New books in August
These books were all the rage at the Book Expo this year. And they are all debuts from new authors you should be reading. A couple of bad covers in this list should not deter you from checking out these titles. It's what's inside that counts.
They are on-order and will be arriving as soon as they're officially released in August. So get your reserves early and sit back and wait for excellent fiction to arrive for you at the library, on the Bookmobile or at a Smartlocker in your neighborhood.
1. The Girl Who Slept with God by Val Brelinski
"A heartrending portrait of the challenges of accepting and rejecting both faith and family and realizing that decisions aren't always so straightforward." - Library Journal
The Girl Who Slept with God is a literary achievement about a family's desperate need for truth, love, purity, and redemption. Set in Idaho in 1970, Val Brelinski's powerfully affecting first novel tells the story of three sisters: young Frances, gregarious and strong-willed Jory, and moral-minded Grace. Their father, Oren, is a respected member of the community and science professor at the local college. Yet their mother's depression and Grace's religious fervor threaten the seemingly perfect family, whose world is upended when Grace returns from a missionary trip to Mexico and discovers she's pregnant with - she believes - the child of God.
2. In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
Entertainment Weekly Summer Books Pick | Buzzfeed "31 Books to Get Excited About this Summer" | Publishers Weekly "Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers" | New York Post "Best Novels to Read this Summer" | Expo America 2015 Buzz Book
What should be a cozy and fun-filled weekend deep in the English countryside takes a sinister turn in Ruth Ware's suspenseful, compulsive and darkly twisted psychological thriller. Leonora, known to some as Lee and others as Nora, is a reclusive crime writer, unwilling to leave her "nest" of an apartment unless it is absolutely necessary. When a friend she hasn't seen or spoken to in years unexpectedly invites Nora (Lee?) to a weekend away in an eerie glass house deep in the English countryside, she reluctantly agrees to make the trip. Forty-eight hours later, she wakes up in a hospital bed injured but alive, with the knowledge that someone is dead.
3. Dragonfish by Vu Tran
"This is a most enjoyable mystery, from its distinct, dazzling premise all the way to its satisfying conclusion." - Publisher's Weekly
Robert, an Oakland cop, still can't let go of Suzy, the enigmatic Vietnamese wife who left him two years ago. Now she's disappeared from her new husband, Sonny, a violent Vietnamese smuggler and gambler who's blackmailing Robert into finding her for him. As he pursues her through the sleek and seamy gambling dens of Las Vegas, shadowed by Sonny's sadistic son, "Junior," and assisted by unexpected and reluctant allies, Robert learns more about his ex-wife than he ever did during their marriage.
4. Everybody Rise by Stephanie Clifford
"A masterful tale of social climbing and entrenched class distinctions, as seen through the eyes of an outsider who desperately wants in. Tense, hilarious and bursting with gorgeous language. Stephanie Clifford is a 21st-century Edith Wharton." -J. Courtney Sullivan, New York Times bestselling author of The Engagements
Twentysomething Evelyn Beegan has just enough social-climbing bona fides (prep school, good college, a somewhat prominent attorney father, a somewhat pedigreed mother) to reach the fringes of 2006 Manhattan high society. When she lands a job with People Like Us, a start-up social media site for superrich young New Yorkers, she is charged with quickly increasing membership. She uses her school friends, her minimal connections, her quick mind, her dogged research skills and her facility for lying to gain entry into the charity events, regattas, debuts, and stunningly excessive shopping and dining experiences that define the lives of her targets. The deeper she gets, the more she needs and eventually she pays a price more terrible than the massive debts she runs up trying to buy her way in.
5. How to Write a Novel by Melanie Sumner
"In the vein of Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project, Sumner's quirky story about an unconventional family is charming and precocious." - Library Journal
Aristotle "Aris" Thibodeau is 12.5 years old and destined for greatness. Ever since her father's death, however, she's been stuck in the small town of Kanuga, Georgia, where she has to manage her mother Diane's floundering love life and dubious commitment to her job as an English professor. Not to mention co-parenting a little brother who hogs all the therapy money. Luckily, Aris has a plan. Following the advice laid out in Write a Novel in Thirty Days! she sets out to pen a bestseller using her charmingly dysfunctional family as material.
See more books I recommend every month in Fiction 5:
