August, amazingly, approaches, the final month in a summer that has at once felt slow and like it has slipped by with the curious swiftness of a half-remembered dream. Still, the summer is not over, and August stands as an ideal moment to tackle the season’s unfinished business: to finally tackle activities you’ve been postponing, and to embark on the ongoing climb of your ever-growing TBR list, enriching it with another batch of dazzling future reads.
For this sweltering month, I’ve gathered nineteen compelling titles returning in paperback, each newly issued in a fresh edition. Among them are highly praised and widely talked-about novels by Jason Mott, Eimear McBride, Addie E. Citchens, Jessica Francis Kane, and a host of others; generous works translated into English; a comprehensive collection of Jamaica Kincaid’s career—a testament to her wide-ranging vision; Margaret Grace Myers’ in-depth chronicle of America’s long and contested efforts to teach sex education amid a nation wrestling with its own identity; poems from Steven Duong that map rupture and recovery; and a great deal more.
Although I aim for a diverse range of genres, the August lineup leans especially toward narrative fiction, yet I trust every title below will offer moments of awe, delight, reflection, and even invitations to action. Wishing you safety as ever, and may your TBR grow even taller.
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Jason Mott, People Like Us (Dutton)
“Mott returns after his National Book Award–winning Hell of a Book with a dreamlike, intimate tale that follows two Black writers facing loss, yearning, and gun violence.”
–The Millions
Samanta Schwebelin, Good and Evil and Other Stories (Vintage)
“Translated with care by Megan McDowell, the prose glimmers with a tense, lyrical edge, and these tales feel both vividly evocative and subtly unsettling. They drift, almost like fever dreams, between the comfort of familiar domestic scenes and the wild, unpredictable flights of the unconscious.”
–Joyce Carol Oates
Addie E. Citchens, Dominion (Picador)
“A radiant Southern drama of hidden truths and transgressions… This Faulknerian, God-haunted novel burns with intensity and heat.”
–Publishers Weekly
Jamaica Kincaid, Putting Myself Together: Writing 1974 – (Picador)
“Putting Myself Together traces Kincaid’s restless sensibility across half a century of personal essays and cultural criticism, offering a model of sumptuous, deliberately slow contemplation.”
–The New York Times
Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Art Above Everything: One Woman’s Global Exploration of the Joys and Torments of a Creative Life (Beacon Press)
“Griest’s rigorous and captivating research not only validates but also enacts her central thesis: a life devoted to art is not only possible but a vibrant answer to attempts to suppress such pursuits. It’s a deep, moving, radical work I’d hand to every aspiring artist.”
–Melissa Febos
LaShawn Harris, Tell Her Story: Eleanor Bumpurs and the Police Killing That Galvanized New York City (Beacon Press)
“An immersive account… With a kaleidoscopic view of the shooting’s aftermath, drawn from interviews, courts, and reactions around the world, Harris presents the killing as a pivotal shift in American political awareness, prompting renewed scrutiny of police treatment of the disabled and mentally ill. A gracefully written and gripping portrait of a major but often overlooked moment.”
–Publishers Weekly
Steven Duong, At the End of the World There Is a Pond: Poems (Norton)
“At the End of the World There Is a Pond marks a powerful debut… The poetry traverses intimate relational waters with wit and depth, staying bright and alive even while it confronts real darkness.”
–Gabrielle Bates
Jessica Francis Kane, Fonseca (Penguin Books)
“Kane has crafted something extraordinary—imagining Penelope Fitzgerald as a character within a tale she intended to write but never did, perhaps because it mirrored her own life in remarkable ways. Penelope Fitzgerald truly comes to life again in Fonseca, sly, witty, and utterly absorbing.”
–Alexander Chee
Eimear McBride, The City Changes Its Face (Faber & Faber)
“McBride sits in a lineage with Joyce and Beckett—not just as Irish writers but as unrepentant experimenters who defy traditional syntax. In her hands, language becomes a pliable medium rather than a fixed vessel of information.”
–NPR
Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding (Holt)
“The Hounding is a lush, atmospheric warning about how dangerous individuality can be for girls who resist the gaze of others. Every sparing sentence lands with precision, tagging the small-town gossips who chase rumors like wild dogs. A virtuosic debut from a perceptive and fearless mind; Purvis clearly channels a Shirley Jackson sensibility.”
–Diane Cook
Margaret Grace Myers, The Fight for Sex Ed: The Century-Long Battle Between Truth and Doctrine (Beacon Press)
“Myers draws on meticulous research and crystal-clear prose to trace the endless loop of politics and denial that has kept sex education in the United States stuck for generations.”
–Chelsea Conaboy
Paul Andrew Hutton, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West (Dutton)
“When Hamlet muses on the ‘undiscovered country,’ he ponders what lies beyond death. For those who ventured westward, however, death was far from their only concern; this book offers an intimate look at the generations who explored the frontier. From Boone and Crockett to Red Eagle, Mangas Coloradas, Sitting Bull, and the end of the frontier era, Hutton weaves a vivid, sourced-rich narrative that resists triumphalism and guilt alike.”
–William C. Davis
Jon Lee, To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban (Penguin Books)
“More than any other American journalist covering Afghanistan, Jon Lee Anderson knew where the story lay—in the lives of ordinary Afghans navigating between foreign forces and a repressive Taliban. With his signature courage, curiosity, and empathy, and an unflinching eye for official pretenses, Anderson crafts a compelling chronicle of the two decades after 9/11. To Lose a War stands as a defining record of Afghanistan and a cautionary note about imperial overreach.”
–Ben Rhodes
Kim de l’Horizon, Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues (Trans. Jamie Lee Searle) (Picador)
“Kim de l’Horizon achieves something rare: a sincere love letter. Both kaleidoscopic and urgent, Sea, Mothers, Swallow, Tongues offers a thoughtful inquiry into what it means to exist as an individual within a body, a family, and society, with all the accompanying misery, humor, joy, and enduring mystery.”
–Krystelle Bamford
Melissa Pace, The Once and Future Me (Holt)
“Virginia, 1954: A woman identified as Dorothy Frasier wakes on a bus bound for a mental hospital. But does she truly belong there?… memory flashes seem to pull her toward a future: 2035. It’s a cinematic ride—like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest meets The Hunger Games—and what a progeny of ideas.”
–Kirkus Reviews
Emily Hunt Kivel, Dwelling (Picador)
“Kivel’s debut unfolds as a lively, modern fairy tale about real estate and its discontents. As she populates the story with a quirky, memorable cast, she keeps a sharp, grounded critique of the housing crisis and widening inequality. The result is a singular, joyous read.”
–Publishers Weekly
Paraic O’Donnell, The Naming of the Birds (Tin House)
“This Victorian-era mystery feels like Dickens meets Sherlock Holmes with a dash of La Femme Nikita, proudly flaunting its genre marks.”
–NPR
Eli Zuzovsky, Mazeltov (Holt)
“Zuzovsky’s debut is at once funny and heartbreakingly honest, offering a kaleidoscopic portrait of a young queer man, his family, and his era through the lens of his bar mitzvah. Mazeltov is an unforgettable, deftly crafted first novel.”
–Claire Messud
Jimmy Juliano, 13 Months Haunted (Dutton)
“Perfect for devotees of Stephen King and Stranger Things, Jimmy Juliano’s 13 Months Haunted delivers crisp, chilling small-town horror seen through the online era of the early 2000s, mixing bugs in computers with the nostalgia of hearing “You’ve got mail” and a looming, malevolent force. Some bonds are best left unopened, and some friendships come with a deadly price. Terrifyingly fun.”
–Craig DiLoui
