Top 9 Books to Read This August

This august, explore the inner workings of a family that changed both Hollywood and Washington forever, delve into a dual biography of one of Hollywood’s most famous couples, devour a page-turner about a group of 19th-century explorers, savour a book about the evil power of money, or rip through an oral history of England’s longest-reigning royal.


Mother In the Dark

Kayla Maiuri

Growing up in working class Boston in an Italian American family, Anna’s childhood was sparse but comfortable—filled with homemade pasta sauce and a close-knit neighborhood. Anna and her sisters are devoted to their mother, orbiting her like the sun, trying to keep up with her loving but mercurial nature as she bounces between tenderness and bitterness.
 
When their father gets a new job outside the city, the family is tossed unceremoniously into a middle-class suburban existence. Anna’s mother is suddenly adrift, and the darkness lurking inside her expands until it threatens to explode.

Release Date: August 9, 2022


When We Were Bright and Beautiful

Jillian Medoff

Cassie Quinn may only be twenty-three, but she knows a few things. One: money can’t buy happiness, but it’s certainly better to have it. Two: family matters most. Three: her younger brother Billy is not a rapist.

When Billy, a junior at Princeton, is arrested for assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Cassie races home to Manhattan to join forces with her big brother Nate and their parents, Lawrence and Eleanor. The Quinns scramble to hire the best legal minds money can buy, but Billy fits the all-too-familiar sex-offender profile.

Release Date: August 2, 2022


Carrie Soto Is Back

Taylor Jenkins Reid

Carrie Soto is fierce, and her determination to win at any cost has not made her popular. But by the time she retires from tennis, she is the best player the world has ever seen. She has shattered every record and claimed twenty Grand Slam titles. And if you ask Carrie, she is entitled to every one. She sacrificed nearly everything to become the best, with her father, Javier, as her coach. A former champion himself, Javier has trained her since the age of two. But six years after her retirement, Carrie finds herself sitting in the stands of the 1994 US Open, watching her record be taken from her by a brutal, stunning player named Nicki Chan.

Release Date: August 30, 2022


The Last White Man

Mohsin Hamid

One morning, a man wakes up to find himself transformed. Overnight, Anders’s skin has turned dark, and the reflection in the mirror seems a stranger to him. At first he shares his secret only with Oona, an old friend turned new lover. Soon, reports of similar events begin to surface. Across the land, people are awakening in new incarnations, uncertain how their neighbors, friends, and family will greet them.Some see the transformations as the long-dreaded overturning of the established order that must be resisted to a bitter end. In many, like Anders’s father and Oona’s mother, a sense of profound loss and unease wars with profound love.

Release Date: August 2, 2022


The Rabbit Hutch

Tess Gunty

The automobile industry has abandoned Vacca Vale, Indiana, leaving the residents behind, too. In a run-down apartment building on the edge of town, commonly known as the Rabbit Hutch, a number of people now reside quietly, looking for ways to live in a dying city. Apartment C2 is lonely and detached. C6 is aging and stuck. C8 harbors an extraordinary fear. But C4 is of particular interest.
 
Here live four teenagers who have recently aged out of the state foster-care system: three boys and one girl, Blandine, who The Rabbit Hutch centers around.

Release Date: August 2, 2022


Kiki Man Ray

Mark Braude

In freewheeling 1920s Paris, Kiki de Montparnasse captivated as a nightclub performer, sold out gallery showings of her paintings, starred in Surrealist films, and shared drinks and ideas with the likes of Jean Cocteau and Marcel Duchamp. Her best-selling memoir—featuring an introduction by Ernest Hemingway—made front-page news in France and was immediately banned in America. All before she turned thirty.

Kiki was once the symbol of bohemian Paris. But if she is remembered today, it is only for posing for several now-celebrated male artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder.

Release Date: August 9, 2022


A Waiter in Paris

Edward Chisholm

A waiter’s job is to deceive you. They want you to believe in a luxurious calm because on the other side of that door . . . is hell.

Edward Chisholm’s spellbinding memoir of his time as a Parisian waiter takes you beneath the surface of one of the most iconic cities in the world—and right into its glorious underbelly.

He inhabits a world of inhuman hours, snatched sleep and dive bars; scraping by on coffee, bread and cigarettes, often under sadistic managers, with a wage so low you’re fighting your colleagues for tips.

Release Date: August 9, 2022


The Other

Daniela Pierre-Bravo

You know that feeling of not belonging when you have so much to say at a work meeting? For women of color and children of immigrants, being the “the other” at work fuels an unyielding need to fit in.

This false feeling of inadequacy in traditional workplaces causes you to adapt and develop “a keep your head down” or “stay in your lane” mentality in order to hold on to the job you’ve worked so hard to attain. Sometimes that “yes” girl mentality can get you a seat at the table, but can lead to being overwhelmed, overworked, and overlooked when bigger roles come around.

Release Date: August 23, 2022


The Music Never Stops

Peter Shapiro

Peter Shapiro is the best known and most influential concert promoter of his generation. He owned the legendary Wetlands in Tribeca and has gone on to much bigger things, including Brooklyn Bowl (NYC, Las Vegas, Philadelphia, and Nashville), the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, producing U2 3D, and promoting the Grateful Dead’s fiftieth-anniversary tour (“Fare Thee Well”) featuring the Core Four and Trey Anastasio . . . and so much more.

In The Music Never Stops, Shapiro shares the inside story of how he became a power-house in the music industry.

Release Date: August 2, 2022


Exit mobile version