If you’re looking for new reads just as the summer draws to a close and the academic year ramps up, look no further! This list of August new releases contains everything from horror thrillers to fairy tale retellings and Regency era romance. Scroll to find your next new favorite!
If you’re looking for a Regency period action-adventure novel, this is the one for you. Elizabeth Wynchester is a bold and curvy hedgehog lover… and seeker of adventure through the sword concealed inside her cane. She doesn’t know the Earl she’s bent on defending is actually his reclusive, inventor cousin impersonating him, and the Earl himself is missing, which complicates things when they fall into bed together. Elizabeth tells him their affair will end with the adventure, so he has to figure out how to change her mind.
For a supernatural laced horror thriller, you’ll want to get this novel. Five teenage boys have been best friends since childhood, and they’ve endured all kinds of deaths—from hurricanes and car accidents to suicide. Always together. But when Bimbo’s mother is gunned down by gangsters working for Puerto Rico’s drug kingpin, he enlists his friends in a vow to avenge her… even as a hurricane full of evil spirits gathers on the coast, and he knows the drug lord takes no prisoners.
If a fairy-tale retelling is just the reading you had in mind for your late summer list, check out this revisited story of the Gorgon, Medusa. You probably remember her as Athena’s priestess who was first raped by Poseidon and then cursed by Athena to have snakes for hair and turn any man who looks at her into stone. But in this retelling, Medusa travels blindfolded and alone across Greece, meeting gods, nymphs, and even a three-headed dog while Perseus closes in, ready to slay her, the beast.
The conclusion of the Belladonna young adult dark fantasy trilogy has arrived! Blythe Hawthorne is defiant toward the men of her life, her overprotective father and the man she’s promised to, not to mention society itself. When she discovers her own link to the past of the latter, though, she has an important decision to make about how to proceed with him, and her future.
This literary thriller is perfect for the reader who wants not only crime fiction, but a fascinating way in which the story is told. This one unfolds in three parts, from three different perspectives. First is Jane, a would-be writer who creates content for a social media firm. She works with Jeremy, our second perspective, to develop an experimental novel told in parts from separate social media persona. It’s a wild, viral, sensational success, and as the form of this novel imitates its content as well, relationship between Jane and Jeremy blooms into something more, Jane realizes there’s a lot to hide about her compulsions and routines. When Jane dies, it’s up to the third character, Jesse, to investigate and figure out what exactly went wrong.
Mary Kay McBrayer is the author of America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster. You can find her short works at Oxford American, Narratively, Mental Floss, and FANGORIA, among other publications. She hosts the podcast about women in true crime, The Greatest True Crime Stories Ever Told. Follow Mary Kay McBrayer on Instagram and Twitter, or check out her author site here.
