In a book club and starting to plan your reads for next year? Check out our 2025 picks.

The Best New Books Publishing in August 2024

August

2024

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We currently have previews of 130 August books.
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Daughter of Fire: A Novel
by Sofia Robleda
Amazon Crossing, 08/01/2024
 
Catalina de Cerrato is being raised by her widowed father, Don Alonso, in 1551 Guatemala, scarcely thirty years since the Spanish invasion. A ruling ...more
Historical Fiction
The Thirteenth Husband: A Novel
by Greer Macallister
Sourcebooks Landmark, 08/01/2024
 
Based on a real woman from history, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo meets The Haunting of Hill House in this fictional tell-all ...more
Historical Fiction
A Mask of Flies
by Matthew Lyons
Tor Nightfire, 08/06/2024
 
THE PAST HAS TEETH

In the grisly aftermath of a botched bank heist, career criminal Anne Heller has no choice but to return to her family's cabin...more
A Sorceress Comes to Call
by T. Kingfisher
Tor Books, 08/06/2024
 
Cordelia knows her mother is ... unusual. Their house doesn't have any doors between rooms―there are no secrets in this house―and her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
by Tia Levings
St. Martin's Press, 08/06/2024
 
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
A World of Hurt
by Mindy Mejia
Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/06/2024
 
Kara Johnson always knew she'd die young and violently. It didn't matter who delivered the final blow, she would deserve it—her years spent ...more
And So I Roar: A Novel
by Abi Daré
Dutton, 08/06/2024
 
When Tia accidentally overhears a whispered conversation between her mother—terminally ill and lying in a hospital bed in Port Harcourt, Nigeria...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Better Left Buried
by Mary E. Roach
Disney-Hyperion, 08/06/2024
 
Lucy Preston just wants to go on vacation. But being the daughter of a famous private detective means that sometimes, your beach vacay goes off the ...more
Death at Morning House
by Maureen Johnson
HarperTeen, 08/06/2024
 
The fire wasn't Marlowe Wexler's fault. Dates should be hot, but not hot enough to warrant literal firefighters. Akilah, the girl Marlowe has been in ...more
Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labor Powering A.I.
by Mark Graham
Bloomsbury USA, 08/06/2024
 
Silicon Valley has sold us the illusion that artificial intelligence is a frictionless technology that will bring wealth and prosperity to humanity. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Five-Star Stranger: A Novel
by Kat Tang
Scribner, 08/06/2024
 
Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband?

In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Great Fear on the Mountain
by Charles Ferdinand Ramuz
Archipelago Books, 08/06/2024
 
Teeming with tension, this immersive, rhapsodic story transports readers to the Swiss mountainside, bringing to mind the writing of Thomas Mann while ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Group Living and Other Recipes: A Memoir
by Lola Milholland
Spiegel & Grau, 08/06/2024
 
Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Both her parents threw open their rambling house in Portland, Oregon, to ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Hello, Horse
by Richard Kelly Kemick
Biblioasis, 08/06/2024
 
A teenager's job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch
by Codie Crowley
Disney-Hyperion, 08/06/2024
 
Murdered bad girl Annie Lane is back from the grave and hellbent on revenge ... she just has to figure out who killed her.

Between her careless mom...more
Hum: A Novel
by Helen Phillips
Marysue Rucci Books, 08/06/2024
 
In a city addled by climate change and populated by intelligent robots called "hums," May loses her job to artificial intelligence. In a desperate bid...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
I Am on the Hit List: A Journalist's Murder and the Rise of Autocracy in India
by Rollo Romig
Penguin Books, 08/06/2024
 
When Gauri Lankesh, an outspoken journalist in the South Indian city of Bangalore, was assassinated in September 2017 outside her home, it wasn't just...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Jellyfish Have No Ears: A Novel
by Adèle Rosenfeld
Graywolf Press, 08/06/2024
 
After an audiology test shows that almost all her hearing is gone, her doctor suggests getting a cochlear implant. The operation will be irreversible,...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Life as No One Knows It: The Physics of Life's Emergence
by Sara Imari Walker
Riverhead Books, 08/06/2024
 
What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
 Debut Author
Paris 1944: Occupation, Resistance, Liberation: A Social History
by Patrick Bishop
Pegasus Books, 08/06/2024
 
The fall of Paris to the Nazis on June 14th, 1940, was one of the darkest days of World War II. And the liberation of the city on August 25th, 1944, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Plays Well with Others: A Novel
by Sophie Brickman
William Morrow, 08/06/2024
 
It takes a village...just not this one. 

Annie Lewin is at the end of her rope. She's a mother of three young children, her workaholic ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems
by Carl Phillips
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/06/2024
 
Carl Phillips's Scattered Snows, to the North is a collection about distortion and revelation, about knowing and the unreliability of a knowing that's...more
Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Age of Loneliness: Essays
by Laura Marris
Graywolf Press, 08/06/2024
 
She asks: how do we add to archives of ecological memory? How can we notice and document what's missing in the landscapes closest to us?

Filled ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Essays
 Debut Author
The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore
by Evan Friss
Viking, 08/06/2024
 
Bookstores have always been unlike any other kind of store, shaping readers and writers, and influencing our tastes, thoughts, and politics. They ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Dragon from Chicago: The Untold Story of an American Reporter in Nazi Germany
by Pamela D. Toler
Beacon Press, 08/06/2024
 
We are facing an alarming upsurge in the spread of misinformation and attempts by powerful figures to discredit facts so they can seize control of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie: Infinite Identities around the World (Queer History Project)
by Lee Wind
Zest Books, 08/06/2024
 
While many people identify as men or women, that is not all there is. The idea that all humans fall into one of two gender categories is largely a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
The In Crowd: Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp
by Charlotte Vassell
Doubleday, 08/06/2024
 
Early one morning, a men's rowing team discovers a body floating face down in the Thames. Many years before, the chief executive of a clothing ...more
The Mercy of Gods: The Captive's War #1
by James S. A. Corey
Orbit, 08/06/2024
 
The Carryx – part empire, part hive – have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy.  ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Outlier
by Elisabeth Eaves
Random House, 08/06/2024
 
Cate Winter, at 34, is a wildly successful neuroscientist and entrepreneur who has invented a cure for Alzheimer's that will improve the lives of ...more
Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Rich People Have Gone Away: A Novel
by Regina Porter
Hogarth Books, 08/06/2024
 
Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their upscale...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Rose Arbor: A Novel
by Rhys Bowen
Lake Union Publishing, 08/06/2024
 
London: 1968. Liz Houghton is languishing as an obituary writer at a London newspaper when a young girl's disappearance captivates the city. If Liz ...more
Historical Fiction
The Truth According to Ember
by Danica Nava
Berkley Books, 08/06/2024
 
Ember Lee Cardinal has not always been a liar—well, not for anything that counted at least. But her job search is not going well and when her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories
by Ruben Reyes Jr.
Mariner Books, 08/06/2024
 
An ordinary man wakes one morning to discover he's a famous reggaetón star. An aging abuela slowly morphs into a marionette puppet. A struggling ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
 Debut Author
This Ravenous Fate
by Hayley Dennings
Sourcebooks Fire, 08/06/2024
 
It's 1926 and reapers, the once-human vampires with a terrifying affliction, are on the rise in New York. But the Saint family's thriving reaper-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Wanted: Toddler's Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America
by Stephanie Kiser
Sourcebooks, 08/06/2024
 
When Stephanie Kiser moves to New York City after college to pursue a career in writing, she quickly learns that her entry-level salary won't cover ...more
Biography/Memoir
Wordhunter: A Novel
by Stella Sands
HarperPaperbacks, 08/06/2024
 
Tattooed, pierced, and a bit of a mess, Maggie Moore is a surprising genius when it comes to words, a savant able to solve any linguistic puzzle. The ...more
Yr Dead
by Sam Sax
McSweeney's Books, 08/06/2024
 
Unfolding in fragments of memory, Ezra dissolves into the family, religion, desire, losses, pains and joys that made them into the person that's ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
A Complicated Passion: The Life and Work of Agnès Varda
by Carrie Rickey
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/13/2024
 
Over the course of her sixty-five-year career, the longest of any female filmmaker, Agnès Varda (1928–2019) wrote and directed some of the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
A Great Marriage: A Novel
by Frances Mayes
Ballantine Books, 08/13/2024
 
A great marriage is an elusive thing, and only a few know the secret to making one.

Dara Willcox, in New York for a weekend, meets Austin Clarke ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Ash's Cabin
by Jen Wang
First Second, 08/13/2024
 
Ash has always felt alone.

Adults ignore the climate crisis. Other kids Ash's age are more interested in pop stars and popularity contests than ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Graphic Novels
Bite: An Incisive History of Teeth, from Hagfish to Humans
by Bill Schutt
Algonquin Books, 08/13/2024
 
In Bite, zoologist Bill Schutt makes a surprising case: it is teeth that are responsible for the long-term success of vertebrates. The appearance of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Burn: A novel
by Peter Heller
Knopf, 08/13/2024
 
Every year, Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt, and hike, leaving much ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Drawn Testimony: My Four Decades as a Courtroom Sketch Artist
by Jane Rosenberg
Hanover Square Press, 08/13/2024
 
For over forty years, Jane Rosenberg has been at the heart of the news cycle, covering almost every major trial that has passed through the New York ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Everything We Never Knew: A Novel
by Julianne Hough
Sourcebooks Landmark, 08/13/2024
 
On stage at an awards banquet is the last place Lexi Cole expected to drown. But as she accepts the award for top-seller at her realty firm, something...more
Literary Fiction
Ginster
by Siegfried Kracauer
New York Review Books, 08/13/2024
 
Siegfried Kracauer's Ginster is the great World War I novel you've never heard of. Here, the sheer horrors are kept offstage, as in Greek tragedy, and...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Gray Matters: A Biography of Brain Surgery
by Theodore H. Schwartz
Dutton, 08/13/2024
 
We've all heard the phrase "it's not brain surgery." But what exactly is brain surgery? It's a profession that is barely a hundred years old and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Hera: A Novel
by Jennifer Saint
Flatiron Books, 08/13/2024
 
When the immortal goddess Hera and her brother Zeus overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side. But as they establish their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Highway Thirteen: Stories
by Fiona McFarlane
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/13/2024
 
In the small town of Barrow, Australia, people go about their ordinary lives. They drive to work through the dense state forest. They raise their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Short Stories
In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother's Secret Life
by Sadiya Ansari
House of Anansi Press, 08/13/2024
 
Why did her grandmother Tahira abandon her seven children to follow a man from Karachi to a tiny village in Punjab? And though she eventually left him...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
In France Profound: The Long History of a House, a Mountain Town, and a People
by T.D. Allman
Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/13/2024
 
When T. D. Allman purchased an 800-year-old house in the mountain village of Lauzerte in southwestern France, he aimed to find refuge from the world's...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv: A Novel
by Andrey Kurkov
HarperVia, 08/13/2024
 
Strange, almost magical, things are afoot in Lviv. Seagulls circle overhead while the passing breeze carries a briny whiff, even though the coast is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Kent State: An American Tragedy
by Brian VanDeMark
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/13/2024
 
On May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio, political fires that had been burning across America during the 1960s exploded. Antiwar protesters ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lady Macbeth: A Novel
by Ava Reid
Bantam Doubleday Dell, 08/13/2024
 
The Lady knows the stories: how her eyes induce madness in men.

The Lady knows she will be wed to the Scottish brute, who does not leave his ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Manboobs: A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake
by Komail Aijazuddin
Abrams Press, 08/13/2024
 
What do you do when you're too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America, and you're ashamed of your body everywhere? How can you find ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Medusa
by Nataly Gruender
Grand Central Publishing, 08/13/2024
 
 The only mortal daughter of two sea gods, and a priestess of Athena, Medusa was a woman who thought she had found her place in the world. But ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Medusa of the Roses
by Navid Sinaki
Grove Press, 08/13/2024
 
Anjir and Zal are childhood best friends turned adults in love. The only problem is they live in Iran, where being openly gay is criminalized, and the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Men Have Called Her Crazy: A Memoir
by Anna Marie Tendler
Simon & Schuster, 08/13/2024
 
In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Mina's Matchbox: A Novel
by Yoko Ogawa
Pantheon Books, 08/13/2024
 
In the spring of 1972, twelve-year-old Tomoko leaves her mother behind in Tokyo and boards a train alone for Ashiya, a coastal town in Japan, to stay ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Mistress of Lies: The Age of Blood #1
by K. M. Enright
Orbit, 08/13/2024
 
The daughter of a powerful but disgraced Blood Worker, Shan LeC laire has spent her entire life perfecting her blood magic, building her network of ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
Mothballs
by Sole Otero
Fantagraphics Books, 08/13/2024
 
San Martín, Argentina, 2001. Upon her estranged grandmother Vilma's death, 19-year-old Rocío moves into a house haunted by memories. Seeking...more
Graphic Novels
Nat Turner, Black Prophet: A Visionary History
by Anthony E. Kaye
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/13/2024
 
In August 1831, a group of enslaved people in Southampton County, Virginia, rose up to fight for their freedom. They attacked the plantations on which...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Opacities: On Writing and the Writing Life
by Sofia Samatar
Soft Skull Press, 08/13/2024
 
In a series of compressed, dynamic prose pieces, Samatar blends letters from her friend with notes on literature, turning to Édouard Glissant to ...more
Our Narrow Hiding Places: A Novel
by Kristopher Jansma
Ecco, 08/13/2024
 
Eighty-year-old Mieke Geborn's life is one of quiet routine. Widowed for many years, she enjoys the view from her home on the New Jersey shore, visits...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Peggy: A Novel
by Rebecca Godfrey
Random House, 08/13/2024
 
Venice, 1958. Peggy Guggenheim, heiress and now legendary art collector, sits in the sun at her white marble palazzo on the Grand Canal. She's in a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Silken Gazelles: A Novel
by Jokha Alharthi
Catapult, 08/13/2024
 
Raised as sisters, Ghazaala is devastated when her friend Asiya is forced to leave their small mountainside village following a tragic circumstance. ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Avian Hourglass
by Lindsey Drager
Dzanc Books, 08/13/2024
 
The birds have disappeared. The stars are no longer visible. The Crisis is growing worse. In a town as isolated as a snowglobe, a woman who dreams of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Dark We Know
by Wen-yi Lee
Zando, 08/13/2024
 
Growing up in Slater, Isadora Chang never felt at ease in the repressive small town, even before she realized she was bisexual―but after the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Fertile Earth: A Novel
by Ruthvika Rao
Flatiron Books, 08/13/2024
 
Vijaya and Sree are the daughters of the Deshmukhs of Irumi. Hailing from a lineage of ancestral aristocrats, their family's social status and power ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Hivemind Swarmed: Conversations on Gamergate, the Aftermath, and the Quest for a Safer Internet
by David Wolinsky
Beacon Press, 08/13/2024
 
With The Hivemind Swarmed, oral historian and documentary researcher David Wolinsky invites readers to sit in on a series of urgent, intimate ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
The Italy Letters
by Vi Khi Nao
Melville House, 08/13/2024
 
The Italy Letters is a slim, powerful shot of literary fantasia from one of America's best-kept secrets. Long an underground favorite, visionary ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Maid and the Crocodile: A Novel in the World of Raybearer
by Jordan Ifueko
Amulet Books, 08/13/2024
 
The smallest spark can bind two hearts...or start a revolution.

In the magic-soaked capital city of Oluwan, Small Sade needs a job—...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Palace of Eros: A Novel
by Caro De Robertis
Atria Books, 08/13/2024
 
Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Secret Life of the Universe: An Astrobiologist's Search for the Origins and Frontiers of Life
by Nathalie A. Cabrol
Scribner, 08/13/2024
 
We are in a golden age in astronomy, living on the cusp of breakthroughs that will revolutionize our understanding of our place in the cosmos in. Yet ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
The Story Collector
by Evie Woods
HarperCollins Publishers, 08/13/2024
 
One hundred years ago, Anna, a young farm girl, volunteers to help an intriguing American visitor translate fairy stories from Irish to English. But ...more
Historical Fiction
The Stranger at the Wedding: A Novel
by A. E. Gauntlett
Henry Holt and Company, 08/13/2024
 
Annie never much believed in love. That is, until meeting Mark. After crossing paths on morning commutes, they connect at a group counseling session ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
Through the Mist: A Novel
by Lindsay Jayne Ashford
Lake Union Publishing, 08/13/2024
 
It's winter 1947 when newlyweds Ellen and Tony Wylde move into an abandoned Cornish farmhouse overlooking the sea. For both, it's a new beginning in ...more
Thrillers
Under the Surface
by Diana Urban
G.P. Putnam's Sons Books for Young Readers, 08/13/2024
 
Ruby is terrified to cave to her feelings for Sean and risk him crushing her heart.

Sean is pumped to spend a week with Ruby in Paris on their ...more
A Pair of Wings: A Novel
by Carole Hopson
Henry Holt and Company, 08/20/2024
 
A few years after the Wright brothers' first flight, Bessie was working the Texas cotton fields with her family when an airplane flew over their...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
A Survivor's Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don't Tell
by Joy Neumeyer
Public Affairs, 08/20/2024
 
On a picturesque campus in the springtime, a young woman is shoved backwards down a concrete stairway by her partner. This follows months of slowly ...more
True Crime
An Echo in Time: A Novel
by Boo Walker
Lake Union Publishing, 08/20/2024
 
Unable to catch a break in life or love as she approaches thirty, Charli Thurman sees red lights at every crossroads. And given the Thurman family's ...more
Mysteries
Anima: A Wild Pastoral
by Kapka Kassabova
Graywolf Press, 08/20/2024
 
Following her three previous books set in the Balkans, and with an increasinging interest in the degraded state of our planet and culture, Kassabova ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Asunder
by Kerstin Hall
Tor Books, 08/20/2024
 
Karys Eska is a deathspeaker, locked into an irrevocable compact with Sabaster, a terrifying eldritch being―three-faced, hundred-winged, ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian's Journey Home
by Chris La Tray
Milkweed Editions, 08/20/2024
 
Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Black Butterflies: A Novel
by Priscilla Morris
Knopf, 08/20/2024
 
Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect makeshift barricades, splitting the city into ethnic enclaves. Each morning, the people who...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Bluff: Poems
by Danez Smith
Graywolf Press, 08/20/2024
 
This is a book of awakening out of violence, guilt, shame, and critical pessimism to wonder and imagine how we can strive toward a new existence in a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
By Any Other Name: A Novel
by Jodi Picoult
Ballantine Books, 08/20/2024
 
Young playwright Melina Green has just written a new work inspired by the life of her Elizabethan ancestor Emilia Bassano. But seeing it performed is ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Devil in the Stack: A Code Odyssey
by Andrew Smith
Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/20/2024
 
Throughout history, technological revolutions have been driven by the invention of machines. But today, the power of the technology transforming our ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Falling Wisteria: A Novel
by Laila Ibrahim
Lake Union Publishing, 08/20/2024
 
Kay Lynn Brooke is a wife and mother in Berkeley, California, building a solid future with her husband and family. Then on December 7, 1941, the ...more
Historical Fiction
Follow the Stars Home
by Diane C. McPhail
A John Scognamiglio Book, 08/20/2024
 
It's a journey that most deem an insane impossibility. Yet on October 20th, 1811, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt—daughter of one of the architects of ...more
Historical Fiction
Freedom Is a Feast
by Alejandro Puyana
Little Brown & Company, 08/20/2024
 
There, as he trains, he meets Emiliana, a nurse and fellow revolutionary. Though their intense connection seems to be love at first sight, their ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Interpretations of Love
by Jane Campbell
Grove Press, 08/20/2024
 
It's the week of Dr. Agnes Stacey's only daughter's wedding, and each of the eleven attendees of the small family gathering is bringing their own ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
Love Requires Chocolate: Love in Translation
by Ravynn K. Stringfield
Joy Revolution, 08/20/2024
 
Whitney Curry is primed to have an epic semester abroad. She's created the perfect itinerary and many, many to-do lists after collecting every detail ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Romance
 Debut Author
My Salty Mary
by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows
HarperTeen, 08/20/2024
 
Don't call this mermaid "little"—call her "captain," unless you want to walk the plank.

Mary is in love with the so-called prince of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Planes Flying over a Monster: Essays
by Daniel Saldaña París
Catapult, 08/20/2024
 
In ten intimate essays, Daniel Saldaña París explores the cities he has lived in, each one home to a new iteration of himself. In Mexico ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Travel & Adventure
Rethinking Rescue: Dog Lady and the Story of America's Forgotten People and Pets
by Carol Mithers
Counterpoint Press, 08/20/2024
 
In Los Angeles's most underserved communities, Lori Weise is known as the Dog Lady, the woman who's spent decades caring for people in poverty and the...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Rules for Ghosting: A Novel
by Shelly Jay Shore
Dell, 08/20/2024
 
Ezra Friedman sees ghosts, which made growing up in a funeral home complicated. It might have been easier if his grandfather's ghost didn't give him ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Scrap: A Novel
by Calla Henkel
The Overlook Press, 08/20/2024
 
Recently dumped and stuck with a mortgage, artist Esther Ray wants to burn the world, but instead, she reluctantly accepts a scrapbooking job from the...more
Thrillers
She Who Knows
by Nnedi Okorafor
DAW Books, 08/20/2024
 
When there is a call, there is often a response.

Najeeba knows.

She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/20/2024
 
We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Swallow the Ghost: A Novel
by Eugenie Montague
Mulholland, 08/20/2024
 
Things are going well for Jane Murphy, or so it seems. She's making it in New York, a sort of wunderkind at the social media marketing startup where ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Full Moon Coffee Shop: A Novel
by Mai Mochizuki
Ballantine Books, 08/20/2024
 
In Japan, cats are a symbol of good luck. As the myth goes, if you are kind to them, they'll one day return the favor. And if you are kind to the ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Naturalist's Daughter
by Tea Cooper
Harper Muse, 08/20/2024
 
1808 Agnes Banks, NSW

Rose Winton wants nothing more than to work with her father, eminent naturalist Charles Winton, on his groundbreaking study...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Silence Factory: A Novel
by Bridget Collins
William Morrow, 08/20/2024
 
1820: Sophia Ashmore-Percy reluctantly accompanies her husband James to a remote Greek island, where he searches for rare biological specimens. Once ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Slow Road North: How I Found Peace in an Improbable Country
by Rosie Schaap
Mariner Books, 08/20/2024
 
Rosie Schaap had a solid career as a journalist and a life that looked to others like nonstop fun: all drinking and dining and traveling to beautiful ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
The Unicorn Woman
by Gayl Jones
Beacon Press, 08/20/2024
 
Set in the early 1950s, this latest novel from Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Gayl Jones follows the witty but perplexing army ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
The Volcano Daughters: A Novel
by Gina María Balibrera
Pantheon Books, 08/20/2024
 
El Salvador, 1923. Graciela, a young girl growing up on a volcano in a community of Indigenous women, is summoned to the capital, where she is claimed...more
Critics' Consensus:

Other
 Debut Author
There Are Rivers in the Sky: A Novel
by Elif Shafak
Knopf, 08/20/2024
 
From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.

In ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
We Love the Nightlife
by Rachel Koller Croft
Berkley Books, 08/20/2024
 
London 1979. Two women with a deep love for disco meet one fateful night on the dance floor, changing the course of both their lives forever.

...more
Thrillers
When the Ice Is Gone: What a Greenland Ice Core Reveals About Earth's Tumultuous History and Perilous Future
by Paul Bierman
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/20/2024
 
In 2018, lumps of frozen soil, collected from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core and lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
You Will Never Be Me
by Jesse Q. Sutanto
Berkley Books, 08/20/2024
 
Influencer Meredith Lee didn't teach Aspen Palmer how to blossom on social media just to be ditched as soon as Aspen became ...more
Christopher Isherwood Inside Out
by Katherine Bucknell
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/26/2024
 
The story of Christopher Isherwood's life is one of pilgrimage: away from the constraints of inheritance and empire and toward authenticity and ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
A Termination
by Honor Moore
Public Space, 08/27/2024
 
In 1969, Honor Moore was twenty-three, a theater student yearning for love and working for radical change, but studying administration and keeping ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
Bridge Across the Sky
by Freeman Ng
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 08/27/2024
 
Tai Go and his family have crossed an ocean wider than a thousand rivers, joining countless other Chinese immigrants in search of a better life in the...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
Confounding Oaths: The Mortal Follies #2
by Alexis Hall
Del Rey, 08/27/2024
 
It is the year 1815, and Mr. John Caesar is determined to help his sister, Mary, successfully navigate the marriage mart. A high-stakes endeavor at ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Everything We Never Had
by Randy Ribay
Kokila, 08/27/2024
 
Watsonville, 1930. Francisco Maghabol barely ekes out a living in the fields of California. As he spends what little money he earns at dance halls and...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World
by Casey Michel
St. Martin's Griffin, 08/27/2024
 
For years, one group of Americans has worked as foot-soldiers for the most authoritarian regimes around the planet. In the process, they've not only ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
Fyrebirds
by Kate J. Armstrong
Nancy Paulsen Books, 08/27/2024
 
The Nightbirds were once their city's best-kept secret, but now the secret's out. What's more, they can do feats of magic no one has seen in centuries...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Hotline: A Novel
by Dimitri Nasrallah
Other Press, 08/27/2024
 
It's 1986, and Muna Heddad is in a bind. She and her son have moved to Montreal, leaving behind a civil war filled with bad memories in Lebanon. She ...more
Literary Fiction
I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine
by Daniel J. Levitin
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/27/2024
 
Music is one of humanity's oldest medicines. From the Far East to the Ottoman Empire, Europe to Africa and the pre-colonial Americas, many cultures ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Science, Health and the Environment
Kayfabe
by Chris Koslowski
McSweeney's Books, 08/27/2024
 
As his body breaks down and his star power fades, he must invent a new gimmick before he loses the only job he's ever known. Meanwhile, Dom's 17-year-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Libertad
by Bessie Flores Zaldívar
Dial Books, 08/27/2024
 
As the contentious 2017 presidential election looms and protests rage across every corner of the city, life in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, churns louder ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Long Live Evil: Time of Iron #1
by Sarah Rees Brennan
Orbit, 08/27/2024
 
When her whole life collapsed, Rae still had books. Dying, she seizes a second chance at living: a magical bargain that lets her enter the world of ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
My Child, the Algorithm: An Alternatively Intelligent Book of Love
by Hannah Silva
Soft Skull Press, 08/27/2024
 
My Child, the Algorithm describes encounters between a single parent, a curious, verbal toddler, and a language-producing algorithm. Like a male ...more
Biography/Memoir
Our Shouts Echo
by Jade Adia
Disney-Hyperion, 08/27/2024
 
Survival Tip #1: The world is going to shit. Whatever you do, don't fall in love.

Sixteen-year old Niarah Holloway's only goal in life is to get ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Sunderworld, Vol. I: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry
by Ransom Riggs
Dutton for Young Readers, 08/27/2024
 
Seventeen-year-old Leopold Berry is seeing weird things around Los Angeles. A man who pops a tooth into a parking meter. A glowing trapdoor in a ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Sync
by Ellen Hopkins
Nancy Paulsen Books, 08/27/2024
 
Seventeen-year-old twins Storm and Lake have always been in perfect sync. They faced the worst a parent could do and survived it together. In the wake...more
Critics' Consensus:

Poetry & Novels in Verse
The Bookshop of Hidden Dreams: Dove Pond Series #4
by Karen Hawkins
Gallery Books, 08/27/2024
 
Tay is still reeling from a romantic betrayal, so she's relieved to refocus her energies on her latest project: a biography of her great-great-...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
The Enchanted Lies of Céleste Artois
by Ryan Graudin
Redhook, 08/27/2024
 
Once, Céleste Artois had dreams of being an artist. But when the creative elite of Paris dashed those plans, she turned her talents to forgery ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler--How War Made Them and How They Made War
by Phillips Payson O'Brien
Dutton, 08/27/2024
 
In The Strategists, Professor Phillips Payson O'Brien shows how the views these five leaders forged in WW1 are crucial to understanding how they ...more
Critics' Consensus:

History, Current Affairs and Religion
With Love, Echo Park
by Laura Taylor Namey
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 08/27/2024
 
Seventeen-year-old Clary is set to inherit her family's florist shop, La Rosa Blanca—one of the last remnants of the Cuban business district ...more
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