Why yes, it is new book Tuesday! If you didn’t get your fill in books released today from my previous list, I have more!

Following are the rest of the books publishing in August that I have my eye on! Included is the publisher’s summary and a brief explanation of my interest in that particular title.

Emma in the Night by Wendy Walker (Aug. 8): 

One night three years ago, the Tanner sisters disappeared: fifteen-year-old Cass and seventeen-year-old Emma. Three years later, Cass returns, without her sister Emma. Her story is one of kidnapping and betrayal, of a mysterious island where the two were held. But to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Abby Winter, something doesn’t add up. Looking deep within this dysfunctional family Dr. Winter uncovers a life where boundaries were violated and a narcissistic parent held sway. And where one sister’s return might just be the beginning of the crime.

Disappearance. Family secrets. Dysfunctional family. Totally my jam. 

Unraveling Oliver by Liz Nugent (Aug. 22):

So begins Liz Nugent’s astonishing debut novel—a chilling, elegantly crafted, and psychologically astute exploration of the nature of evil.

Oliver Ryan, handsome, charismatic, and successful, has long been married to his devoted wife, Alice. Together they write and illustrate award-winning children’s books; their life together one of enviable privilege and ease—until, one evening after a delightful dinner, Oliver delivers a blow to Alice that renders her unconscious, and subsequently beats her into a coma.

In the aftermath of such an unthinkable event, as Alice hovers between life and death, the couple’s friends, neighbors, and acquaintances try to understand what could have driven Oliver to commit such a horrific act. As his story unfolds, layers are peeled away to reveal a life of shame, envy, deception, and masterful manipulation.

With its alternating points of view and deft prose, Unraveling Oliver is “a page-turning, one-sitting read from a brand new master of psychological suspense” (Sunday Independent) that details how an ordinary man can transform into a sociopath.

I’ve heard nothing but praise about this one! A number of people whose opinion I value have recommended this one; it’s been bumped to the top of my “must read” list!

The Saboteur by Andrew Gross (Aug. 22): 

February, 1943. Both the Allies and the Nazis are closing in on attempts to construct the decisive weapon of the war.

Kurt Nordstrum, an engineer in Oslo, puts his life aside to take up arms against the Germans as part of the Norwegian resistance. After the loss of his fiance, his outfit whittled to shreds, he commandeers a coastal steamer and escapes to England to transmit secret evidence of the Nazis’s progress towards an atomic bomb at an isolated factory in Norway. There, he joins a team of dedicated Norwegians in training in the Scottish Highlands for a mission to disrupt the Nazis’ plans before they advance any further.

Parachuted onto the most unforgiving terrain in Europe, braving the fiercest of mountain storms, Nordstrum and his team attempt the most daring raid of the war, targeting the heavily-guarded factory built on a shelf of rock thought to be impregnable, a mission even they know they likely will not survive. Months later, Nordstrum is called upon again to do the impossible, opposed by both elite Nazi soldiers and a long-standing enemy who is now a local collaborator—one man against overwhelming odds, with the fate of the war in the balance, but the choice to act means putting the one person he has a chance to love in peril. 

Based on the stirring true story, The Saboteur is Andrew Gross’s follow-up to the riveting historical thriller, The One Man. A richly-woven story probing the limits of heroism, sacrifice and determination, The Saboteur portrays a hero who must weigh duty against his heart in order to singlehandedly end the one threat that could alter the course of the war.

I read and devoured the previous book, The One Man.  It is truly full of action, compassion, thrill. I’m thrilled to see there is a sequel; I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy.

 

The History of Bees by Maja Lunde (Aug. 22): 

In the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this dazzling and ambitious literary debut follows three generations of beekeepers from the past, present, and future, weaving a spellbinding story of their relationship to the bees—and to their children and one another—against the backdrop of an urgent, global crisis.

England, 1852. William is a biologist and seed merchant, who sets out to build a new type of beehive—one that will give both him and his children honor and fame.

United States, 2007. George is a beekeeper fighting an uphill battle against modern farming, but hopes that his son can be their salvation.

China, 2098. Tao hand paints pollen onto the fruit trees now that the bees have long since disappeared. When Tao’s young son is taken away by the authorities after a tragic accident, she sets out on a grueling journey to find out what happened to him.

Haunting, illuminating, and deftly written, The History of Bees joins these three very different narratives into one gripping and thought-provoking story that is just as much about the powerful bond between children and parents as it is about our very relationship to nature and humanity.

Talk about a timely read.  It’s a little known (or perhaps recognized) fact that the health and vitality of bees has a direct correlation to the status of our environment.  If you read about a mass extinction of bees, you have something to worry about.  This is what has compelled me to want to read this title, as well as the comparisons to Station Eleven.

 

Charlatans by Robin Cook (Aug. 22):

Newly minted Chief Resident at Boston Memorial Hospital Noah Rothauser is swamped in his new position, from managing the surgical schedules to dealing with the fallouts from patient deaths. Known for its medical advances, the famed teaching hospital has fitted several ORs as ’hybrid operating rooms of the future’—an improvement that seems positive until an anesthesia error during a routine procedure results in the death of an otherwise healthy man. Noah suspects Dr. William Mason, an egotistical, world-class surgeon, of an error during the operation and for tampering with the patient’s record afterwards. But Mason is quick to blame anesthesiologist Dr. Ava London.

When more anesthesia-related deaths start to occur, Noah is forced to question all of the residents on his staff, including Ava, and quickly realizes there’s more to her than what he sees. A social media junkie, Ava has created multiple alternate personas for herself on the internet. With his own job and credibility now in jeopardy, Noah must decide which doctor is at fault and who he can believe—before any more lives are lost.

Robin Cook was my introduction to medical thrillers. It’s been a while since I’ve read his book.  When I got the pitch for this one, I couldn’t say no!

Valley of Terror by Zhou Haohui (Aug. 29):

A mysterious “fear disease” is scaring to death the citizens of Longzhou, China. Literally. Victims go insane or die frozen in terror, while survivors rant maniacally about demons infiltrating the city. But what’s really behind the sudden epidemic? To find the answer, Chief Inspector Luo Fei teams up with a controversial historian and a brilliant psychologist to track down the true source of the illness and halt the wave of horror that threatens the metropolis.

As the trio ventures to the primitive jungles and mountains of Yunnan, they’re haunted by tales of a seventeenth-century general whose demonic soul, said to have been sealed away in a vial of his blood, has been unleashed on the modern world. Now, trekking deep into the legendary Valley of Terror, they find themselves being stalked by someone—or something—daring them to uncover the truth. And as superstition, science, and history collide, their discovery could be as heart-stopping as fear itself.

This is going to be the oddball of my list. This title is published by Amazon, something I tend to avoid.  That said, I’m quite intrigued by the premise, perhaps enough to push past my feelings?

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby by Cherise Wolas (Aug. 29)

An audacious and dazzling debut novel–think Shirley Jackson meets Claire Messud and Lauren Groff–about a woman who struggles with the sacrifices required by motherhood and how an unthinkable betrayal confirms her deepest fears.

When Joan Ashby meets her future husband, Martin, she is frank from the beginning: nothing can stand in the way of her career. Joan Ashby is a prodigy, a darling of the literary world by age 25, acclaimed for her dark and singular stories. But after her marriage, the life Joan intended to leave spins away from her, and she finds herself raising two sons in a Virginia suburb. She has made her peace with this—or at least that’s what she tells herself as she steals moments to write between school drop-offs and household chores. She can never be ordinary, though, and her precocious young sons grow up with the burden of her genius. 

Two decades later, Joan’s sons are grown and she has finally completed her masterpiece, the novel she was destined to write. But just as she is poised to reclaim the spotlight, a betrayal of Shakespearean proportion threatens to undo everything she has worked for. 

Epic, propulsive, and incredibly ambitious, The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is a story about sacrifice and motherhood, privilege and the weight of expectation. Cherise Wolas’s debut introduces an indelible heroine who is candid about her struggles and unapologetic in her ambition. 

 

I think the summary speaks for itself. I’m quite intrigued about this one!

 

There you have it! My most anticipated books of August! What titles did I miss? Which ones are you looking forward to most? 

FALL! Yes, the title of this post does say Fall. I cannot wait. It’s been unbearably hot here (triple digit heat index), zapping all of my energy!

August has an insane amount of books I’m excited about, so many of them publishing the first Tuesday of the month, which just happens to be the very first day of the month.

As always, I’ve included the publisher’s summary and a brief note about why I’m particularly excited about that particular title. Following are the titles publishing the first week of August.

See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt (Aug. 1) 

Lizzie Borden took an ax
And gave her mother forty whacks
When she saw what she had done,
She gave her father forty-one.

Or did she?

In this riveting debut novel, See What I Have Done, Sarah Schmidt recasts one of the most fascinating murder cases of all time into an intimate story of a volatile household and a family devoid of love.

On the morning of August 4, 1892, Lizzie Borden calls out to her maid: Someone’s killed Father. The brutal ax-murder of Andrew and Abby Borden in their home in Fall River, Massachusetts, leaves little evidence and many unanswered questions. While neighbors struggle to understand why anyone would want to harm the respected Bordens, those close to the family have a different tale to tell—of a father with an explosive temper; a spiteful stepmother; and two spinster sisters, with a bond even stronger than blood, desperate for their independence.

As the police search for clues, Emma comforts an increasingly distraught Lizzie whose memories of that morning flash in scattered fragments. Had she been in the barn or the pear arbor to escape the stifling heat of the house? When did she last speak to her stepmother? Were they really gone and would everything be better now? Shifting among the perspectives of the unreliable Lizzie, her older sister Emma, the housemaid Bridget, and the enigmatic stranger Benjamin, the events of that fateful day are slowly revealed through a high-wire feat of storytelling.

This just happens to be my most anticipated book of August! I had an unhealthy addiction to the Borden case as a teen. I’ve read nearly everything on the topic I can get my hands on, so of course I NEED this one as well.  The anticipation is killing me!

The Clockwork Dynasty by Daniel H. Wilson (Aug. 1)

Present day: When a young anthropologist specializing in ancient technology uncovers a terrible secret concealed in the workings of a three-hundred-year-old mechanical doll, she is thrown into a hidden world that lurks just under the surface of our own. With her career and her life at stake, June Stefanov will ally with a remarkable traveler who exposes her to a reality she never imagined, as they embark on an around-the-world adventure and discover breathtaking secrets of the past…

Russia, 1725: In the depths of the Kremlin, the tsar’s loyal mechanician brings to life two astonishingly humanlike mechanical beings. Peter and Elena are a brother and sister fallen out of time, possessed with uncanny power, and destined to serve great empires. Struggling to blend into pre-Victorian society, they are pulled into a legendary war that has raged for centuries.

The Clockwork Dynasty seamlessly interweaves past and present, exploring a race of beings designed to live by ironclad principles, yet constantly searching for meaning. As June plunges deeper into their world, her choices will ultimately determine their survival or extermination. Richly-imagined and heart-pounding, Daniel H. Wilson’s novel expertly draws on his robotics and science background, combining exquisitely drawn characters with visionary technology—and riveting action.

I first discovered Wilson’s work upon reading Robopocalypse nearly six years ago and I became an instant fan.  This title sounds phenomenal, quite unique!

Shadow of Lions  by Christopher Swann (Aug. 1): 

In the middle of his senior year at the Blackburne School in Virginia, Matthias Glass’s roommate and best friend Fritz Davenport runs off into the woods after the two boys have an argument–and vanishes without a trace. Ever since, Matthias has felt responsible, thinking that their fight, about a betrayal of the school’s honor code, led to Fritz’s disappearance.

A decade later, after an early triumph with his first novel, followed by too much partying and too little work, Matthias realizes he has stalled out and become a failure as a writer, a boyfriend, a man. So when he is offered a job at Blackburne as an English teacher, he sees it as a chance to put his life back together. But once on campus, Matthias gets swiftly drawn into the past and is driven to find out what happened to Fritz. Along the way he must reckon with Fritz’s complicated and powerful Washington, D.C., family and the shocking death of a student–and begin to understand his own place in the privileged world of Blackburne.

In the spirit of film noir, Shadow of the Lions takes plenty of dark, surprising twists–it’s a thriller, but also a moving debut that is as much about the mystery as it is about the redemption of a broken friendship and a lost soul.

I think the summary alone shows why I’m intrigued by this one.  Twisty thrillers always pique my interest.  That it’s set locally just adds to the intrigue. 

The Cottingley Secrety by Hazel Graynor (Aug. 1):

1917… It was inexplicable, impossible, but it had to be true—didn’t it? When two young cousins, Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright from Cottingley, England, claim to have photographed fairies at the bottom of the garden, their parents are astonished. But when one of the great novelists of the time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, becomes convinced of the photographs’ authenticity, the girls become a national sensation, their discovery offering hope to those longing for something to believe in amid a world ravaged by war. Frances and Elsie will hide their secret for many decades. But Frances longs for the truth to be told.

One hundred years later… When Olivia Kavanagh finds an old manuscript in her late grandfather’s bookshop she becomes fascinated by the story it tells of two young girls who mystified the world. But it is the discovery of an old photograph that leads her to realize how the fairy girls’ lives intertwine with hers, connecting past to present, and blurring her understanding of what is real and what is imagined. As she begins to understand why a nation once believed in fairies, can Olivia find a way to believe in herself?

I was thrilled beyond belief to see Gaynor was publishing a new book! I’m quite the fan of her historical fiction, and the supernatural or mystical feel to this latest one has me intrigued!

Girl in Snow  by Danya Kukafka (Aug. 1):

WHO ARE YOU WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING?

When a beloved high schooler named Lucinda Hayes is found murdered, no one in her sleepy Colorado suburb is untouched—not the boy who loved her too much; not the girl who wanted her perfect life; not the officer assigned to investigate her murder. In the aftermath of the tragedy, these three indelible characters—Cameron, Jade, and Russ—must each confront their darkest secrets in an effort to find solace, the truth, or both. In crystalline prose, Danya Kukafka offers a brilliant exploration of identity and of the razor-sharp line between love and obsession, between watching and seeing, between truth and memory.

Compulsively readable and powerfully moving, Girl in Snow offers an unforgettable reading experience and introduces a singular new talent in Danya Kukafka.

What draws me to this one is the format: viewing the aftermath of a brutal murder through the eyes of three distinct characters. Also, that cover! It’s quite breathtaking!

 

Are You Sleeping  by Kathleen Barber (Aug. 1): 

The only thing more dangerous than a lie…is the truth.

Josie Buhrman has spent the last ten years trying to escape her family’s reputation and with good reason. After her father’s murder thirteen years prior, her mother ran away to join a cult and her twin sister Lanie, once Josie’s closest friend and confidant, betrayed her in an unimaginable way. Now, Josie has finally put down roots in New York, settling into domestic life with her partner Caleb, and that’s where she intends to stay.

The only problem is that she has lied to Caleb about every detail of her past—starting with her last name.

When investigative reporter Poppy Parnell sets off a media firestorm with a mega-hit podcast that reopens the long-closed case of Josie’s father’s murder, Josie’s world begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the unexpected death of Josie’s long-absent mother forces her to return to her Midwestern hometown where she must confront the demons from her past—and the lies on which she has staked her future.

This book has been compared to Ruth Ware’s In a Dark, Dark Wood and Serial so that alone pretty much sold me. Reading more into it, the family lies, confronting the past, etc. has sold me even more!

Yesterday by Felicia Yap (Aug. 1):

How do you solve a murder when you can only remember yesterday?

 

Imagine a world in which classes are divided not by wealth or religion but by how much each group can remember. Monos, the majority, have only one day’s worth of memory; elite Duos have two. In this stratified society, where Monos are excluded from holding high office and demanding jobs, Claire and Mark are a rare mixed marriage. Clare is a conscientious Mono housewife, Mark a novelist-turned-politician Duo on the rise. They are a shining example of a new vision of tolerance and equality-until…

A beautiful woman is found dead, her body dumped in England’s River Cam. The woman is Mark’s mistress, and he is the prime suspect in her murder. The detective investigating the case has secrets of his own. So did the victim. And when both the investigator’s and the suspect’s memories are constantly erased–how can anyone learn the truth?

Told from four different perspectives, that of Mark, Claire, the detective on the case, and the victim–Felicia Yap’s staggeringly inventive debut leads us on a race against an ever-resetting clock to find the killer. With the science-fiction world-building of Philip K. Dick and the twisted ingenuity of Memento, Yesterday is a thriller you’ll never forget.

Talk about a unique premise!  I read about this months ago, I’m thrilled the publication date is just around the corner!

The Readymade Thief by Augustus Rose (Aug. 1):

Lee Cuddy is seventeen years old and on the run, alone on the streets of Philadelphia.

After taking the fall for a rich friend, Lee reluctantly accepts refuge in the Crystal Castle—a cooperative of homeless kids squatting in an austere, derelict building. But homeless kids are disappearing from the streets in suspicious numbers, and Lee quickly discovers that the secret society’s charitable façade is too good to be true. She finds an unexpected ally in Tomi, a young artist and hacker whose knowledge of the Internet’s black market is rivaled only by his ability to break into and out of buildings. From abandoned aquariums to highly patrolled museums to the homes of vacationing Philadelphians, Tomi and Lee can always chart a way to the next, perfect hide-out.

But the harder Lee tries to escape into the unmapped corners of the city, the closer she unwittingly gets to uncovering the disturbing agenda of the very men who pull the strings of the secret society she’s hoped to elude, a group of fanatics obsessed with the secrets encoded in the work of early-twentieth-century artist Marcel Duchamp. What these men want is more twisted than anything Lee could’ve imagined, and they believe Lee holds the key to it all.

This was a recent add to my most anticipated list. It is likened to the work of Ernest Cline, a favorite author of mine.