Mysteries, thrillers, romance, and historical books will be heading your way with these August book releases! If you’re looking for a different time period, head to 1948 in Rust and Stardust or two time periods in The Masterpiece, which takes you to 1928 and 1974. Perhaps if thrillers are more your speed, Emily Bleeker’s The Waiting Room and Rena Olsen’s With You Always.
Read on to discover our picks and tell us in the comments below if you will be checking any of them out!
Good Luck With That by Kristan Higgins
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
Emerson, Georgia, and Marley have been best friends ever since they met at a weight-loss camp as teens. When Emerson tragically passes away, she leaves one final wish for her best friends: to conquer the fears they still carry as adults. For Marley, it’s coming to terms with the survivor’s guilt she’s carried around since her twin sister’s death. For Georgia, it’s about learning to stop trying to live up to her mother’s and brother’s ridiculous standards, and learning to accept the love her ex-husband has tried to give her. But as Marley and Georgia grow stronger, the real meaning of Emerson’s dying wish becomes truly clear: more than anything, she wanted her friends to love themselves.
Rust and Stardust by T. Greenwood
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth’s, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move. Accosting her outside the store, Frank convinces Sally that he’s an FBI agent who can have her arrested in a minute—unless she does as he says. This chilling novel traces the next two harrowing years as Frank mentally and physically assaults Sally while the two of them travel westward from Camden to San Jose, forever altering not only her life, but the lives of her family, friends, and those she meets along the way.
Goodbye, Paris by Anstey Harris
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
Jojo Moyes meets Eleanor Oliphant in Goodbye, Paris, an utterly charming novel that proves that sometimes you have to break your heart to make it whole. Filled with lovable, quirky characters, this poignant novel explores the realities of relationships and heartbreak and shows that when it comes to love, there’s more than one way to find happiness.
Becoming Belle by Nuala O’Connor
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
A witty and inherently feminist novel about passion and marriage, based on a true story of an unstoppable woman ahead of her time in Victorian London. In 1887, Isabel Bilton is the eldest of three daughters of a middle-class military family, growing up in a small garrison town. By 1891 she is the Countess of Clancarty, dubbed “the peasant countess” by the press, and a member of the Irish aristocracy. Becoming Belle is the story of the four years in between, of Belle’s rapid ascent and the people that tried to tear her down.
Our House by Louise Candlish
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
When Fiona Lawson comes home to find strangers moving into her house, she’s sure there’s been a mistake. She and her estranged husband, Bram, have a modern co-parenting arrangement: bird’s nest custody, where each parent spends a few nights a week with their two sons at the prized family home to maintain stability for their children. But the system built to protect their family ends up putting them in terrible jeopardy. In a domino effect of crimes and misdemeanors, the nest comes tumbling down. Now Bram has disappeared and so have Fiona’s children.
Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them—Cara first: dark and beautiful, then Peter: striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbours’ private lives. To Frances’ surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur.
The Drama Teacher by Koren Zailckas
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
Gracie Mueller is a proud mother of two and devoted wife, living with her husband Randy in upstate New York, her life complicated by the usual stressors and tedium. But Gracie, underneath all that’s marked her life as average, has a lot to hide about where she’s from, who she is, and who she’s been. And when Randy’s failing career as a real estate agent makes finances tight, their home goes into foreclosure, and Gracie feels she has no choice but to return to the creatively illegal and high-stakes lifestyle of her past in order to keep all that she’s worked so hard to have.
The Waiting Room by Emily Bleeker
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
Ever since her husband’s death collided with the birth of her daughter, postpartum depression has taken hold of Veronica Shelton. Her emotional state is whispering lies in Veronica’s ear: You’re a bad mother. Your baby would be better off without you. After all, the break-in at her house happened. The disturbing sketches she found in her studio are real. So is the fear for her daughter’s safety—especially when Veronica comes home to a cold, silent nursery and a missing baby. As she turns from victim into primary suspect, Veronica realises that only she can find her daughter. Authorities aren’t helping. They’re only watching.
With You Always by Rena Olsen
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
In the wake of a painful breakup and struggling to prove herself at work, Julia feels adrift. When Bryce blows into her life, he seems like the perfect anchor. Together they embark on a path guided by the principles of his family and their church, each step a paving stone leading to happily ever after. But this is no fairy tale. Step by step, one small concession leading to another, Julia is slowly isolated from her job, her friends, and her family, until she comes to find that her dream come true is a cage. Then one day everything changes…and Julia is faced with no choice but to find a way out.
Housegirl by Michael Donkor
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
Three adolescents—two Ghanaian “housegirls” and the daughter of newly wealthy immigrants—struggle to come to terms with themselves and the secrets they have kept from each other in this powerful debut novel. A universal and unexpectedly funny coming-of-age story that explores friendship and family, shame and forgiveness, Michael Donkor’s Hold is a powerfully evocative debut novel whose characters will stay with you even as you try to let them go.
The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
In her latest captivating novel, nationally bestselling author Fiona Davis takes readers into the glamorous lost art school within Grand Central Terminal, where two very different women, fifty years apart, strive to make their mark on a world set against them.
Ohio by Stephen Markley
Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository
The debut of a major talent; a lyrical and emotional novel set in an archetypal small town in northeastern Ohio—a region ravaged by the Great Recession, an opioid crisis, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—depicting one feverish, fateful summer night in 2013 when four former classmates converge on their hometown, each with a mission, all haunted by the ghosts of their shared histories.
Check out our other August book picks on our Goodreads list!
