Here are the best new books to read in August 2022

Ihe month of August represents the last delicious dregs of summer, good books will help you savor it. Mike in real life packs in more than enough laugh-out-loud relativity and soulful romance to satisfy those looking for one last read on the beach. Walk to the House of Nobility, A card for the missingand afterlife all readers grounded in the specificity of the story – a black matriarchal family tree, China during and after the Cultural Revolution, and East Africa in the midst of German colonization – fixing us in pockets of time. And the folk magic of witches provides an enchanting distraction from the end of the upcoming season.

Here, the best novelties to read in August.

The Last White ManMohsin Hamid (August 2)

Anders, a young white man, wakes up one morning to find that he has turned “a deep, unmistakable brown”. At first, he shares the discovery only with Oona, his old friend turned new lover, but soon the whole town begins to transition. Anders and Oona’s parents struggle with the seemingly inevitable change, but once the last titular white man – Anders’ father – dies, people begin to forget that whiteness ever existed. Author Mohsin Hamid told Oprah Daily that all of his characters experience the loss of whiteness in different ways, and a “deep destabilization” emerges. “There is a basic human desire to be away from destabilization,” Hamid said. “But also a vital need to take an imaginary journey there.”

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Mike in real lifeEmiko Jean (August 2)

Mika Suzuki doesn’t have his life together. The 35-year-old just lost her last dead-end job, her last relationship caught fire and she doesn’t get along with her parents. Enter: Penny Calvin, the daughter Mika gave up for adoption 16 years ago. When Penny contacts her out of the blue, Mika is desperate to impress her, so she weaves a precarious web of white lies involving an art gallery and a handsome boyfriend. Once this web has unfolded, Mika must figure out if she can reconnect with the curious and headstrong Penny and find herself in the process.

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Walk to the House of NobilityAlora Young (August 2)

At just 19 years old, Alora Young, a former Southern Youth Poet Laureate, wrote her first lyric book in verse that traces the history of her matrilineal family through time. It begins with Amy, the first of her ancestors to arrive in Tennessee; next is Gentry, Young’s great-grandmother who was married at 14; and finally, there’s Young’s own mother, a teenage beauty queen. “The only way to tell this story is through poetry,” Young writes, “because black youth are eternally rhythmic, Negro hymns whispered by Amy Coleman as she bore her slaver’s child to the beat of the gospel my mother sang at age fifteen when she was hailed as a child prodigy.

Buy now: Walk to the House of Nobility about Bookstore | Amazon

A card for the missingBelinda Huijuan Tang (August 9)

In Belinda Huijuan Tang’s gripping debut novel, we meet Tang Yitian, who emigrated to the United States from China two decades ago to pursue higher education. But when Yitian receives a frantic phone call from his mother informing him that his estranged father is missing, he rushes back to his rural hometown. There he reconnects with Tian Hanwen, a childhood friend and former lover who once shared his interest in learning. As the pair embark on a quest to find out what happened to Yitian’s father, Yitian must also deal with family tension, his sense of identity, and sense of home.

Buy now: A card for the missing about Bookstore | Amazon

I’m glad my mother diedJennette McCurdy (August 9)

Jennette McCurdy had her first acting audition when she was 6 years old. For 15 years, her mother restricted her calorie intake, criticized her appearance, and monitored her journals, emails, income, and even her showers. Now the iCarly star penned a dark and funny memoir about the strained relationship, reflecting on her late mother’s behaviors with empathy and insight. After recovering from bulimia and alcohol abuse, quitting acting and going to therapy, McCurdy tells a story of healing.

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Elizabeth FinchJulian Barnes (August 16)

Neil is captivated by Professor Elizabeth Finch, the teacher of “Culture and Civilization”, a course not for students but for adults of all ages. This is no ordinary class, and Finch is no ordinary teacher either; author Julian Barnes writes her as singular and lively, reserved but authoritative. The student and professor become friends, and after Finch’s death, Neil takes it upon himself to become his history professor’s historian.

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Witches: A NovelBrenda Lopez, translation by Heather Cleary (August 16)

Zoe, a journalist from Mexico City, is exhausted from endless assignments on rape and femicide. Nonetheless, she agrees to investigate Paloma, a murdered traditional healer, or curandera, from the mountain village of San Felipe. In San Felipe, Zoe meets Feliciana, another curandera, who also happens to be Paloma’s cousin. Thanks to Feliciana, Zoe begins to unearth the story of the cousins’ struggle to establish themselves as curanderas in a patriarchal family.

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Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose CrisisBeth Macy (August 16)

Beth Macy, the acclaimed author of Dope, follows his 2018 book with another deeply reported account of the dark forces at play behind America’s opioid crisis, this time focusing on the everyday people who are fighting against them. As addiction rates have soared since the start of the pandemic, harm reduction specialists, activists and frontline workers are working against the stigma and towards real and lasting change.

Buy now: Raising of Lazarus about Bookstore | Amazon

afterlife, Abdulrazak Gurnah (August 23)

Abdulrazak Gurnah, winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature, weaves the stories of three East Africans – Ilyas, Afiya and Hamza – into a rich and detailed tapestry. Ilyas was kidnapped by the German colonial army as a child. After returning home to find his sister, Afiya, he leaves again to join the Schutztruppe, a group of African mercenaries who serve the German Empire. Hamza had also joined the Germans as a mercenary, but quickly realizes his mistake and returns from the war to meet – and fall in love with – Afiya. These three distinct histories intertwine to probe the violence of European colonialism.

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Babel: or the necessity of violence: an obscure history of the Oxford translators’ revolution, RF Kuang (August 23)

In The poppy war The latest work by author RF Kuang, a work of the black academy, it chronicles the rise of an orphan Chinese student at Babel, the prestigious (and fictional) Royal Institute of Translation at the University of Oxford. The protagonist dropped his first name and dubbed himself Robin Swift at the insistence of Professor Richard Lovell, an Oxford sinologist. This is not the only strange occurrence at the institute. Against a backdrop of magic and lore, Robin slowly begins to realize that serving Babel can also mean abandoning one’s homeland.

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No one cared what happened to Carlotta, James Hannaham (August 30)

The 4th of July looks very different for Carlotta this year – after two decades in prison, where she transitioned and suffered abuse from fellow inmates and correctional officers, she is finally out and ready to go home. But the house has changed in her absence, and the bold, brash, and hilariously biting protagonist seeks to reconcile with the Fort Greene, Brooklyn she left behind. Hannaham’s novel drew comparisons with Ulysses with its style, its specificity and its instant framing.

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Carrie Soto is back, Taylor Jenkins Reid (August 30)

In Taylor Jenkins Reid’s latest novel, retired tennis legend Carrie Soto aims to make a triumphant return to the sport she changed forever, winning 20 Grand Slam singles titles and earning the media nickname of “the battle axe” for his brutal playstyle and icy demeanor. . A new competitor has come to threaten her record, so Carrie, now 37, returns to the court – alongside her lifelong father and coach Javier – to defend her record and her legacy.

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