New month, new books! Book Light is our Dandelion Chandelier curated list of the most-anticipated new releases for August 2019. The perfect August read is as hot and sunny as a day at the beach. So what are the best new books coming in August 2019? Our intrepid team has been exploring and here’s what we found.
what are the best books coming in August 2019?
What’s on the list of the most-anticipated new releases in August 2019? The list of best new books in August 2019 includes lots of “beach reads” and thrillers (interestingly, many with female protagonists). Just in time for August nights comes a comprehensive history of the mosquito in history and culture. The focus of light literary novels shifts to the Upper East Side and away from the Hamptons and the coast of Maine. And the first novel that we’re aware of about Fake News appears at the end of the month.
On a far more serious note, some of the most-anticipated new releases of August 2019 address loss, regret, the ongoing challenges of racism in America and the courage that resistance has always required in both the young and the old.
In short, there’s a book for every taste and mood coming in August 2019. Have a look at the most-anticipated new releases of August 2019.
new books coming out in August 2019
Here’s our pick of the top new books – novels, essay collections, and non-fiction – that we cannot wait to read. You can pre-order them now if you like.
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best new book releases August 6, 2019
1.
A Particular Kind of Black Man by Tope Folarin. This debut novel tells the story of Tunde Akinola, a Nigerian-American growing up in Utah. Over the course of the novel, he moves from place to place, including Texas, Morehouse College in Atlanta and eventually Lagos, searching for connection and a sense of himself. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
2.
Doxology by Nell Zink. The author of Mislaid returns with a novel about a Lower East Side punk band facing a shattering loss in the wake of 9/11. As they search for a path forward in a time of confusion, threat, and political division, Zink illuminates hard truths about our political climate while also offering a poignant portrait of human goodness. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
3.
Hollow Kingdom by Kira Jane Buxton. In this debut novel, a pet crow fights to save humanity from an apocalypse. S.T., the domesticated crow and protagonist, is a bird of simple pleasures. He loves hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle’s wild crows (those idiots), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
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4.
La Resta (The Remainder) by Alia Trabucco Zerán, translated by Sophie Hughes. Shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker International Prize, Chilean writer Alia Trabucco Zerán’s debut novel wrestles with the enduring legacy of General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
5.
Berta Isla by Javier Marías. From the award-winning author of The Infatuations comes a new novel of intrigue and missed chances. Both a spy story and an examination of a marriage founded on secrets and lies, it’s the story of Berta and Tomás, childhood sweethearts who marry after college. But unbeknownst to Berta, Tomás has been approached by the British intelligence services. And has unwittingly set in motion events that will derail the life they envisioned together – Publication date: August 6, 2019
6.
The Long Accomplishment: A Memoir of Struggle and Hope in Matrimony by Rick Moody. The award-winning author of The Ice Storm and Hotels of North America shares the harrowing true story of the first year of his second marriage. The couple encounters a plague of external troubles, including miscarriages, the deaths of friends, and robberies. To Moody’s astonishment, matrimony turns out to be a significant source of strength in hard times – Publication date: August 6, 2019
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7.
The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator Hardcover by Timothy C. Winegard. This well-timed work of narrative nonfiction offers a new perspective on the history of humankind. In it, the author makes the case that the mosquito has been the single most powerful force in determining humanity’s fate through millennia. Why was gin and tonic the cocktail of choice for British colonists in India and Africa? Why did Scotland surrender its sovereignty to England? What was George Washington’s secret weapon during the American Revolution? It appears that the answer to all of these queries is “the mosquito.” – Publication date: August 6, 2019
8.
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino. The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino breaks down big cultural trends through the lens of her own experiences in her debut essay collection. The nine essays cover everything from the horrors of the Internet to Tolentino’s appearance on a reality television show as a teenager. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
9.
A New Sublime: Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics by Piero Boitani, trans. by Ann Goldstein. In this book of essays, the author celebrates the best of classical literature, ranging in time from Homer through Sophocles to Tacitus. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
10.
Is There Still Sex in the City? by Candace Bushnell. Twenty years after her narrative of life in Manhattan as a young single woman launched a TV show, several movies, and a new nomenclature (“are you a Charlotte?”), Bushnell returns with a new book on the wilds and lows of sex and dating after fifty. – Publication date: August 6, 2019
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best new book releases August 13, 2019
11.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Tokarczuk’s mystical detective novel (following Flights, winner of the Man Booker International Prize) is narrated by a woman who lives in an isolated Polish hamlet, where bodies keep turning up.– Publication date: August 13, 2019
12.
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom. It was 1961 when Sarah M. Broom’s mother Ivory Mae bought the shotgun house where she would raise her 12 children. Back then, the East New Orleans neighborhood where it was situated was imbued with post-war optimism. This memoir mines her family’s history and their relationship to the titular Yellow House — even after Hurricane Katrina destroys it. – Publication date: August 13, 2019
13.
Have You Eaten Grandma? Or, the Life-Saving Importance of Correct Punctuation, Grammar, and Good English by Gyles Brandreth. Brandreth, popular in the U.K. for his discussions of grammar, weighs in on the necessity of mastering punctuation and other aspects of writing. – Publication date: August 13, 2019
14.
Inland by Téa Obreht. Eight years after her debut best-seller and National Book Award finalist, The Tiger’s Wife, comes this second novel, a historical tale of a family in crisis. Set in the Arizona Territory in 1893, it tells the story of a stoic housewife and an outlaw, with references to mythology and a touch of magic. reimagines and subverts the myths of the American West. it tells the story of Nora, a resolute frontierswoman bound to a house she can’t leave, and Lunie, a haunted former outlaw searching for a home he can’t find. – Publication date: August 13, 2019
15.
The Oysterville Sewing Circle by Susan Wiggs. Caroline Shelby returns home to Oysterville, Wash., to take custody of the two children of her friend Angelique, who died of a drug overdose. Caroline starts the Oysterville Sewing Circle for women to find the will to move forward together after a trauma. – Publication date: August 13, 2019
16.
Sudden Courage: Youth in France Confront the Germans, 1940-1945 by Ronald C. Rosbottom. The author of the acclaimed When Paris Went Dark returns to World War II with this story of the youngest members of the French Resistance—many only teenagers—who waged a hidden war against the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators in Paris and across France.
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17.
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, translated by Stephen Snyder. In this dystopian novel, an orphaned novelist living on an unnamed island that is in the process of disappearing, item by item. First animals and flowers disappear, then bells, ribbons and photographs. Then, at the hands of the Memory Police, the few people who can recall that those vanished objects ever existed begin themselves to disappear. One of Japan’s most acclaimed authors explores truth, state surveillance and individual autonomy. – Publication date: August 13, 2019
18.
Things You Save in a Fire by Katherine Center. When her estranged and ailing mother asks her to give up her life in Texas and move to Boston, firefighter Cassie finds herself working in a tough, old-school Boston firehouse. Hazing, a lack of funding, and poor facilities mean that the firemen aren’t exactly thrilled to have her there. Except for one member of squad, who’s the only man who doesn’t seem to mind having her around. In time, even that becomes a bit problematic. Leaving Cassie to remind herself of the timeless advice her old fire captain gave her: Never date firefighters.
best new book releases August 20, 2019
19.
How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi dissects why in a society where so few people consider themselves to be racist the divisions and inequalities of racism remain so prevalent. examining what racism really is — and what we should do about it. – Publication date: August 20, 2019
20.
Going Dutch by James Gregor. Set in the isolating vastness of New York City, this novel centers on a complex, unusual relationship between a struggling young gay writer and the female classmate who yearns for his company – Publication date: August 20, 2019
21.
Carnegie Hill by Jonathan Vatner. In this novel of manners set on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, a 30-something young woman of privilege is adrift. Engaged to a man her parents have decided they don’t like, and unsure about whether or not to follow their orders to break it all off. She looks to her new neighbors on the co-op board for assistance – but the best model for a real love may be a clandestine relationship that the doorman is having. – Publication date: August 20, 2019
22.
The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott is a collection of linked stories set in fictional Cross County, Maryland, founded by the leaders of America’s only successful slave uprising. Characters range from robots to sons of God in these magical realist stories about race, religion, and violence. One reviewer says “Think of it as Faulkner meets Asimov.” – Publication date: August 20, 2019
best new book releases August 27, 2019
23.
Bottle Grove by Daniel Handler. Set in San Francisco during the Big Bang of tech, this taut novel sees two marriages form and mutate under the influence of greed, secrets, and income inequality. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
24.
Cold Warriors: Writers Who Waged the Literary Cold War by Duncan White. During the Cold War, literature was both sword and noose. Novels, essays and poems could win the hearts and minds of those caught between the competing creeds of capitalism and communism. This is an account of the great writers on both sides of the Iron Curtain who played the dangerous games of espionage, dissidence and subversion that changed the course of the Cold War. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
25.
The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri. In 2015, Nuri Ibrahim and his wife, Afra, who was blinded during the Syrian Civil War, decide to seek asylum in the U.K. after soldiers attempt to forcefully recruit Nuri. They travel through harsh conditions in Turkey and Greece, waiting in camps for the proper paperwork.– Publication date: August 27, 2019
26.
Shakespeare’s First Reader: The Paper Trails of Richard Stonley by Jason Scott-Warren profiles the first recorded purchaser of Shakespeare’s first publication, Venus and Adonis. He was the proud owner of a then-staggering number of books, around 500. Sadly, he later died in prison. It turned out that he had built his library by embezzling funds, as a government clerk, from Mary I and Elizabeth I. What a bookworm won’t do to get ahold of another edition! – Publication date: August 30, 2019
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27.
Everything Inside: Stories by Edwidge Danticat. One of the most-anticipated releases in August 2019 is a new collection of eight stories from an award-winning writer. It’s a journey through Haiti and through childhood. In one, a New York City high school teacher learns that her absent father is dying. In another, a woman with dementia struggles to impart the lessons of motherhood to her own daughter. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
28.
The Ventriloquists by E.R. Ramzipoor. In this novel set in Nazi-occupied Belgium, journalists at the country’s most popular newspaper, Le Soir, are forced to publish only Nazi propaganda. They decide to make one final resistance effort: publish a fake edition that pokes fun at Hitler and Stalin. Yep, you read that right. It’s the first novel that we know of about Fake News. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
29.
The Girl Who Lived Twice: A Lisbeth Salander Novel by David Lagercrantz. The sixth Lisbeth Salander story begins with a bang: Lisbeth has disappeared. She’s sold her apartment in Stockholm, gone silent electronically, and told no one where she is. And no one is aware that at long last she’s got her primal enemy, her twin sister, Camilla, squarely in her sights. – Publication date: August 27, 2019
30.
The Other’s Gold by
That’s it – 30 of the most-anticipated new book releases in August 2019. It looks like a great month in reading! Enjoy.
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