The Best New Books Publishing in August 2025

August

2025

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We currently have previews of 62 August books.
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A Dog in Georgia
by Lauren Grodstein
Algonquin Books, 08/05/2025
 
Which is why she is currently in the republic of Georgia, on a mission to find a lost dog named Angel, and, more importantly, the life's purpose she ...more
Literary Fiction
Automatic Noodle
by Annalee Newitz
Tordotcom, 08/05/2025
 
You don't have to eat food to know the way to a city's heart is through its stomach. So when a group of deactivated robots come back online in an ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Dwelling: A Novel
by Emily Hunt Kivel
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/05/2025
 
The world is ending. It has been ending for some time. When did the ending begin? Perhaps when Evie's mother died, or when her father died soon after....more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Every Summer After: Deluxe Edition
by Carley Fortune
Berkley Books, 08/05/2025
 
They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too ...more
Romance
 Debut Author
Extinction Capital of the World: Stories
by Mariah Rigg
Ecco, 08/05/2025
 
In ten vibrant, affecting stories, Mariah Rigg immerses readers in contemporary Hawai'i. By turns heartbreaking and hopeful, these stories of love, ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
God and Sex
by Jon Raymond
Simon & Schuster, 08/05/2025
 
What if God spoke to you? Would you hear Him? Would you obey His command?

Arthur Zinn, an author of high-end spiritual texts, has fallen in love ...more
Literary Fiction
House of the Beast
by Michelle Wong
Harper, 08/05/2025
 
Born out of wedlock and shunned by society, Alma learned to make her peace with solitude, so long as she had her mother by her side. When her mother ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
L.A. Women
by Ella Berman
Berkley Books, 08/05/2025
 
After a steady descent from literary stardom, Lane Warren is back. She's secured a new book deal based off the life of her sometimes friend and more ...more
Historical Fiction
Mindscape
by Andrea Hairston
Tor Books, 08/05/2025
 
The world has been divided by the Barrier. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epidimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Power-...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Mistress of Bones: A Novel
by Maria Z. Medina
Wednesday Books, 08/05/2025
 
It's been thousands of years since the gods lifted the continents into the air so humanity could thrive, chaining the lands down with their bones and ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Moderation: A Novel
by Elaine Castillo
Viking, 08/05/2025
 
Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global ...more
Literary Fiction
Murder by the Book: A Novel
by Amie Schaumberg
MIRA, 08/05/2025
 
She's been posed to look like a painting of Ophelia from Shakespeare's Hamlet, the scene taunting the police with messages that they don't understand....more
Thrillers
 Debut Author
Nagasaki: The Last Witnesses (Embers)
by M. G. Sheftall
Dutton, 08/05/2025
 
On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
People Like Us: A Novel
by Jason Mott
Dutton, 08/05/2025
 
People Like Us is Jason Mott's electric new novel. It is not memoir, yet it has deeply personal connections to Jason's life. And while rooted in ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Putting Myself Together: Writing 1973–
by Jamaica Kincaid
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/05/2025
 
This collection of Jamaica Kincaid's nonfiction writing, including early pieces from publications such as The New Yorker, The Village Voice, and Ms., ...more
Essays
Sunbirth
by An Yu
Grove Press, 08/05/2025
 
In Five Poems Lake, a small village surrounded by impenetrable deserts, the sun is slowly disappearing overhead. A young woman keeps one apprehensive ...more
Literary Fiction
Tantrum
by Rachel Eve Moulton
G.P. Putnam's Sons, 08/05/2025
 
Thea's third pregnancy was her easiest. She wasn't consumed with anxiety about the baby. She wasn't convinced it was going to be born green, or have a...more
Literary Fiction
The Art of a Lie: A Novel
by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
Atria Books, 08/05/2025
 
Following the murder of her husband in what looks like a violent street robbery, Hannah Cole is struggling to keep her head above water. Her ...more
Historical Fiction
The Hounding: A Novel
by Xenobe Purvis
Henry Holt and Company, 08/05/2025
 
Even before the rumors about the Mansfield girls begin, Little Nettlebed is a village steeped in the uncanny, from strange creatures that wash up on ...more
Historical Fiction
 Debut Author
The Invention of Charlotte Brontë: A New Life
by Graham Watson
Pegasus Books, 08/05/2025
 
Charlotte Brontë had a life as seemingly dramatic as her heroine Jane Eyre. Turning her back on her tragic past, Charlotte reinvented herself as ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
The Magician of Tiger Castle
by Louis Sachar
Ace Books, 08/05/2025
 
Long ago and far away (and somewhere south of France) lies the kingdom of Esquaveta. There, Princess Tullia is in nearly as much peril as her ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why
by Madeleine Beekman
Simon & Schuster, 08/05/2025
 
Journeying to the dawn of Homo sapiens, evolutionary biologist Madeleine Beekman reveals the "happy accidents" hidden in our molecular biology—...more
Science, Health and the Environment
This Here Is Love: A Novel
by Princess Joy L. Perry
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/05/2025
 
As the seventeenth century burns to a close in Tidewater, Virginia, America's character is wrought in the fires of wealth, race, and freedom.

Young...more
Literary Fiction
Verity Vox and the Curse of Foxfire
by Don Martin
Page Street YA, 08/05/2025
 
The rules here are simple:

Don't look in the trees.

Don't whistle in the woods at night.

Don't answer if you hear your name called.

And ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
We Should All Be Birds: A Memoir
by Brian Buckbee
Tin House Books, 08/05/2025
 
On a spring evening in Montana, Brian Buckbee encounters an injured baby pigeon. Heartbroken after the loss of the love of his life and increasingly ...more
Biography/Memoir
When the Cranes Fly South: A Novel
by Lisa Ridzén
Vintage, 08/05/2025
 
Bo is running out of time. Yet time is one of the few things he's got left. These days, his quiet existence is broken up only by daily visits from his...more
Literary Fiction
A Game in Yellow
by Hailey Piper
Saga Press, 08/12/2025
 
A kink-fixated couple, Carmen and Blanca, have been in a rut. That is until Blanca discovers the enigmatic Smoke in an under-street drug den, who ...more
Thrillers
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History
by Moudhy Al-Rashid
W.W. Norton & Company, 08/12/2025
 
Thousands of years ago, in a part of the world we now call ancient Mesopotamia, people began writing things down for the very first time.

What they...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
 Debut Author
Black Moses: A Saga of Ambition and the Fight for a Black State
by Caleb Gayle
Riverhead Books, 08/12/2025
 
In this paradigm-shattering work of American history, Caleb Gayle recounts the extraordinary tale of Edward McCabe, a Black man who championed the ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Dogs: A Novel
by C. Mallon
Scribner, 08/12/2025
 
As night falls on the city of Carbon, Hal and his friends are cruising the backroads in their terrible car. From the wrestling gym to the gas station,...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Fonseca: A Novel
by Jessica Francis Kane
Penguin Press, 08/12/2025
 
Winter 1952. Penelope Fitzgerald's husband is a struggling alcoholic, their literary journal is on the brink, and she is pregnant with their third ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Historical Fiction
Hotshot
by River Selby
Atlantic Monthly Press, 08/12/2025
 
From 2000 to 2010, River Selby was a wildland firefighter whose given name was Anastasia. This is a memoir of that time in their life—of Ana, ...more
Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
I Found a Body: A Novel
by Becky C. Brynolf
Crooked Lane Books, 08/12/2025
 
Detective Sergeant Mona Hendricks has a lot on her plate: she's getting divorced, her teen daughter is punishing her for it, and she's shooting for a ...more
Thrillers
 Debut Author
Island at the Edge of the World: The Forgotten History of Easter Island
by Mike Pitts
Mariner Books, 08/12/2025
 
Rapa Nui, known to Western cultures as Easter Island for centuries, has long been a source of mystery. While the massive stone statues that populate ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Lucky Day
by Chuck Tingle
Tor Nightfire, 08/12/2025
 
After a global disaster prompts thousands of comically unlikely deaths, a bisexual statistics professor―who has convinced herself she might not ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Seduction Theory: A Novel
by Emily Adrian
Little Brown & Company, 08/12/2025
 
Simone is the star of Edwards University's creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less ...more
Literary Fiction
Tall Water
by SJ Sindu
HarperAlley, 08/12/2025
 
Ever since she turned sixteen, Nimmi has wanted to see her mother. Though she has a loving but overprotective father and a budding relationship, she ...more
Graphic Novels
The Book of Lost Hours: A Novel
by Hayley Gelfuso
Atria Books, 08/12/2025
 
Nuremberg, 1938: On the night of Kristallnacht, eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy is hidden by her father from approaching forces in a mysterious place ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
 Debut Author
The Dancing Face
by Mike Phillips
Melville House, 08/12/2025
 
University lecturer Gus knows that stealing the priceless Benin mask, the Dancing Face, from a museum at the heart of the British establishment will ...more
Thrillers
The Dime Museum: A novel in stories
by Joyce Hinnefeld
Unbridled Books, 08/12/2025
 
He's struggling to understand how his significant privilege has destroyed a romantic relationship, but he draws unwanted interest from other quarters ...more
Short Stories
The Frequency of Living Things: A Novel
by Nick Fuller Googins
Atria Books, 08/12/2025
 
Josie may be the youngest sister, but she takes care of everyone. She is the left-brained scientist to her twin sisters' right-brained artistic chaos....more
Literary Fiction
The Gossip Columnist's Daughter
by Peter Orner
Little Brown & Company, 08/12/2025
 
Jed Rosenthal hasn't published a book in fourteen years, the mother of his child left him in a "trial separation" that has stretched on indefinitely, ...more
Literary Fiction
The Island of Last Things
by Emma Sloley
Flatiron Books, 08/12/2025
 
Camille has always preferred animals to people. The wild has nearly disappeared, but as a zookeeper at the last zoo in the world, on Alcatraz Island, ...more
Literary Fiction
These Memories Do Not Belong to Us: A Constellation Novel
by Yiming Ma
Mariner Books, 08/12/2025
 
When I was a boy, my mother used to tell me stories of a world before memories could be shared between strangers…

Decades from now, the ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
What Hunger
by Catherine Dang
Simon & Schuster, 08/12/2025
 
It's the summer before high school, and Ronny Nguyen finds herself too young for work, too old for cartoons. Her days are spent in a small backyard, ...more
Literary Fiction
White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History
by Ann Bausum
Roaring Brook Press, 08/12/2025
 
Warning: This is not your average U.S. history book.

After the Civil War, the Confederates may have laid down their arms, but they were far from ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
All the Tomorrows After
by Joanne Yi
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 08/19/2025
 
Each night, Winter Moon counts her earnings dreaming of escape. Once she's saved enough, she and her grandmother can finally take flight and disappear...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Baldwin: A Love Story
by Nicholas Boggs
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/19/2025
 
As the first major biography of the iconic figure in more than three decades, Baldwin: A Love Story tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most ...more
Biography/Memoir
 Debut Author
Buff Soul
by Moa Romanova
Fantagraphics Books, 08/19/2025
 
How do you prevent history from repeating itself, and is it possible to protect the one you love from themselves? When cartoonist Moa Romanova joins ...more
Graphic Novels
Dominion: A Novel
by Addie E. Citchens
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 08/19/2025
 
Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Fetishized: A Reckoning with Yellow Fever, Feminism, and Beauty
by Kaila Yu
Crown, 08/19/2025
 
No one fetishized Kaila Yu more than she fetishized herself. As a young girl, she dreamt of beauty. But none of the beautiful women on television ...more
Biography/Memoir
Lessons in Magic and Disaster
by Charlie Jane Anders
Tor Books, 08/19/2025
 
A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic—with very unexpected results—in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, ...more
Literary Fiction
Milena and Margarete: A Love Story in Ravensbrück
by Gwen Strauss
St. Martin's Press, 08/19/2025
 
From the moment they met in 1940 in Ravensbrück concentration camp, Milena Jesenska and Margarete Buber-Neumann were inseparable. Czech Milena ...more
History, Current Affairs and Religion
Ruth: A Novel
by Kate Riley
Riverhead Books, 08/19/2025
 
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning ...more
Literary Fiction
 Debut Author
Sweetener: A Novel
by Marissa Higgins
Catapult, 08/19/2025
 
In Sweetener, recently separated wives, both named Rebecca, can't seem to disentangle their lives. Lonely and depressed, Rebecca is scraping by as a ...more
Literary Fiction
The Once and Future Me: A Novel
by Melissa Pace
Henry Holt and Company, 08/19/2025
 
When a woman wakes up on a transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital, she remembers nothing of her life up to that moment, none of ...more
Thrillers
 Debut Author
The Possession of Alba Díaz
by Isabel Cañas
Berkley Books, 08/19/2025
 
In 1765, plague sweeps through Zacatecas. Alba flees with her wealthy merchant parents and fiancé, Carlos, to his family's isolated mine for ...more
Thrillers
Where Are You Really From: Stories
by Elaine Hsieh Chou
Penguin Press, 08/19/2025
 
A mail order bride from Taiwan is packed up in a cardboard box and sent via express shipping to California, where her much older husband awaits her. ...more
Short Stories
Katabasis: A Novel
by R. F Kuang
Harper Voyager, 08/26/2025
 
The story of a hero's descent to the underworld.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick...more
Critics' Consensus:

Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Legendary Frybread Drive-In: Intertribal Stories
by Cynthia Leitich Smith
Heartdrum, 08/26/2025
 
The road to Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In slips through every rez and alongside every urban Native hangout. The menu offers a rotating ...more
Short Stories
My Perfect Family
by Khadijah VanBrakle
Holiday House, 08/26/2025
 
"Lonely Leena" is close with her young single mother. Still, she's always secretly dreamed of more (and, when she was a kid, asked Santa for it). A ...more
Critics' Consensus:

Literary Fiction
Roar of the Lambs
by Jamison Shea
Henry Holt and Company, 08/26/2025
 
Sixteen-year-old Winnie Bray is a liar. As the resident psychic at an oddities shop, Winnie truly can see the future. But her customers only want ...more
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
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