12 Books We’re Excited to Read in August 2024

As summer comes to a close, we recommend more books to enjoy before time at the beach is up, including near-death realizations, dystopian futures, and epistolary novels.

Yr Dead, Sam Sax (August 6)

Queer poet Sam Sax’s debut novel, Yr Dead, takes place within the blink of an eye. Ezra has just lit themselves on fire, and before the moment they die, they get flashes of religion, otherworldliness, Jewish diaspora, everyone they’ve ever loved and whoever loved them, and the pains and joys that make up their whole being. Stylistically inventive and provocative, Sax expands on their poetry with a blazing novel.

Unspeakable Home, Ismet Prcic (August 6)

Can trauma be funny? Ismet Prcic, with his new novel Unspeakable Home, seems to think so — its narrator, Izzy, divulges his history growing up in the midst of the Bosnian war, eventually escaping to Los Angeles to become a successful fiction writer. Part autobiography, part imagined tale, part crazed fan letters to comedian Bill Burr, Izzy details his family’s story, including meeting his ‘Beloved,’ who leaves him because of his alcoholism. Brutally honest and experimental, Izzy’s story unfolds like a car crash you can’t look away from.

Hum, Helen Phillips (August 6)

Timely and prescient, the prolific dystopian writer’s sixth book centers May, who has just lost her job due to a robot being able to do it better. Desperate for cash, she undergoes a surgical procedure so her face is no longer recognizable to AI bots called ‘Hums’ littering the city. She seeks respite in the city’s Botanical Garden, where climate change hasn’t touched the expansive rivers, streams, and forests, but her insistence that her family leaves their technology behind to live a naturalistic life proves more difficult than she thinks. 

The Rich People Have Gone Away, Regina Porter (August 6)

Delightfully wealthy, Theo and his pregnant wife Darla head upstate to escape the COVID pandemic ravaging Brooklyn. During a hike they take to reconnect with nature and get their minds off the virus, Theo divulges a secret to Darla, who soon after goes missing. The people the couple abandoned in their Park Slope apartment complex have to come together to discover what happened, and the teens and restaurateurs make up a complex lattice of narratives, some only knowing Darla from a glance, in Regina Porter’s suspenseful second novel. 

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven, Ruben Reyes Jr. (August 6)

Up for a debate as to whether Ruben Reyes Jr ‘s There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven acts as a short story collection or interlinked novel, its voices and themes of Central American upbringing and identity ring true through surreal and realistic ideas. One man wakes up to discover he’s now a famous reggaetón singer, elders turn into marionettes as they age, and other dreamlike worlds showcase unrecognizable lives mixed with familiar dread in this stylish and exciting new writer’s debut.

Mystery Lights, Lena Valencia (August 6)

Lena Valencia’s horror-tinged collection of short stories, set against the American Southwest’s desert, is a haunting and existential rolodex of unsettling tales. From influencers who can sic their fans on anyone they please like a pack of rabid dogs, mysterious orbs that bring together disparate townspeople, and ghost hunters who lose their ability to suss out the paranormal, Lena Valencia’s ideas are big in scope and creatively thrilling.

The Italy Letters, Vi Khi Nao (August 13)

For anyone who’s struggled to keep a journal, the poet and novelist Vi Khi Nao’s The Italy Letters might put you to shame. An epistolary novel comprised of five letters from an unnamed bisexual narrator to her lover in Italy, she details her life through the readings and events she attends — from Iowa City, to the Midwest, to Las Vegas — while taking care of her often suicidal mother. Autofictional but shockingly candid, the narrator describes her desperation for this Italian penpal, whom she might never meet, saying she thinks of her like how the earth thinks of rain. Khi Nao’s writing is beautiful and surprising, and the Letters are messy fragments, mirroring how the human brain works — going from roommate issues to depressive episodes in the blink of an eye.

The Hypocrite, Jo Hamya (August 13)

The author of 2021’s Three Rooms returns with The Hypocrite, a novel about art, personal disgrace, and family ties. The young playwright Sophia invites her father, a novelist whose earlier works haven’t stood the test of time and read as uncouth now, to her new show. What he doesn’t know is that she wrote it based on a vacation they took two years prior to an Italian island, where his past comments and actions are now skewered through a feminist, unforgiving lens. Set over one runthrough of the play, Sophia and her father’s relationships and past arguments come into the light to be revealed to an anonymous, undiscerning audience. 

Blue Graffiti, Calahan Skogman (August 13)

Actor and writer Calahan Skogman’s Kerouac-tinged debut novel Blue Graffiti centers on adventure. Cash has lived in his small town of Johnston, Wisconsin his whole life, and has never thought about leaving his city for something elsewhere, until a beautiful stranger walks into his favorite bar and has him questioning his stagnancy. His is a tale of romance, starry-eyed hope, and freedom from the multidisciplinary star of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone.

The Avian Hourglass, Lindsey Drager (August 13)

Lindsey Drager’s fourth novel, The Avian Hourglass, is sure to have you look at the world differently. Caught in the middle of The Crisis which could tip into The Catastrophe at any moment, the narrator is lamenting the loss of stars in the night sky and birds in the air when she discovers “Saturn,” a block of concrete in the middle of her small town. The townsfolk — divided into YES or NO people via an arbitrary, undisclosed question — go on a journey to find the other planets while the narrator studies for her fifth and final test to become a radio astronomer. Burdened with triplets she’s tasked into raising, the narrator navigates her friends, etymologists, playwrights, and construction workers who make sense of their unfolding and rapidly changing world — even if it means deconstructing the very thing she’s known her entire life. Drager blends science, nature, and space in this unforgettable and often beautiful meditation on reality and the environment.

Planes Flying Over A Monster, Daniel Saldaña París (August 20)

Mexican novelist Daniel Saldaña París has lived in many places — Madrid, Montreal, Mexico City — all with varying degrees of success supporting his wife or writing his own work. In his first essay collection, the lyrical Planes Flying Over A Monster, he reflects on drug use, addiction, the rhythms of a city, books, the nature of writing, falconry, and a stint as a cult member in his early teens. París’ writing is candid and fascinating, calling attention to underlooked topics right under our noses.

How to Disappear and Why: Essays, Kyle Minor (August 27)

From a leading writer in micro-fiction, Kyle Minor’s expansive and well-researched essay collection How to Disappear and Why concerns itself with the long history of disappearance and invisibility. Ranging from ghosts in The Sixth Sense and Shakespeare, to the erasure of lost temples and strategic self-exits, disappearance is as much of an art form as something to be explored.