for everyone.
Discover the history and meaning of the feminist movement through 15 reasons why feminism improves life for everyone. By exploring who has been left out of the movement historically, this book makes sure everybody is included. (Credit: Frances Lincoln Ltd)
Bullet Train by Kotaro Isaka
Nanao, nicknamed Lady Bird–the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world”–boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with one simple task: grab a suitcase and get off at the next stop. Unbeknownst to him, the deadly duo Tangerine and Lemon are also after the very same suitcase–and they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Satoshi, “the Prince,” with the looks of an innocent schoolboy and the mind of a viciously cunning psychopath, is also in the mix and has history with some of the others. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate . . . like, is killing really wrong? Chasing the Prince is another assassin with a score to settle for the time the Prince casually pushed a young boy off of a roof, leaving him comatose.
When the five assassins discover they are all on the same train, they realize their missions are not as unrelated as they first appear. (Credit: Overlook Press)
The Mismatch by Sara Jafari
Now that Soraya Nazari has graduated from university, she thinks it’s time to get some of the life experience she feels she’s lacking, partly due to her strict upbringing–and Magnus Evans seems like the perfect way to get it.
Where she’s the somewhat timid, artistic daughter of Iranian immigrants, Magnus is the quintessential British lad. They have little in common, so there’s no way Soraya could ever fall for him. What’s the harm in having some fun as she navigates her postgrad life? And he could give her some distance from her increasingly complicated home life, where things are strained by her father’s struggles, her mother’s unhappiness and her eldest sister’s estrangement under a vague cloud of shame fifteen years earlier.
Distracting herself with Magnus is easy at first. But just as Soraya realizes there’s more to Magnus than she thought, long-buried secrets, and hard questions, begin to surface–will any of her relationships survive the truth coming out?
Moving between modern-day London and revolutionary Iran, The Mismatch is a gorgeously written coming-of-age story that follows a young woman as she finds love in a most unexpected place, and a path in life amid two different cultures. (Credit: Dell)
Sisters in Arms: A Novel of the Daring Black Women Who Served During World War II by Kaia Alderson
Grace Steele and Eliza Jones may be from completely different backgrounds, but when it comes to the army, specifically the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), they are both starting from the same level. Not only will they be among the first class of female officers the army has even seen, they are also the first Black women allowed to serve.
As these courageous women help to form the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, they are dealing with more than just army bureaucracy–everyone is determined to see this experiment fail. For two northern women, learning to navigate their way through the segregated army may be tougher than boot camp. Grace and Eliza know that there is no room for error; they must be more perfect than everyone else.
When they finally make it overseas, to England and then France, Grace and Eliza will at last be able to do their parts for the country they love, whatever the risk to themselves.
Based on the true story of the 6888th Postal Battalion (the Six Triple Eight), Sisters in Arms explores the untold story of what life was like for the only all-Black, female U.S. battalion to be deployed overseas during World War II. (Credit: William Morrow & Company)
Night Music by Jojo Moyes
Expected Publication Date: August 17
Isabel Delancey, a classical violinist, has always taken her comfortable life for granted. But when her husband dies suddenly, leaving her with a mountain of debt, she and her two children are forced to abandon their home and move to the Spanish House, a now-dilapidated manor Isabel inherited in the English countryside.
With the house falling down around them, and the last of her savings disappearing fast, Isabel turns to her neighbors for help, not knowing that her mere presence there has stirred up long-standing obsessions.
As she fights to make her house a home, passions and lives collide. Isabel will discover an instinct for survival she never knew she had– and that a heart can play a new song. . . . (Credit: Penguin Books)
Burden Falls by Kat Ellis
Expected Publication Date: August 24
The town of Burden Falls drips with superstition, from rumors of its cursed waterfall to Dead-Eyed Sadie, the disturbing specter who haunts it. Ava Thorn grew up right beside the falls, and since a horrific accident killed her parents a year ago, she’s been plagued by nightmares in which Sadie comes calling–nightmares so chilling, Ava feels as if she’ll never wake up. But when someone close to Ava is brutally murdered and she’s the primary suspect, she begins to wonder if the stories might be more than legends–and if the ghost haunting her dreams might be terrifyingly real. Whatever secrets Burden Falls is hiding, there’s a killer on the loose . . . with a vendetta against the Thorns. (Credit: Dial Books)
Steeple Vol. 2 by John Allison
Expected Publication Date: August 31
Former curate Billie has moved on to a new path . . . as a priestess in the Church of Satan. Meanwhile, her friend Maggie has made a similar switch–from Satanist to church-bound do-gooder.
But when the light of the supermoon turns a Church of Satan warlock into an almost-werewolf, Billie’s well-meaning solutions bring her evil boss to the breaking point, just as Maggie’s chaotic nature begins to wear thin on her Godly supervisors.
Then, when a mysterious visitor is found in a cave, an ancient evil from the unknowable depths of the Pacific Ocean is hot on their heels . . . and so is Christmas In the midst of the madness, Billie does her best to arrange an improbable Saturnalia truce between the churches of England and Satan. (Credit: Dark Horse Books)
The Women of Troy by Pat Barker
Expected Publication Date: August 24
Troy has fallen and the victorious Greeks are eager to return home with the spoils of an endless war–including the women of Troy themselves. They await a fair wind for the Aegean.
It does not come, because the gods are offended. The body of King Priam lies unburied and desecrated, and so the victors remain in suspension, camped in the shadows of the city they destroyed as the coalition that held them together begins to unravel. Old feuds resurface and new suspicions and rivalries begin to fester.
Largely unnoticed by her captors, the one time Trojan queen Briseis, formerly Achilles’s slave, now belonging to his companion Alcimus, quietly takes in these developments. She forges alliances when she can, with Priam’s aged wife the defiant Hecuba and with the disgraced soothsayer Calchas, all the while shrewdly seeking her path to revenge. (Credit: Doubleday Books)
The Last Chance Library by Freya Sampson
Expected Publication Date: August 31
Lonely librarian June Jones has never left the sleepy English village where she grew up. Shy and reclusive, the thirty-year-old would rather spend her time buried in books than venture out into the world. But when her library is threatened with closure, June is forced to emerge from behind the shelves to save the heart of her community and the place that holds the dearest memories of her mother.
Joining a band of eccentric yet dedicated locals in a campaign to keep the library, June opens herself up to other people for the first time since her mother died. It just so happens that her old school friend Alex Chen is back in town and willing to lend a helping hand. The kindhearted lawyer’s feelings for her are obvious to everyone but June, who won’t believe that anyone could ever care for her in that way.
To save the place and the books that mean so much to her, June must finally make some changes to her life. For once, she’s determined not to go down without a fight. And maybe, in fighting for her cherished library, June can save herself, too. (Credit: Berkley Books)
Good Girls Don’t Make History by Keith Olwell , Elizabeth Kiehner and Kara Coyle
Expected Publication Date: August 31
History has rarely been told from a woman’s point of view. Good Girls Don’t Make History is an important graphic novel that amplifies the voices of female legends from 1840 to the present day.
Reliving moments from the lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sojourner Truth, Alice Paul, Ida B. Wells, and Susan B. Anthony, these inspiring stories are boldly told from one of the most formative eras in women’s history–the fight for the vote in the United States.
The tale begins at a modern-day polling station in California with a mother and daughter voting together, then flashes back 180 years to the World Anti-Slavery Convention where the women’s movement got its legendary start.
The twists and turns take readers across the country and through time, illuminating parallels between epic battles for liberty in the past and similar struggles for justice today. A powerful and important examination of some key figures in the ongoing fight for equality, Good Girls Don’t Make History’s accounts of bravery, perseverance and courage are truly inspiring for readers of any age. (Credit: Wide Eye Editions)
House of Music: Raising the Kanneh-Masons by Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason
Expected Publication Date: August 31
Seven brothers and sisters. All of them classically trained musicians. One was Young Musician of the Year and performed for the royal family. The eldest has released her first album, showcasing the works of Clara Schumann. These siblings don’t come from the rarefied environment of elite music schools, but from a state comprehensive in Nottingham. How did they do it?
Their mother, Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason, opens up about what it takes to raise a musical family in a Britain divided by class and race. What comes out is a beautiful and heartrending memoir of the power of determination, camaraderie and a lot of hard work. The Kanneh-Masons are a remarkable family. But what truly sparkles in this eloquent memoir is the joyous affirmation that children are a gift and we must do all we can to nurture them. (Credit: OneWorld Publications)
