The August 2022 Prepub Alert posts are also available as a downloadable spreadsheet of titles.  

Fiction 

Mystery

Andrews, Donna. Round Up the Usual Peacocks. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Meg Langslow Mystery, Bk. 31). Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250760203. $26.99. CD. MYSTERY/COZY

Childs, Laura. A Dark and Stormy Tea. Berkley. (Tea Shop Mystery, Bk. 24). Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593200896. $27. MYSTERY/COZY

Krueger, William Kent. Fox Creek. Atria. (Cork O'Connor Mystery). Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781982128715. $28. MYSTERY/PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

Pryor, Mark. Die Around Sundown. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250824820. $27.99. MYSTERY/HISTORICAL

Quinn, Spencer. Bark to the Future. Forge. (Chet & Bernie Mystery, Bk. 13). Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250843272. $26.99. MYSTERY/PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS

Rose, Karen. Quarter to Midnight. Berkley. Aug. 2022. 608p. ISBN 9780593336298. $27. Downloadable. POLICE PROCEDURAL

Scrivenor, Hayley. Dirt Creek. Flatiron: Macmillan. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250834751. $26.99. CD. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

Schaffhausen, Joanna. Long Gone. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. (Detective Annalisa Vega, Bk. 2). Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250264633. $27.99. MYSTERY/POLICE PROCEDURAL

Walker, Martin. To Kill a Troubadour. Knopf. (Bruno, Chief of Police Novel, Bk. 15). Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593319796. $27. MYSTERY

From the multi-award-winning Andrews, past master of laugh-out-loud avian titling, Round Up the Usual Peacocks puts Meg Langslow on the trail of three separate cold cases when a member of her techie nephew’s true-crime podcast team has an unfortunate accident that could have been attempted murder (40,000-copy first printing). In the New York Times best-selling Childs’s A Dark and Stormy Tea, tea maven Theodosia Browning is approaching St. Philips Graveyard one rain-wrought night when she witnesses the murder of a friend’s daughter and immediately starts investigating—never mind the serial killer loose in Charleston. In the Edgar Award–winning Krueger’s Fox Creek, Ojibwe healer Henry Meloux protects a stranger named Dolores Morriseau who had sought his guidance but now finds herself pursued by hunters, with Cork O’Connor hot on their trail; his wife, Meloux’s great-niece, is with the endangered Dolores (150,000-copy first printing). Author of the “Hugo Marston” mystery series, English journalist–turned–Texas prosecutor Pryor launches a new series with Die Around Sundown, set in World War II Paris, where Det. Henri Lefort has just a few days to solve the murder of a German major at the Louvre Museum (40,000-copy first printing). In Bark to the Future, latest in Quinn’s doggedly funny New York Times best-selling series, PI Bernie Little and his devoted canine, Chet, try to figure out what happened to the woman who reigned as prom queen of Bernie’s high school class and now seems to have vanished (75,000-copy first printing). With Quarter to Midnight, the New York Times best-selling Rose takes us to New Orleans, where police officer–turned–private eye Molly Sutton is tasked with helping a steamy-hot young chef prove that his NOPD dad’s death was not suicide. Former director of the Wollongong Writers Festival, Scrivenor delivers the booming-big debut Dirt Creek, in which D.S. Sarah Michaels investigates the disappearance of 12-year-old Esther as she walked home from her rural Australian school even as Esther’s classmates offer their own insights (150,000-copy first printing). In Schaffhausen’s Long Gone , Det. Annalisa Vega recoups from having turned in her ex-cop father for murder by investigating a detective’s suspicious death, which leads her to a slick car salesman trying to charm her best friend (40,000-copy first printing). Walker's popular hero, Bruno, chief of police in the Dordogne village of St. Denis, faces Spanish nationalists with plans To Kill a Troubadour after release of “Song for Catalonia” by a local folk music group.

Four Top Literary Authors

Donoghue, Emma. Haven. Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780316413930. $28. CD/downloadable. LITERARY/HISTORICAL

Trust the protean author of Room and Slammerkin to take us on an unexpected journey. In seventh-century CE Ireland, priest/scholar Artt seeks to abandon the sinful world by hopping into a boat with two monks and sailing out to sea, where they land on a craggy, bird-mobbed island now famously known as Skellig Michael and build a monastery whose remains stand to this day. High adventure and passionate belief; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Gurnah, Abdulrazak. Afterlives. Riverhead. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593541883. $28. Downloadable. LITERARY/HISTORICAL

In Gurnah’s first book since winning the Nobel Prize, Ilyas is taken from his East African home by German colonial troops in the late 1800s and compelled to fight against his own people. Years later, he returns to find his parents dead and his sister, Afiya, effectively enslaved to their self-professed aunt and uncle. Hamza, too, returns home after having been sold into service and left badly scarred, not just emotionally but physically, and he falls in love with beautiful, unbreakably determined Afiya. As these three young people try to get on with their lives, war is coming after them again, with decades of rebellion and suppression to follow.

Roffey, Monique. The Mermaid of Black Conch. Knopf. Jul. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593534205. $26. Downloadable. LITERARY

Literary author Roffey's Costa Book of the Year Award winner is a feminist retelling of an old Taino myth BISACed as Fairy Tales/Romance/Historical Fiction and amplified by a condemnation of colonization in the Caribbean. In the 1970s, David is fishing off the island of Black Conch when he rescues a mermaid netted by some raucous tourists from the States. Actually, she’s a beautiful young Taino woman named Aycayia who was cursed centuries ago by envious wives to take the form of a sea creature. As she comes to live with David, who falls in love with her, she takes on human form and begins relearning human ways while bearing witness to the devastation wrought by empire.

Wiggins, Marianne. Properties of Thirst. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 544p. ISBN 9781416571261. $28. CD. LITERARY/HISTORICAL

In this latest from National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Wiggins, Rockwell “Rocky” Rhodes has long defended his California ranch from the demands of the LA Water Corporation. Now World War II arrives, and after widower Rocky decides to join the war effort, tragedy strikes the family yet again. Meanwhile, the government has decided to build a Japanese American concentration camp next to the ranch, and even as the man in charge begins to question what he’s doing, he falls for Rocky’s daughter Sunny. Painfully intertwining the political and the personal; with a 150,00-copy first printing.

Literary Fiction

Acampora, Lauren. The Hundred Waters. Grove. Aug. 2022. 224p. ISBN 9780802159748. $26. LITERARY

Once a struggling model and photographer in glittering New York, Louisa Rader now lives with her architect husband and daughter in upscale suburban Connecticut, missing the energy of her old life even as she tries to spruce up the local art scene. Then vital young artist/environmentalist Gabriel arrives in town and upends everything. From the award-winning author of The Wonder Garden.

Barnes, Julian. Elizabeth Finch. Knopf. Aug. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9780593535431. $26. LITERARY

When he signed up for an adult class called Culture and Civilization, Neil didn’t expect to develop a sort of intellectual crush on demanding professor Elizabeth Finch. Their relationship shapes his life, even after she dies—she leaves him notes on his latest obsession, Julian the Apostate—as Booker Prize winner Barnes explores the many variations on love and the undercurrents of “culture and civilization” in our lives.

Hamid, Mohsin. The Last White Man. Riverhead. Aug. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9780593538814. $26. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. LITERARY/POLITICAL

Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, a secret he initially shares only with new lover Oona. But soon people everywhere are being transformed, raising tough questions. How can you recognize friends and family? Can you love them as you once did, changed as they are? And is the old social order, with its attendant prejudices, about to be tossed out the window? Sharp-edged political/fantastical allegory from two-time Booker Prize finalist Hamid.

Janson, Julie. Benevolence. HarperVia. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780063140950. $27.99. LITERARY

A Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal Nation, award-winning playwright/poet/novelist Janson draws on family history to tell the story of Muraging, who is still a child when white settlers violently seize what is now Australia for the British Empire, including in their claim the little strip of land between the river and the sea her family calls home. Soon Muraging is sent to the Parramatta Native School, where she is forced to abandon her language and culture, and she eventually runs away to face a strange and harsh new world. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Jones, Sadie. Amy & Lan. Harper. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063240902. $25.99. LITERARY

On a farm in southwest England presided over by three sets of parents, best friends Amy and Lan frolic with the other children, plus chickens, goats, dogs, and a calf named Gabriella Christmas. Theirs is a carefree, even wild childhood that’s about to be disrupted by something stirring between Lan's mother and Amy's father. With a 25,000-copy first printing; check it out, as Jones’s novels range from The Outcast, a Costa First Novel Award winner, to 2019’s LJ-starred The Snakes.

Kumarasamy, Akil. Meet Us by the Roaring Sea. Farrar. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780374177706. $27. LITERARY

In this follow-up to Kumarasamy’s Bard Fiction Prize–winning story collection, Half Gods, a young woman responds to her mother’s violent death in a near-future Queens, NY, by working her way through language studies, artificial intelligence, and television, eventually translating an old manuscript about female medical students in a catastrophic world figuring out how best to help others. With the arrival of both a stranger and a childhood friend and the advent of a special AI project, the protagonist asks herself the same question. With 40,000-copy first printing.

Levin, Adam. Mount Chicago. Doubleday. Aug. 2022. 592p. ISBN 9780385548243. $30. Downloadable. LITERARY

A major disaster strikes Chicago, with the earth falling away beneath everyone’s feet, and a Jewish comedian, his most committed fan, and the city’s mayor are among the main characters struggling to survive. Meanwhile, NYPL Young Fiction Lions Levin gets to comment on issues like Chicago politics, stand-up comedy, Jewish identity, loss, and resilience.

Louis, Édouard. A Woman’s Battles and Transformations. Farrar. Aug. 2022. 128p. tr. from French by Tash Aw. ISBN 9780374606749. $25. LITERARY

“I did it. I left your father.” So proclaimed French novelist Louis’s mother in a phone call that ultimately inspired this novel, which follows the blistering international best sellers The End of Eddy and History of Violence. Here he writes not simply of one woman’s liberation but of mother and sons, class and control, and how we are all ground down by society’s strictures. With a 20,000-copy first printing.

Lozano, Brenda. Witches. Catapult. Aug. 2022. 240p. tr. from Spanish by Heather Cleary. ISBN 9781646220687. $26. LITERARY

In this new work from Mexican writer Lozano, whose Loop won the PEN Translation Prize, reporter Zoé travels from Mexico City to San Felipe to investigate the murder of Paloma, a muxe—that is, she belongs to a self-identifying third gender among the Indigenous people of Oaxaca, assigned male at birth and embracing dress and behavior typically associated with women. Before she became Paloma, she was Gaspar, a curandero (or traditional healer) who taught cousin Feliciana the secrets of her art. Examining Paloma’s death while learning how Feliciana has struggled to be accepted as a healer deepens Zoé’s understanding of her own hard experiences as a woman.

Yagi, Emi. Diary of a Void. Viking. Aug. 2022. 224p. tr. from Japanese by David Boyd & Lucy North. ISBN 9780143136873. $23. Downloadable. LITERARY

Winner of the Dazai Osamu Prize, awarded annually to the best debut work of fiction in Japan, Yagi’s satisfyingly acidulous works feature thirtyish Ms. Shibata, who leaves one job in Tokyo to escape sexual harassment yet finds in her new job that as the only woman on staff she is expected to do all the menial work. Insisting that she cannot clear away the coffee because the smell nauseates her as she’s pregnant—never mind that she’s not—Ms. Shibata finds herself released from overtime and various obnoxious tasks and soon begins losing her sense of reality. 

Literary Debuts

Amiry, Suad. Mother of Strangers. Pantheon. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593316559. $26. LITERARY

Founder and director of RIWAQ, Centre for Architectural Conservation, in Ramallah, a participant in the 1991–93 Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, and the author numerous award-winning architecture titles, Amiry turns to fiction to chronicle the destruction of Palestine in 1947–51 and displacement of its people. The story is set in brightly cosmopolitan Jaffa and focuses on 15-year-old mechanic Subhi and Shams, the 13-year-old peasant girl he hopes one day to marry.

Garza, Kimberly. The Last Karankawas. Holt. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250819857. $26.99. LITERARY

Descended from the Karankawas, an Indigenous people of southern Texas, Carly Castillo calls Galveston home but still wants to leave; her parents’ abandonment will reverberate painfully as long as she stays there. But boyfriend Jess Rivera, now a seaman, prefers to remain. As friends, family, and coworkers circle this couple, Hurricane Ike looms ferociously on the horizon. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Gunty, Tess. Rabbit Hutch. Knopf. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593534663. $28. LITERARY

Gunty investigates economic strain in the U.S. heartland by taking readers to Vacca Vale, IN, a once thriving industrial center that’s turned to rust. Homing in on a tumble-down apartment building called the Rabbit Hutch, she presents mostly older residents with no place else to go but also introduces the four teenagers in Apt. C4, who have recently aged out of the state’s foster care system. Along with three boys, they include the bright, damaged, ambitiously hopeful heart of the matter, a girl named Blandine.

Habib, Conner. Hawk Mountain. Norton. Jul. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780393542172. $26.95. LITERARY

In small-town New England, single dad Todd is enjoying the beach with son Anthony when he’s approached by someone ominous from the past: Jack, the guy who cruelly bullied him in their teenage years. Jack just wants to catch up, have dinner, and maybe stay the night, then proceeds to shove himself threateningly into Todd’s life. From the host of the popular podcast Against Everyone, suggesting that people don’t easily change and that the horrors of high school live on. There’s TV/film interest.

Hokeah, Oscar. Calling for a Blanket Dance. Algonquin. Aug. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781643751474. $26.95. CD. LITERARY

Even as young, Indigenous Ever Geimausaddle wrestles with rage over centuries of murderous injustice, his family copes with more immediate pain: his father has been injured by the police, his mother is fighting for her job, and the family has been constantly resettled. Meanwhile, his Cherokee grandmother thinks they’d be safer if they moved across Oklahoma, while both his grandfather and his Kiowa cousin want to connect him to his heritage. Now all he has to do is figure out what he really wants and find a way to save his family.

Lafarge, Daisy. Paul. Riverhead. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593538845. $26. Downloadable. LITERARY

After a scandal, a young British graduate student flees Paris for southern France, where she volunteers on a farm and falls in bed with the moody but charismatic owner, seen-the-world artist Paul. It takes just a few weeks for her to realize that with Paul she’s risking her independence and her very identity. A Betty Trask Award winner; Lafarge is also a T.S. Eliot Prize short-listed poet, so expect a striking voice.

Mathews, Sarah Thankam. All This Could Be Different. Viking. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593489123. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. LITERARY

Though she graduated amid a recession, all’s well with Sneha. She found a good job in Milwaukee, also managing to swing a position for college friend Thom; she’s got a new friend named Tig; and she’s starting to date women, soon falling hard for Marina. Then everything goes haywire. From Iowa Writers' Workshop grad Mathews, whose work has been featured in Best American Short Stories 2020.

Newson, Rasheed. My Government Means To Kill Me. Flatiron: Macmillan. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250833525. $27.99. LITERARY

Leaving behind his wealthy Black family in Indianapolis, young, gay Earl “Trey” Singleton flees almost penniless to 1980s New York, where he meets folks like civil rights leader Bayard Rustin and landlord Fred Trump and volunteers at an under-the-radar home hospice for AIDS patients. Soon, he’s active in gay rights and a founding member of ACT UP, still trying to maintain ties with his family as he negotiates an uneasy understanding of life amid death. With a 150,000-copy first printing; from TV writer/producer Newson (Bel-Air).

Pollard, Clare. Delphi. Avid Reader: S. & S. Aug. 2022. 160p. ISBN 9781982197896. $26. LITERARY

Upended by COVID-19 lockdown, a British classics professor specializing in prophecy decides she would rather be predicting the future. Soon she’s invested in palm reading, then zoomancy (prophecy by animal behavior) and oenomancy (prophecy by wine), but she completely misses the problems unfolding at home in real time. From poet/playwright/translator Pollard.

Tang, Belinda Huijuan. A Map for the Missing. Penguin Pr. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593300664. $27. Downloadable. LITERARY

After 10 years in the United States, Tang Yitian is called home to China when his father vanishes, but his efforts to learn what happened are waylaid by bureaucracy and his mother’s evasions. So he teams up with childhood friend Tian Hanwen, a well-to-do housewife whose academic dreams were wrecked by tragedy, and together they uncover who Yitian’s father really was in a narrative that ultimately ranges from the late 1970s to 1990s. From Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate Tang.

Short Stories

Campbell, Jane. Cat Brushing. Grove. Aug. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9780802160027. $26.

Fofana, Sidik. Stories from The Tenants Downstairs. Scribner. Aug. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9781982145811. $26.

Glose, Bill. All the Ruined Men: Stories. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781250279880. $27.99.

Yoshimoto, Banana. Dead-End Memories. Counterpoint. Aug. 2022. 240p. tr. from Japanese by Asa Yoneda. ISBN 9781640093690. $26.

A debut author at 80, Campbell resists stereotyping as she explores the lives and desires of women aged 60 to 90 in Cat Brushing. From public school teacher and NYU MFA graduate Fofana, the eight linked portraits in Stories from The Tenants Downstairs plumb the lives of tenants in the Banneker Homes, a low-income high rise in Harlem threatened by gentrification (150,000-copy first printing). The author of five books of poetry and winner of F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story and Robert Bausch Fiction awards, combat veteran Glose tells what it was like to fight the “forever” war in All the Ruined Men. First published in Japan in 2003, popular author Yoshimoto’s Dead-End Memories limns women making unusual discoveries as they find ways to heal from trauma.

Top Thrillers

Abbott, Jeff. Traitor’s Dance. Grand Central. (Sam Capra. No. 6). Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781538708743. $28. Downloadable. THRILLER

Ten years after events in The First Order, the autonomous independent spy group called The Round Table has been disbanded, and Sam Capra contentedly manages bars and nightclubs worldwide while tending to his son. Then he gets a call that Marcus Bolt, the last of several U.S. traitors who turned over allied military secrets to the Russians, has disappeared from Moscow. Now Sam is asked to contact Marcus’s estranged daughter to see what she knows. From three-time Edgar nominee Abbott, whose Sam Capra thriller The Last Minute won an International Thriller Writers Award; with a 25,000-copy first printing.

Brown, Sandra. Untitled. Grand Central. Aug. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9781538752012. $29. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Thriller Master Brown returns after 73 New York Times best sellers; the last, Blind Tiger, debuted at No. 5 on the New York Times best sellers list and No. 3 on the Combined Print & E-Book list. No word on plot, but there’s a 500,000-copy first printing.

Coulter, Catherine. Reckoning. Morrow. (FBI Thriller, No. 26). Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780063004139. $28.99. lrg. prnt. THRILLER/LEGAL

Past and present danger looms in this latest featuring FBI agents Dillon Savich and Lacey Sherlock. Virginia Commonwealth attorney Kirra Mandarian turns to Savich when she finds herself dangerously out of her depth while seeking to bring down the man she holds responsible for her parents’ death 14 years earlier. Meanwhile, Sherlock joins with Metro officers in Washington, DC, to protect 12-year-old piano prodigy Emma Hunt when she performs at the Kennedy Center; granddaughter of a crime boss and adopted by a federal judge, she was abducted at age six and has just avoided another kidnapping. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Emerson, Ramona. Shutter. Soho Crime. Aug. 2022. 312p. ISBN 9781641293334. $27.95. THRILLER/SUPERNATURAL

Diné forensic photographer Rita Todacheene doesn’t just take good pictures, she helps solve cases for the Albuquerque police force with insights gleaned from the ghosts of crime victims, whom she can see and hear. More curse than gift, her ability to confer with the otherworld has driven her from the reservation, where it’s regarded with suspicion, and has wrecked her personal life. Now an especially angry ghost won’t leave Rita alone, sending her on a mission of vengeance that could get her killed. Diné writer/filmmaker Emerson’s debut is at once a thriller, a horror story, and a portrait of growing up on the reservation; a big push at PLA and ALA.

Goldin, Megan. Stay Awake. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250280664. $27.99. CD. THRILLER

Goldin follows up her edgy and much-appreciated The Escape Room and The Night Swim with Liv Reese waking up in a taxi she doesn’t remember catching; thrust from her brownstone apartment, now inhabited by a stranger; and finding a bloodstained knife in her pocket and the words “STAY AWAKE” scrawled on her skin—the same message scrawled in the victim’s blood at a crime scene. Even more confoundingly, she learns that two years have gone by, completely lost to her memory. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Hogan, Chuck. Gangland. Grand Central. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781538751756. $28. Downloadable. CRIME

The New York Times best-selling, Hammett Prize–winning Hogan bases his latest on the true story of Tony Accardo, the longest‑reigning mob capo in history. It’s the 1970s, and loyal trooper Nicky Passero is tasked with retrieving stolen jewelry that includes a gold and diamond bracelet Tony got his wife for Christmas. Meanwhile, even as Tony seems more and more unbalanced in his directives, a battle for the mob control of Chicago rages, and Nicky finds himself beholden to the FBI. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Howard, Catherine Ryan. Run Time. Blackstone. Aug. 2022. NAp. ISBN 9781982694685. $25.99. THRILLER

A last-minute replacement on the set of Final Draft, a psychological horror flick being filmed in remote West Cork, former soap-star Adele Rafferty is grateful for the job. But she begins having second thoughts when eerie events in the script start happening in real life. From the Edgar short-listed Howard, whose recent 56 Days was a New York Times and Washington Post Best Thriller.

Iglesias, Gabino. The Devil Takes You Home. Mulholland: Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780316426916. $28. Downloadable. CRIME/SUPERNATURAL

Desperately in debt owing to his daughter’s illness and with his marriage stumbling, Mario tries to save the situation by taking on a job as hitman. When tragedy descends, he agrees to one more job, but it’s risky: with an old buddy and a cartel-insider named Juanca, he’s set to hijack a cartel’s cash shipment before it reaches Mexico. As they drive along Texan backroads, they run into real violence and the kind of spooky, inexplicable encounters one would expect from a Bram Stoker–nominated author. (He’s got Anthony and Locus nominations, too.) With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Jones, Sandie. The Blame Game. Minotaur: St. Martin’s. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781250836908. $27.99. CD. THRILLER/DOMESTIC

A psychologist specializing in domestic crisis, Naomi is supportive of her client Jacob when he announces his decision to leave his wife. But on the morning of their next session, she finds her door unlocked and his file missing. Is she being paranoid, or is she being targeted for trouble herself? From the author of the Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Book Club pick The Other Woman; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Kirsanow, Peter. W.E.B. Griffin The Devil’s Weapons. Putnam. (Men at War, No. 8). Aug. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780593422281. $28. CD. ACTION & ADVENTURE

With the advent of World War II, Poland has been divided between Germany and the Soviet Union, and both countries are seeking scientist Sebastian Kapsky, who initially worked with leading aerospace engineers Walter Riedel and Werner von Braun but then rejected the Nazi perversion of science. He’s vanished in the Soviet occupation zone, and OSS head Col. “Wild Bill” Donovan sends in top agent Dick Canidy to rescue him. Thriller author Kirsanow (Target Omega), a lawyer and presidential appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, picks up Griffin’s New York Times best-selling series.

Li, Winnie M. Complicit. Emily Bestler: Atria. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781982190828. $27. CD. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

Her Hollywood dreams in ruins, Sarah Lai now works as a lecturer at a lackluster college, but a journalist’s questions about her work with star producer Hugo North elicit a desire to set the record straight about the abuse of power that quashed her career. Soon she realizes that she’s got some owning up to do as well. Li authored the Edgar finalist Dark Chapter; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Moore, Taylor. Firestorm. Morrow. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780063066557. $27.99. lrg. prnt. CRIME

Moore brings back DEA Special Agent Garrett Kohl from his LJ-starred debut Down Range to battle more bad guys threatening his beloved Texas homestead and High Plains. W orking in concert with Russian agents , the energy consortium Talon is using bribery and violence to launch a rip-the-earth mining operation and corral the world’s supply of rare earth minerals. Harsh exchanges between Talon and the Kohls are bad enough, but then Kohl’s friend Kim Manning, a CIA operative, is kidnapped. With a 200,000-copy first printing.

Osborne, Lawrence. On Java Road. Hogarth: Crown. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780593242322. $27. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

After two decades in Hong Kong, ex-pat English journalist Adrian Gyle is just bumping along, bored and disaffected. Then the streets startle into violence as pro-democracy demonstrations gather strength, and the death of a young protester named Rebecca—the girlfriend of one of Adrian’s oldest buddies—compels him to investigate. From the classy writer of multipleNew York Times Notable Books, most recently The Glass Kingdom.

Patterson, James with Richard DiLallo. The Ninth Month. Grand Central. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781538720837. $32; pap. ISBN 9781538753002. $17.99. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Hard-working, hard-partying Emily Atkinson leads the glamorous New York life until she ends up in the hospital owing to her excesses and discovers that she is pregnant. A friendly nurse advises a healthier lifestyle, getting her get back into running and enjoying quiet evenings at home. But when women in her social circle start disappearing, Emily fears that she, too, is being targeted. With a 250,000-copy paperback and 40,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Slaughter, Karin. Girl, Forgotten. Morrow. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780062858115. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CD. THRILLER

Sent to Longbill Beach to protect a judge who’s been receiving death threats, newly minted U.S. Marshal Andrea Oliver has something else on her mind: she hopes to discover who killed Emily Vaughn there on her prom night in 1982. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

Takamura, Kaoru. Lady Joker, Vol. 2. Soho Crime. Aug. 2022. NAp. tr. from Japanese by Allison Markin Powell & Marie Iida. ISBN 9781641290296. $28.95. THRILLER

With this second volume, Takamura wraps up a story based on Japan’s notorious Glico-Morinaga kidnapping in 1984, though the kidnapping here takes place in 1995. The first, multi-best-booked installment introduced a cluster of individuals who trace their health problems (or those of loved ones) to a Hinode Beer factory and plot to kidnap the corporation’s president. The second volume chronicles the kidnapping’s aftermath, revealing high-level business malfeasance and fractures in Japanese society. With Lady Joker, the multi-award-winning Takamura gets her first translation into English.

Winstead, Ashley. The Last Housewife. Sourcebooks Landmark. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9781728229911. $27.99. THRILLER/PSYCHOLOGICAL

In their last year of college, Shay Evans and best friend Laurel escaped the lure of a charismatic man preaching female submission. Years later Laurel is dead, and when Shay enlists the help of a true-crime podcast host to discover why, she uncovers a secret cult of men violently devoted to the concept of male superiority. From the author of the well-received In My Dreams I Hold a Knife.

Woods, Stuart. Untitled. Putnam. (Stone Barrington, No. 62). Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780593540008. $28. lrg. prnt. CD/downloadable. THRILLER

Readers all know Stone Barrington, behind-the-scenes guy for a Manhattan law firm and an expert in high-class intrigue and government intelligence. He’s back, but with no plot details. Woods sold nearly a million copies across frontlist formats in 2020.

Top Thrillers: All in the Family

Fielding, Joy. The Housekeeper. Ballantine. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593158920. $28. SUSPENSE

With her mother succumbing to Parkinson’s disease, successful real estate agent Jodi Bishop believes that her father, however alert and commanding, can’t manage the caretaking. So she hires peppy, sixtyish widow Elyse Woodley as housekeeper. Big mistake. From the New York Times best-selling Fielding, author most recently of Cul-de-Sac. 

Jewell, Lisa. The Family Remains. Atria. Aug. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9781982178895. $28. CD. SUSPENSE

When Rachel Rimmer’s husband, Michael, is found murdered at his home in France, the police blame his gangster connections. But Rachel blames Lucy, Michael’s former wife, the last person to see him alive and living heedlessly in London with her children. Now Rachel is after her. From the No. 1 New York Times best-selling author; with a 250,000-copy first printing.

Johnson, Tyrell. The Lost Kings. Anchor. Aug. 2022. ISBN 9780593466865. $27. Downloadable. SUSPENSE

When 12-year-old Jeanie King’s father appears one night soaked in blood and disappears the next morning with Jeanie’s twin brother, Jeanie is taken by authorities from her Washington State home and separated from childhood crush Maddox. Two decades later, Maddox seeks out a still-troubled Jeanie in England to tell her that he’s found her father. From the author of The Wolves of Winter, a Canadian best seller that got Indie Next, PopSugar, and Vogue.com attention.

Kellerman, Faye. The Hunt. Morrow. (Decker/Lazarus Novels). Aug. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780062910493. $28.99. lrg. prnt. POLICE PROCEDURAL

Even as Det. Peter Dexter discovers a body in the woods, Teresa McLaughlin, the biological mother of Peter and wife Rina’s foster son, Gabe, needs him. She’s fled to Los Angeles during a complicated divorce from a former hitman, whom Peter and Gabe reluctantly call on for help when Teresa is beaten up and her children snatched. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Mosberg, Jason. My Dirty California. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781982178666. $28.99. CD. LITERARY THRILLER

Jody is thrilled when younger brother Marty arrives to visit him and their father in Pennsylvania, then horrified to find them both murdered the next day. His search for their killer sends him to Marty’s Los Angeles home, where a stash of disturbing videos reveals the city’s uglier aspects and leads him to more mysteries—e.g., a documentary filmmaker who thinks humanity is living in a simulation—that might help solve his. With a 40,000-copy first printing; from screenwriter Mosberg.

Oates, Joyce Carol. Babysitter. Knopf. Aug. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780593535172. $30. NOIR

A criminal dubbed Babysitter is abducting and killing children in the affluent suburbs of late 1970s Detroit, and his path soon crosses with two other key characters. Local businessman’s wife Hannah is having an affair with a dashing, enigmatic stranger, while street-hustling Mikey is on a surprising quest for justice. Oates in haute thriller mode, examining the risky plunge into an alternate life within the context of police corruption, deep-seated racism, and a world that facilitates sexual predation.

SF/Fantasy/Dystopian/Horror

Dean, Sunyi. The Book Eaters. Tor. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781250810182. $26.99. FANTASY

Giddings, Megan. The Women Could Fly. Amistad: HarperCollins. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780063116993. $26.99. DYSTOPIAN

Harris, Charlaine. The Serpent in Heaven. Gallery: Saga: S. & S. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781982182496. $27.99. FANTASY

Jones, Stephen Graham. Don’t Fear the Reaper. Saga: Gallery. Aug. 2022. 464p. ISBN 9781982186593. $27.99. HORROR

Kuang, R.F. Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of The Oxford Translators’ Revolution. Harper Voyager. Aug. 2022. 560p. ISBN 9780063021426. $27.99. FANTASY/HISTORICAL

Modesitt, L.E., Jr. Councilor: A Novel in the Grand Illusion. Tor. Aug. 2022. 528p. ISBN 9781250814456. $29.99. FANTASY/GASLAMP

Owen. Lauren. Small Angels. Random. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593242209. $27. GHOSTS

Penelope, Leslye. The Monsters We Defy. Redhook: Hachette. Aug. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780316377911. pap. $17.99. Downloadable. FANTASY/HISTORICAL

Valdes, Valerie. Fault Tolerance. Harper Voyager. Aug. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780063085893. pap. $16.99. SF/SPACE OPERA

Virdi, R.R. The First Binding. Tor. Aug. 2022. 832p. ISBN 9781250796172. $29.99. /EPIC

West, Joma. Face. Tor.com. Aug. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781250810298. $26.99. SF/GENETIC ENGINEERING

In Dean’s big, intriguingly premised debut, Devon is part of a venerable clan belonging to The Book Eaters—instead of food, they munch thrillers, romance, and, when they misbehave, dusty dictionaries—and she’s terrified to learn that her son is born hungering not for paper, printing, and binding but human minds (150,000-copy first printing). In The Women Could Fly, a dystopian work from Rumpus features editor Giddings, the mother of a young Black woman named Josephine is long vanished—was she a witch? Was she murdered?—and if Josephine doesn’t marry soon, she will be forced to enroll in a registry that will effectively blot out her freedom (75,000-copy first printing). In Harris’s The Serpent in Heaven, a sequel to The Russian Cage, Felicia is set upon by her estranged family of Mexican wizards and discovers that she is the most powerful witch of her generation (75,000-copy first printing). In Don’t Fear the Reaper, Jones’s follow-up to the LJ best-booked My Heart Is a Chainsaw, an exonerated Jade Daniels returns home from prison just as convicted serial killer Dark Mill South arrives to avenge 38 Dakota men hanged in 1862 (100,000-copy first printing). In this latest from the multi-award-nominated Kuang, a Chinese boy orphaned in 1828 Canton (now Guangzhou) is brought to London and eventually enters Oxford’s Royal Institute of Translation—called Babel—which doubles as a center for magic and compels him to work in support of Britain’s imperial ambitions in China (125,000-copy first printing). Modesitt continues his newly launched “Grand Illusion” series with Steffan Dekkard joining the Council of Sixty-Six as Councilor—the first to be an Isolate, which makes him impervious to emotional manipulation but could lead to his assassination (100,000-copy first printing). Author of the Slate best-booked Quick, Owens has Kate planning to hold her wedding at a church called Small Angels in the town where she once found shelter with the Gonne sisters, little realizing that they’ve been tasked with keeping a marauding ghost from invading the village—and they’re falling down on the job. Winner of a BCALA Self-Publishing EBook Award for Song of Blood and Stone, one ofTime’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time, Penelope returns with The Monsters We Defy, whose heroine pays off a debt to the Empress ruling the spirit world by agreeing to steal a wealthy woman’s ring in 1925 Washington, DC (25,000-copy first printing). From Valdes, author of the LJ best-booked Chilling Effects, Fault Tolerance brings back Capt. Eva Innocente and the raucous crew of La Sirena Negra to counter an anonymous threat that could lead to the death of billions (50,000-copy first printing). Dragon/Nebula finalist Virdi launches a new series with The First Binding, featuring an Immortal disguised as a storyteller—and he’s here to relate how he unleashed the First Evil on the world (175,000-copy first printing). The MMU Novella Award–winning West goes full length with Face, set in a genetically engineered society where the perfect profile buys fame, wealth, and power but not happiness for Schuyler and Madeleine Burroughs (60,000-copy first printing).

Family, Friends, Lovers

Buckley, Christopher. Has Anyone Seen My Toes? S. & S. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781982198046. $26.99. CD. HUMOROUS

Hunkering down on the South Carolina coast during the pandemic, an aging screenwriter gorges on fast food while working feverishly on a screenplay about a Nazi plan to kidnap FDR and an article on English words of Carthaginian origin, prompting his alarmed doctor to order a battery of brain tests. Meanwhile, why are the Russians so concerned about the local coroner’s race? From the Thurber Prize–winning Buckley; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Casale, Jana. How To Fall Out of Love Madly. Dial. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780593447727. $27. CD. CONTEMPORARY

Cash-strapped Joy and Annie decide to rent their apartment’s extra bedroom to charming, older Theo, and Joy and Theo get kind of snuggly close when Annie then decides to move in with her boyfriend. Soon, however, Theo brings in Celine, the gorgeous girlfriend he’s neglected to mention, and jealous Joy fails to recognize Celine’s own deep pain. Following the attention-getting debut The Girl Who Never Read Noam Chomsky.

DeForest, Anna. A History of Present Illness. Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 176p. ISBN 9780316381062. $25. Downloadable. FAMILY LIFE

In his debut from a neurologist and palliative care physician in New York City, a student doctor works her way through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, birth, death, and the possibility of love, moving in a few steps from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis to a child in severe pain. Meanwhile, DeForest considers who gets good health care, who doesn’t, and what living really means. With a 30,000-copy first printing.

Gamarra, Katalina. Ben and Beatriz. Graydon House: Harlequin. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9781525899959. pap. $15.99. CD. ROMANCE

In this reimagining of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, queer, Latinx Beatriz is sharp of mind and tongue and always there for beloved cousin Hero , which lands her at the Cape Cod mansion of rich, white playboy Ben Montgomery. Ben represents everything Beatriz hates, but he’s beginning to question the values of his conservative family. After they join forces to circumvent a tragedy, Beatriz and Ben reach a sort of rapprochement that could lead to a different kind of love story. With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Gelman, Laurie. Smells Like Tween Spirit. Holt. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781250777591. $26.99. CONTEMPORARY

After Class Mom, You’ve Been Volunteered, and Yoga Pant Nation, what’s next for cheeky, high-spirited Jen Dixon, who’s never fit the suburban mom mold? Now she’s the new Mat Mom of the Pioneer Middle School wrestling team and soon learns that it’s not all fun and games. Middle-school parenting at it most glorious goriest; with a 60,000-copy first printing.

Hariri-Kia, Iman. A Hundred Other Girls. Sourcebooks Landmark. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781728247953. pap. $16.99. COMING OF AGE

Middle Eastern American blogger Noora is doing it all for free, so she’s ecstatic when she lands a job as assistant to the editor in chief of the prestigious Vinyl, a magazine that has shaped her life. Then she learns about corporate cunning and the battle between print and online as she’s deployed by each side against the other. A debut exploring media, the working world, and the difficulties of pursuing one’s dream.

Jean, Emiko. Mika in Real Life. Morrow. Aug. 2022. 384p. ISBN 9780063215689. $27.99. lrg. prnt. CONTEMPORARY

Currently jobless and unable to sustain a relationship, 35-year-old Mika Suzuki is a real trial for her traditional Japanese American parents. Then she receives a call from Penny, the daughter she gave up for adoption 16 years earlier, and the desire to look good in Penny’s eyes leads Mika to small lies, then wilder embellishments, then the determination to succeed. A first adult novel from the author of Tokyo Ever After, a Reese Witherspoon x Hello Sunshine Summer YA Book Club pick; with a 100,000-copy first printing.

Meltzer, Jean. Mr. Perfect on Paper. Mira: Harlequin. Aug. 2022. 288p. ISBN 9780778386872. $28.99; pap. ISBN 9780778386162. $15.99. CD. ROMANTIC COMEDY

A third-generation schadchan, or matchmaker, Dara Rabinowitz runs the world-renowned Jewish dating app J-Mate but hasn’t found love herself; she’s cramped by social anxiety. Then she appears on a TV news show with her beloved bubbe, who reveals Dara’s requirements for the “Perfect Jewish Husband,” and ratings-hungry anchor Chris Steadfast decides that it would help matters to feature Dara’s personal hunt on his show. Following Meltzer’s popular debut, The Matzah Ball; with a 100,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing.

Roby, Kimberla Lawson. Sister Friends Forever. Grand Central. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781538708958. $29. Downloadable. CONTEMPORARY

Serena, Michelle, Kenya, and Lynette grew up in different neighborhoods, but they met at church and have remained friends for decades. They still meet once a month for lunch, even as they reach 40 and have taken different paths in life. A study of friendship from the New York Times best-selling Roby; with a 60,000-copy first printing.

Steel, Danielle. The Challenge. Delacorte. Aug. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9781984821614. $28.99. lrg. prnt. CONTEMPORARY

Best friends living in the foothills of Montana’s Beartooth Mountains, Peter Pollock and Matt Brown join with new-in-town Juliet and some other local kids to scale challenging Granite Peak. They end up trapped on the mountain in a fight for survival as a search-and-rescue mission is launched, and the tension fractures relationships among their parents back home. No need to point out that Steel’s books have sold over a billion copies.

Watkins, LaToya. Perish. Tiny Reparations: Random. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593185919. $27. Downloadable. FAMILY LIFE

After numerous fellowships, Watkins debuts with a saga reuniting a Black Texan family at the deathbed of matriarch Helen Jean Turner. The family’s ongoing traumas are revealed through the stories of four main characters: Julie B., who regrets her wasted opportunities and the iron control of Helen Jean; troubled police officer Alex; Jan, a mother of two who dreams of leaving her troubled hometown behind; and Lydia, whose repeated miscarriages are threatening her marriage. Which bonds can be repaired here, and which are broken forever?

Zusy, Jeannie. The Frederick Sisters Are Living the Dream. Atria. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982185381. $27. CD. FAMILY LIFE

Diabetic and with intellectual disabilities, Maggie’s sister Ginny has landed in the hospital after eating too much Jell-O, and Maggie reasons that she should not be living on her own. So she brings Ginny and her cranky dog to live near her in upstate New York, even as she struggles to deal with parenting, impending divorce, freelancing, dating opportunities, Ginny’s feuding home aides, and Ginny’s own lack of cooperation. Playwright and short story writer Zusy makes her full-length fiction debut; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Historical Fiction

Ackerman, Sara. The Codebreaker's Secret. Mira: Harlequin. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780778386889. $28.99; pap. ISBN 9780778386452. $16.99. CD. HISTORICAL

Burton, Jessie. The House of Fortune. Bloomsbury. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9781635579741. $28. HISTORICAL

Carey, C.J. Widowland. Sourcebooks Landmark. Aug. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781728248448. pap. $16.99. HISTORICAL

Charyn, Jerome. Big Red: A Novel Starring Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. Liveright: Norton. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781324091332. $28. HISTORICAL

Edwards, Shaunna J. & Alyson Richman. The Thread Collectors. Graydon House: Harlequin. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781525804823. $28.99; pap. ISBN 9781525899782. $16.99. HISTORICAL

Sivak, Zoe. Mademoiselle Revolution. Berkley. Aug. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9780593336038. $27. lrg. prnt. Downloadable. HISTORICAL

In 1943 Honolulu, cryptanalysist Isabel Cooper is concerned when the only other female codebreaker at Station Hypo goes missing; perhaps The Codebreaker’s Secret is uncovered in 1965 when a rookie reporter and a crusty old-timer discover a skeleton near the ever-so-fancy Mauna Kea Beach Hotel in Ackerman's (75,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover first printing). In Burton's The House of Fortune, a companion to the New York Times best-selling The Miniaturist, 18-year-old Thea Brandt hides out in 1700s Amsterdam’s playhouses from her family’s money quarrels, refusal to discuss her mother’s death, and fear of the mysterious, soul-capturing Miniaturist (200,000-copy first printing). In Carey's 1950s Britain, ruled by a triumphant Reich that ranks women from the gorgeous (and advantaged) Gelis to those past childbearing good for domestic drudgery and living in Widowland, a Geli named Rose Ransom gets involved with subversion against the government. Narrated by a small-potatoes lesbian gossip columnist, Charyn’s Big Red reimagines the entwined careers of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles. With The Thread Collectors, debuter Edwards joins the USA TODAY best-selling Richman in a story paralleling New Orleans–based Black woman Stella, who embroiders intricate maps for enslaved men intending to flee and join the Union army, with New York–based white, Jewish, abolitionist Lily, who rolls bandages for Union soldiers and wants to join her husband fighting in Louisiana (125,000-copy paperback and 10,000-copy hardcover). In debuter Sivak’s Mademoiselle Revolution, Sylvie de Rosiers, the biracial daughter of a rich white planter and an enslaved Black woman, flees her privileged life in Haiti during the revolution and ends up in Paris amid another revolution, befriending Robespierre and his strong-willed mistress, Cornélie.

Nonfiction

Current Issues

Ackerman, Elliot. The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan. Penguin Pr. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593492048. $22. POLITICS/MEMOIR

A former U.S. Marine and CIA paramilitary officer in Afghanistan and Iraq, Ackerman deepened our understanding of war with three novels, including the National Book Award–nominated Dark at the Crossing, and two Andrew Carnegie long-listed works of nonfiction. Here he documents the end of the longest war in U.S. history as he explains how he converged on the Kabul airport with friends, journalists, veterans, and former colleagues to help negotiate the safe evacuation of hundreds of Afghan nationals who had assisted U.S. military and intelligence communities. What results is a view of 20 years’ worth of conflict, encompassed in a week and highlighting the commitment of those who fought.

Jin, Keyu. The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism. Viking. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781984878281. $28. ECONOMICS

A London School of Economics professor and adviser to the China Banking Regulatory Commission, born in China and U.S.-educated Jin offers a far-reaching picture of how China became a world financial power, focusing on the radical break from mostly state-owned enterprises that led to the current entrepreneur-driven economy. She also looks to the future as she presents China as an economic model for the world.

Macy, Beth. Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis. Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9780316430227. $30. PHARMACEUTICALS

In this follow-up to her New York Times best-selling Dopesick, the George Mason Award–winning Macy investigates the personal cost of opioid addiction to individuals and families across the United States, arguing that they have been left to manage on their own as major forces—big pharma, political and moneyed interests, and race and class structure—shape their lives. Important reading: with no consensus on the best treatment for opioid addiction and a failure to address underlying causes, deaths from drug overdose continue to haunt the country and in fact have escalated since the beginning of the pandemic. A 100,000-copy first printing.

Merchant, Brian. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech . Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780316487740. $30. TECHNOLOGY

Many people today worry that technology threatens their way of life and very livelihoods—just as the Luddites did in early 1800s England, leading them to smash machinery in numerous factory raids challenging the personal costs of the Industrial Revolution. Wired/Vice contributor Merchant, whose The One Device: The Secret History of the iPhone was a USA TODAY best seller and Financial Times Business Book of the Year finalist, revisits the Luddite rebellion with an eye to discovering what it can tell us about our tech worries today.

Milbank, Dana. The Destructionists: The Twenty-Five-Year Crack-Up of the Republican Party. Doubleday. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780385548137. $30. Downloadable. POLITICAL SCIENCE

Author of the Washington Post’s widely read “Washington Sketch” column, Milbank aims to clobber the political shenanigans of all comers. Here he focuses on the Republican Party, drawing a straight line from Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America to the January 6, 2021, insurrection and decrying the white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, and authoritarians swamping the party of Lincoln.

Morris, G. Elliott. Strength in Numbers: How Polls Work and Why We Need Them. Norton. Jul. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780393866971. $28.95. POLITICAL SCIENCE/POLLS

Recently, polls have come under fire as disruptive or worse, but Morris, a data journalist for the Economist, says differently. Here he provides a history of polls, explains how they can be misused, and argues that their potential impact is unappreciated. In the end, Morris sees polls as a crucial component of democracy, giving a direct voice to the people. It’s not just numbers.

Quart, Alissa. Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream. Ecco. Aug. 2022. 192p. ISBN 9780063028005. $27.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE

Executive director at the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and an Emmy Award–winning journalist whose books include the recent Squeezed, Quart argues that the U.S. laser-sharp fixation on relentlessly, self-reliantly going it alone damages both individuals and society. It hampers initiatives aimed at alleviating hardship and inequality and shifts responsibility to those with the least wherewithal to change their circumstances. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Thrasher, Steven W. The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. Celadon: Macmillan. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250796639. $29.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE/DISEASE

The inaugural Daniel H. Renberg chair at Northwestern University, the world’s first journalism professorship focusing on LGBTQ research, Thrasher has long studied the racialization and policing of HIV. Here he transfers that understanding to a new realm, showing that COVID-19 does not affect all people equally. The better-off can often work safely from home, with necessities delivered, but others are less fortunate. Those more directly in the virus's sights include essential workers, with occupations ranging from healthcare to grocery clerking to transportation; those in more crowded communities; those without health insurance or jobs; older people viewed as expendable; and people with disabilities that put them at special risk. Members of this “viral underclass” are more likely to be infected and less likely to survive, which ultimately reveals deep fractures in our society. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

The Environment

Bittle, Jake. The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982178253. $28.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE/DISASTER

With climate change prompting displacement worldwide, journalist Bittle pulls in his focus, warning us that millions in the United States will be forced to migrate internally in the next 50 years. They will be burned out of California, flooded out of Louisiana and North Carolina, compelled to flee the desiccated cotton fields of Arizona, and more. Indeed, the federal government has already sponsored the relocation of tens of thousands of families from flood zones, with tens of thousands more relocating on their own owing to natural disaster. The migration has begun; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

King, Dean. Guardians of the Valley: John Muir and the Friendship That Saved Yosemite. Scribner. Aug. 2022. 432p. ISBN 9781982144463. $30. NATURE/CONSERVATION

Providing context for today’s conservation efforts, King ( Skeletons on the Zahara) relates what happened when environmentalist John Muir and his longtime editor, Robert Underwood Johnson, left 1889 San Francisco for Yosemite Valley. Muir was devastated by the depredations wrought there by mining, tourism, and logging, but Johnson persuaded him that they had to fight back. The result: the creation of Yosemite National Park and the launching of the U.S. environmental movement. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

McDonald, Bob. What’s the Alternative?: A Guide to Our Green Energy Future. Viking. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780735241947. $22.95. SCIENCE

With whales cavorting in Vancouver’s harbors and mountain goats visiting a Welsh town, pandemic lockdown revealed green possibilities we thought were lost. But how can they be sustained? Award-winning CBC science reporter McDonald (the host of Quirks & Quarks)  goes beyond the long-available wind, solar, and geothermal technologies to show us alternative power sources like desk-sized nuclear reactors, generators run by tides, and space-based satellites that convert sunlight into microwaves that are then sped earthward. Green technology is one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy, so here’s a chance to catch up.

Ostrander, Madeline. At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth. Holt. Aug. 2022. 352p. ISBN 9781250620514. $28.99. SCIENCE/GLOBAL WARMING

Last summer, climate change was made real as one in three people in the United States faced some kind of weather disaster, and environmental journalist Ostrander explores such close-to-home changes with personal stories. A firefighter and a mayor struggle to rebuild their devastated Pacific Northwest community; a historic preservationist seeks to save St. Augustine, FL, from rising seas; an urban farmer hopes to reset the future of a California town visited by fossil-fuel disasters; and an Alaska Native community moves to higher ground as their village site is washed away. With a 40,000-copy first printing.

Savage, Kathryn. Groundglass. Coffee House: Consortium. Aug. 2022. 128p. ISBN 9781566896405. pap. $16.95. MEMOIR/GRIEF

Poet/essayist Savage grew up near a US Superfund site—one of thousands of sites contaminated by hazardous substances and slated by the U.S. government for clean-up. Currently, she lives atop Minnesota’s most polluted aquifer. Here she mourns the devastation to land, groundwater, communities, and people by environmental pollution while contemplating raising a young son as her father died of cancer.

Vince, Gaia. Nomad Century: How Climate Migration Will Reshape Our World. Flatiron: Macmillan. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250821614. $28.99. SCIENCE

Global migration has doubled in the past decade, with billions set to be displaced in the coming decades, and a large reason is climate change bringing fire, drought, violent storms, and disappearing shorelines in its wake. Award-winning science journalist Vince argues that we aren’t yet acknowledging how and how much climate change will reconfigure human geography, and here she sets out to show us. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Rethinking Life and Work

Andrews-Dyer, Helena. The Mamas: What I Learned About Kids, Class, and Race from Moms Not Like Me. Crown. Aug. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780593240311. $27. MEMOIR/PARENTING

Forte, Tiago. Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method To Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Atria. Aug. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9781982167387. $28. CD. SELF-HELP

Mariani, Mike. What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us: Who We Become After Tragedy and Trauma. Ballantine. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780593236949. $28.99. PSYCHOLOGY

O’Brady, Colin. The 12-Hour Walk: Invest One Day, Unlock Your Best Life. Scribner. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781982133160. $26.99. CD. SELF-HELP

Pierre-Bravo, Daniela. The Other: How To Own Your Power at Work as a Woman of Color. Legacy Lit: Hachette. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780306925443. $29. Downloadable. SELF-HELP

In The Mamas, Andrews-Dyer—a senior culture writer at the Washington Post and author of Bitch Is the New Black —relates her experiences as a Black mother in a predominantly white mommy group and asks whether Black and white mothers can truly be not just mom mates but real friends. Productivity expert Forte explains that as we deal with all the information swamping us, we can think, work, and live better by Building a Second Brain (75,000-copy first printing). Journalist Mariani draws on personal experience with chronic fatigue syndrome to show how people deal with life disruptions by creating new identities in What Doesn’t Kill Us Makes Us. Author of the New York Times best-selling The Impossible First and a multi-record-holding explorer, O’Brady explains how to push beyond self-imposed limits and become a better you in The 12-Hour Walk (125,000-copy first printing). Well connected in both English- and Spanish-language media, MSNBC reporter forMorning Joe Pierre-Bravo can identify with feeling like The Other in business meetings, and she gives women of color and children of immigrants advice on overcoming that head-down feeling (50,000-copy first printing).

History & Biography

Buck, Rinker. Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781501106378. $32.50. CD/downloadable. HISTORY

In this follow-up to the New York Times best-selling The Oregon Trail, Buck relates building a wooden flatboat like those used in the early 1800s and sailing down the Mississippi River to New Orleans, aiming to relive the initial expansion of the United States by white settlers who included farmers, merchants, and hopeful pioneers. History and adventure: lots of danger dodging cargo barges and rescuing a first mate swept overboard. With a 250,000-copy first printing.

English, T.J. Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz and the Underworld. Morrow. Aug. 2022. 448p. ISBN 9780063031418. $29.99. HISTORY/CRIME

Author of the New York Times best-selling Havana Nocturne, journalist/screenwriter English examines the connection between jazz and organized crime in the first half of the 20th century. With its clubs, the mob afforded the likes of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday performance opportunities, but as English highlights, these clubs replicated the plantation system, with white men holding power over Black musicians. With a 75,000-copy first printing.

Maraniss, David. Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 608p. ISBN 9781476748412. $29.99. CD. BIOGRAPHY/SPORTS

Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Maraniss limns the life of stellar athlete Jim Thorpe, who won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, made the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw’s New York Giants. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he also faced assimilationist cant ("Kill the Indian, Save the Man”) and racism (his medals were unfairly rescinded because he had played minor league baseball), and he struggled with alcohol, money problems, and broken marriages. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Musemeche, Catherine. Lethal Tides: Mary Sears and the Marine Scientists Who Helped Win World War II. Morrow. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780062991690. $28.99. HISTORY

During World War II, the U.S. Navy hoped to reach Japan by hopscotching across the Pacific Ocean via its numerous islands but knew little about the Pacific’s tides, currents, coral reefs, and ocean-floor topography. That’s where marine biologist Mary Sears came in. Sears and her team gathered information and made predictions that facilitated the navy’s actions and particularly the all-important amphibious landings. From pediatric surgeon Musemeche; with a 50,000-copy first printing.

Nevala-Lee, Alec. Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller. Dey Street: Morrow. Aug. 2022. 640p. ISBN 9780062947222. $32.50. BIOGRAPHY

Author of the Hugo/Locus finalist Astounding, a group biography of John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard that was also best-booked by the Economist, Nevala-Lee here homes in on inventor/futurist Buckminster Fuller. The narrative covers Fuller’s career; his sometimes contentious relationships with students, colleagues, and leading cultural figures; his enormous influence; and the cost for him of his single-mindedness. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

Patterson, James & Chris Mooney. Diana, William & Harry. Little, Brown. Aug. 2022. 400p. ISBN 9780759554221. $31. CD/downloadable. BIOGRAPHY

Blockbuster thriller author Patterson and Edgar finalist Mooney join forces to tell a different kind of story: that of Princess Diana and her commitment to raising her sons William and Harry. With a 300,000-copy first printing.

Snyder, Brad. Democratic Justice: Felix Frankfurter, the Supreme Court, and the Making of the Liberal Establishment. Norton. Aug. 2022. 1056p. ISBN 9781324004875. $45. BIOGRAPHY

A professor of constitutional law and 20th-century U.S. legal history at Georgetown University Law Center, Snyder aims to provide a new and in-depth look at Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, the progressive lawyer who became a champion of judicial self-restraint once he was named to the Court. At over 1,000 pages, a hefty biography.

Spector, Ronald H. A Continent Erupts: Decolonization, Civil War, and Massacre in Postwar Asia, 1945–1955. Norton. Aug. 2022. 608p. ISBN 9780393254655. $35. HISTORY

A Samuel Eliot Morison Prize–winning military historian, Spector offers a comprehensive look at the fighting that unfurled from China, Indonesia, and Vietnam to Korea and Malaya after World War II ended. Significantly, almost all the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia once colonized or conquered by European powers or Japan had achieved independence within a decade, and Spector aims to give readers a clearer understanding of how their stories connect.

Stone, Daniel. Sinkable: Obsession, the Deep Sea, and the Shipwreck of the Titanic. Dutton. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9780593329375. $28. Downloadable. HISTORY

Another book on the Titanic? It’s story is much told, but though former National Geographic staffer Stone explains why and how the ship cracked apart, he turns much of his attention to its afterlife: the search efforts that spanned seven decades (it was found only in 1985), the rust and decomposition that will obliterate it within decades, and what lying two miles deep on the ocean floor really means. He also wants to explain why so many people—himself included—are obsessed the ship.

Young, Lauren. Hitler’s Girl: The British Aristocracy and the Third Reich on the Eve of WWII. Harper. Aug. 2022. 240p. ISBN 9780062936738. $29.99. HISTORY

Young draws on recently declassified intelligence files to rattle our nerves by showing just how close Great Britain came to trading in democracy for authoritarianism in the 1930s. She reveals a British aristocracy more deeply steeped in Nazi sympathies than ever acknowledged, with some members actively pursuing a pro-German agenda, and argues that Germany depended on this implicit support to conquer the country. Sober reading as authoritarianism flares today; with a 75,000-copy first printing.

Arts & Literature

Alsadir, Nuar. Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation. Graywolf. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781644450932. pap. $17. LITERATURE

Ball, Jesse. Autoportrait. Catapult. Aug. 2022. 144p. ISBN 9781646221387. $20. LITERATURE

Braude, Mark. Kiki Man Ray : Art, Love, and Rivalry in 1920s Paris. Norton. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9781324006015. $30. BIOGRAPHY/ART

Crawford, Robert. Eliot After “The Waste Land.” Farrar. Aug. 2022. 608p. ISBN 9780374279462. $35. BIOGRAPHY/LITERATURE

Kenan, Randall. Black Folk Could Fly: Selected Writings by Randall Kenan. Norton. Aug. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780393882162. $27.95. LITERATURE

Lowell, Robert. Memoirs. Farrar. Aug. 2022. 464p. ed. by Steven Gould Axelrod & Grzegorz Kosc. ISBN 9780374258924. $35. LITERATURE

Mayes, Frances. A Place in the World: Finding the Meaning of Home. Crown. Aug. 2022. 304p. ISBN 9780593443330. $28. LITERATURE/TRAVEL

Morris, Heather. Listening Well: Bringing Stories of Hope to Life. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781250276919. $29.99. LITERATURE

Rodgers, Mary & Jesse Green. Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers. Farrar. Aug. 2022. 480p. ISBN 9780374298623. $30. MUSIC/MEMOIR

Wohl, Alice Sedgwick. As It Turns Out: Thinking About Edie and Andy. Farrar. Aug. 2022. 272p. ISBN 9780374604684. $28. BIOGRAPHY/PERFORMING ARTS

With Animal Joy, poet/psychoanalyst Alsadir, a National Book Critics Circle finalist for the collection Fourth Person Singular, gets serious about studying the importance of laughter (30,000-copy first printing). Long-listed for the National Book Award and a Granta Best of Young American Novelists, Ball was inspired by French writer/artist Édouard Levé’s memoir (written at age 39) to offer his own frank Autoportrait in his 39th year. In 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse was a model, muse, and friend to cultural greats and an artist, cabaret star, and driving force in her own right, as Braude (The Invisible Emperor) highlights in Kiki Man Ray. With Eliot After “The Waste Land,” award-winning scholar/poet Crawford follows up his highly regarded Young Eliot (10,000-copy first printing). Standing as both memoir and memorial, Black Folk Could Fly is a first selection of personal nonfiction from the late author/mentor Kenan, whose award-winning works powerfully communicate his experience of being Black, gay, and Southern. Lowell’s Memoirs collects the complete autobiographical prose of the great poet, including unpublished early work (10,000-copy first printing). What is home but A Place in the World, and Tuscany celebrant Mayes’s new book explores what home really means in all its variations. As Morris explains in her first book of nonfiction, she came to the writing career launched with the multi-million-copy best-selling The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Listening Well (50,000-copy first printing). Composer of the Tony-nominated musical Once Upon a Mattress, author of the novel Freaky Friday and the follow-up screenplay, and chair of the Juilliard School, Rodgers has a lot more to discuss in Shy than being the daughter of Richard Rodgers (25,000-copy first printing). Addressed to Wohl’s brother Bobby, who died in 1965, As It Turns Out reconstructs the life of their sister, the iconic actress/model Edie Sedgwick made famous by Andy Warhol (30,000-copy first printing).

Memoir

Leahy, Patrick. The Road Taken: A Memoir. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982157357. $30. CD.  MEMOIR/POLITICS

Lewis, Jenifer. Walking in My Joy: In These Streets. Amistad: HarperCollins. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780063079656. $28.99. lrg. prnt. MEMOIR

Lowry, Beverly. Deer Creek Drive: A Reckoning of Memory and Murder in the Mississippi Delta. Knopf. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780525657231. $29. Downloadable. MEMOIR/CRIME

McCurdy, Jennette. I’m Glad My Mom Died. S. & S. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9781982185824. $27.99. MEMOIR/PERFORMING ARTS

Nietfeld, Emi. Acceptance: A Memoir. Penguin Pr. Aug. 2022. 368p. ISBN 9780593489475. $27 Downloadable. MEMOIR

Tillman, Lynne. Mothercare: On Obligation, Love, Death, and Ambivalence. Catapult. Aug. 2022. 160p. ISBN 9781593767174. $23. MEMOIR

Currently president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, Leahy gives us a sweeping view of U.S. politics as he tells his story as the country’s longest-serving senator in The Road Taken (75,000-copy first printing). A leading light in film and television, also featured in four Broadway shows, Lewis (The Mother of Black Hollywood) recounts personal experiences encapsulating the vagaries of modern life while highlighting what she’s learned about Walking in My Joy (125,00-copy first printing). In Deer Creek Drive, AWP Award–winning novelist/memoirist Lowry recalls the particularly vicious 1948 murder of society matron Idella Thompson near where she grew up in the solidly Jim Crow Mississippi Delta, with neighbors protesting the conviction of Thompson’s daughter even though her claims about a fleeing Black man proved spurious. Proclaiming I’m Glad My Mom Died, actor/director McCurdy relates what it was like to be a child star (iCarly) wrestling with an eating disorder, addiction, and a controlling and aggressively ambitious mother (75,000-copy first printing). In a memoir rejecting the standard resilience trope, Nietfeld chronicles traversing a childhood encompassing a mother who put her on antipsychotics, icy foster care, Adderall addiction, and homelessness to arrive at Harvard, Big Tech, and Acceptance—crucially, of herself. Award-winning critic/novelist Tillman relates a life taken over by Mothercare after her mother was diagnosed with Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus (after several wrong assumptions), leading to seven surgeries, memory loss, and total dependence on her daughters.

Education and Beyond

Bunch, Will. After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How To Fix It. Morrow. Aug. 2022. 320p. ISBN 9780063076990. $28.99. SOCIAL SCIENCE/ECONOMIC DISPARITY

Harvey, Dr. William R. Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ Guide to Excellence. Amistad: HarperCollins. Aug. 2022. 256p. ISBN 9780062863287. pap. $16.99. PERSONAL GROWTH

Liang, Belle & Timothy Klein. How To Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career, and Beyond. St. Martin’s. Aug. 2022. 336p. ISBN 9781250273147. $29. PSYCHOLOGY/ADOLESCENT

Arguing that the United States is essentially split between those who are educated and those who are not, which makes access to college today’s most crucial issue, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bunch investigates everything that’s wrong with U.S. higher education in After the Ivory Tower Falls and proposes how to build it better (50,000-copy first printing). In Historically Black Colleges and Universities’ Guide to Excellence, President Harvey of Hampton University—one of 107 HBCUs in the United States—explains that HBCU graduates have achieved success through a blend of moral values, personal grown, and community responsibility that has allowed them to navigate the white world while retaining their core Blackness. Award-winning educators Liang and Klein look at the newest generation of stressed adolescents, whose physical and mental burnout will carry through college right into their first jobs, to show how they can shut out the noise and shift from performance to purpose in How To Navigate Life (50,000-copy first printing).