August 29, 2023, 6:00am
The wheel of the year is turning, as it always does, beginning its slow shift from summer to the fall. If you’re unsure of how to spend the last days of August, rest assured that even if seasons always shift, one constant you can rely on is that there will always be new books to look forward to. Below, you’ll find twenty new titles to consider picking up to curl up with on these last days of August: fiction that ranges from philosophically complex to comfortingly comedic; poems on the transcendent power of nature and gardening; nonfiction on mavericks, murder, misogyny, mother tongues, and marijuana magazines; and much, much more. I hope you’ll choose one (or many!) of the exciting new books below to spend some time with.
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Angie Kim, Happiness Falls
(Hogarth Press)
“A philosophical family drama that is as page-turning as it is thought-provoking. Book groups will find much to discuss here, especially those who like Celeste Ng.”
–Booklist
Hilary Leichter, Terrace Story
(Ecco Press)
“Prepare to be astonished. Like the magical terrace of its title, Hilary Leichter’s spectacular second novel contains the whole world. Told with boundless imagination, wisdom, and effortlessly gorgeous prose, Terrace Story will transform your understanding of time, space, memory, love, longing, and family and make you see your life anew. This book is a wonder.”
–Jessamine Chan
LaToya Watkins, Holler Child: Stories
(Tiny Reparations Books)
“Watkins (Perish) portrays West Texas characters faced with loss, disappointment, and betrayal in this stunning collection….Adding to the fierce characterizations, Watkins beautifully conveys a sense of place….These kinetic stories are no less powerful than Watkins’s marvelous debut novel.”
–Publishers Weekly
Lucille Clifton, The Book of Light: Anniversary Edition
(Copper Canyon Press)
“Thoughtfully introduced by Ross Gay and with an afterword by Sidney Clifton, this thirtieth anniversary edition highlights the timeless power and relevance of Clifton’s writing. One of the most celebrated and beloved voices in poetry, Clifton brings to vivid life the intersections of the sacred and the secular (‘between starshine and clay’) and the everyday and the extraordinary with her trademark simplicity and precision….This essential edition is an excellent reminder of the poet’s inimitable gifts.”
–Publishers Weekly
William Egginton, The Rigor of Angels: Borges, Heisenberg, Kant, and the Ultimate Nature of Reality
(Pantheon Books)
“Physicists attempt to explain reality, poets provide our emotional response to it, and philosophers try to establish cerebral connections. All of these endeavors are plagued with uncertainty. Werner Heisenberg, Jorge Luis Borges, and Immanuel Kant struggled with this uncertainty throughout their entire lives. Egginton takes us on an illuminating journey through the fascinating labyrinth created by their intertwined intellectual paths.”
–Mario Livio
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare
(Bloomsbury)
“All things weird, wonderful, mysterious, and mythical collide in this excellent debut story collection. Focused on mixed native Hawaiian and Japanese women and ensconced in Hawaiian history and lore, each story explores what it means to be a woman, but especially a woman of color….This great book signals the arrival of a very talented writer.”
–Booklist
Alice Carrière, Everything/Nothing/Someone
(Spiegel & Grau)
“Carrière’s surgically precise prose compresses her broken-glass experiences into hard diamond truths about family trauma and the mental health industry. This brutal, illuminating account reads like a contemporary Girl, Interrupted.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jenni Nuttall, Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words
(Viking)
“Nuttall, a scholar of Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature and the history of the English language, brings humor and a merry curiosity to her examination of the ‘lively, unruly and often startlingly vivid’ words used in reference to women and their bodies from Old English to the present….A fresh, informative perspective on women’s lives through the centuries.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Tess Taylor, Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands that Tend Them
(Storey Publishing)
“As Aimee Nezhukamatathil reminds us in the delightful and informative foreword to this bountiful collection, the word anthology means a gathering of flowers. How perfect is this bouquet! Diverse and delightful. At turns, tender and tough. I’m sure I’ll be reading the poems gathered in this anthology for years to come.”
–Camille T. Dungy
Lars Iyer, My Weil
(Melville House)
“Lars Iyer does it again! My Weil is a melancholic, yet joyful story of lost PhD students hoping to find themselves in modern Manchester, lured there by the music of Joy Division, The Smiths and The Fall, enthralled by a student named after Simone Weil. As ever, it’s thoughtful, punchy, and riotously funny.”
–Juliet Jacques
Jenna Levine, My Roommate Is a Vampire
(Penguin)
“From the dryly witty notes Cassie and Frederick leave for reach other to the cast of quirky and endearing secondary characters, everything about this sneaky, sweet, otherworldly rom-com is a delight.”
–Booklist
Thomas Harding, The Maverick: George Weidenfeld and the Golden Age of Publishing
(Pegasus Books)
“If the name Arthur George Weidenfeld is unfamiliar to the casual reader, the list of books bearing his imprint is evidence of his enormous impact during decades in publishing. Harding admirably details Weidenfeld’s ascent from refugee to a leading figure who shaped our culture and intellectual firmament.”
–Booklist
Peter Stark, Gallop Toward the Sun: Tecumseh and William Henry Harrison’s Struggle for the Destiny of a Nation
(Random House)
“In this irresistible dual biography, Stark documents the violent confrontation between the United States and the Indigenous tribes in the wake of the American Revolution. And he does so with a profound grasp of both narrative storytelling and the major, violent themes of our nation’s life. You can’t understand America without understanding this book.”
–Rinker Buck
Stefan Hertmans, The Ascent: A House Can Have Many Secrets (trans. David Mckay)
(Pantheon Books)
“Discovering he lived in a house in Ghent formerly owned by a Nazi collaborator, [Hertmans] experienced ‘the powerful pull of an unknown life’ and set out to investigate. Through a series of anecdotes, he tells the story of Willem Verhulst….[His] impressionistic prose is deeply evocative, and the novel reads like a fascinating conversation, drawing on the storyteller’s absorption with his subject matter and intimate knowledge of the characters involved.”
–Booklist
Karin Smirnoff, The Girl in the Eagle’s Talons (trans. Sarah Death)
(Knopf)
“Propulsive….Smirnoff adds new maturity and depth to the two leads, offers several jaw-dropping plot twists….Fans will find it a worthy addition to the series.”
–Publishers Weekly
Alana Best, Around the World in Black and White: Traveling as a Biracial, Blended Family
(She Writes Press)
“Alana Best has a knack for making you feel like you are one of her besties being told another great tale of her family travelling adventure. You get her enthusiasm, and you get private glimpses into her life, her delight and despair. But this is no simple lavish travel trip–this is a rich story where Alana explores her own deepening understanding of what it means to be a white woman travelling with her Black husband and the myriad of assumptions and judgements they face along the way.”
–Yvonne Blomer
Bruce Dorsey, Murder in a Mill Town: Sex, Faith, and the Crime that Captivated a Nation
(Oxford University Press)
“Murder in a Mill Town is a murder mystery, a sex scandal, a legal thriller, and a crystal-clear primer on how the rise of capitalism transformed the most intimate aspects of American life—all rolled into one. It is an essential read for anyone interested in true-crime tales and their hold on American culture.”
–Debby Applegate
Liz Ianelli, Bret Witter, I See You, Survivor: Life Inside the Totally F*cked Up Troubled Teen Industry
(Hachette)
“Searing, profane, horrifying, but ultimately hopeful—read I See You, Survivor to understand how abuse is sold to parents as treatment for ‘troubled teens’ and why these programs must be stopped. Liz’s story is hard to take, but thousands of young people have survived similar attack therapies….A must-read for anyone concerned about teenage mental health and how systems intended to help can go terribly wrong.”
–Maia Szalavitz
Jeremy Eichler, Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance
(Knopf)
“Time’s Echo is a remarkable book. Jeremy Eichler shows how listening to history through its music can transport us in mind, body, and spirit—resulting in a profound, detailed resurrection of the past into the living present….The result is a kind of time travel with music as our mode of transport, a poignant journey back to an era that still affects us, and an inspiringly hopeful meditation on the power of art to remember not just the traumas of the past but also its highest ideals.”
–Yo-Yo Ma
Sean Howe, Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
(Hachette)
“A dizzying ride through the hazy, contentious, loopy world of American radicalism in the sixties and seventies. In Tom Forçade, Howe has found the perfect character for tracing the multifarious histories of the era, from the parties and protests to the sativa-smogged subbasements where idealists, pranksters, and conspiracists clashed. Richly drawn, deadly serious, utterly comical.”
–Joe Hagan