Books Pubbing in August

With the last full month of summer in full swing, now’s the perfect time to fill your shelves with August’s most anticipated new releases. Discover the books everyone will be talking about.
Bennett, Trilling, and the ATF investigate. A single-minded group angry with the government keep turning up in unexpected places, insisting that they’re only trying to make the world a better place. To law enforcement, their claims seem delusional.
Will words or gunpowder light the next fuse?
Originally published in 1988, Celia Dale’s vividly realized final novel is a darkly humorous and suspenseful exploration of greed, deception, and moral ambiguity. Reissued in the UK by Daunt Books in 2023, it was hailed as “masterly” by The Times and “chilling” by The Guardian.
Now, twenty years later, Rex has long vanished. Dinah is married with a baby and a job at the local zoo. But she is not at peace, and it seems as if someone from the past won’t let her go quietly. When mysterious clues start appearing, animals at the zoo go missing, and an old conspirator barely survives a suspicious fire, Dinah’s paranoia gets the best of her, and she takes the baby and drives back to her hometown to investigate. Although Dinah reunites with old friends, the forces out to get her make it painfully clear: Dinah must repent and face her enemies alone.
Billy Trask is a weathered and charismatic sociopath, who thinks nothing of quietly killing whomever may come in his way, and carefully guards the coordinates for a truck loaded with $10 million dollars-worth of Canadian pharmaceuticals.
Jimmy, Theo, and Sarah are the not-so-innocent locals poised to stand in Billy’s way, none more so than Sarah, a local party girl with the heart and will of a colossus, and who will leave her own trail of mayhem and carnage in her 75-mile-per-hour wake.
In the rough-and-tumble tradition of Dennis Lehane, S.A. Cosby, and classic American noir, Freight is a thrill-ride view of the world of labor, life and love–a searing portrait of men at work and also at their worst.
The neon “Strange Investigations” sign may be flickering in disrepair outside his office, but private investigator Derek Strange is still accepting new cases. When a flashy drug lawyer hires him to prove an alibi for an accused murderer, Strange can’t help getting drawn into the darkness.
In his hunt for answers, he stands his ground against some of Washington, D.C.’s most dangerous criminals, and a police department that doesn’t entirely welcome his interference. As the violence escalates and claims another victim, the raised stakes force Strange to question his own moves. Are his instincts still intact?
The Blue Flame is signature Pelecanos: tough, smart, rich with details of a time and place–and at its core, exposing the good and bad that exist side by side in so-called heroes and villains alike.
Perched on a ledge with stunning views, the Dixon’s family lodge was once a crown jewel of the mountains. Until late one August night, when both parents and their four children vanished, leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints, and a mystery that has endured for thirty years. Now, its latest occupants, the Collinses, are arriving, and the former grand lodge is once more stirring to life.
For Amanda Grady, following in her father’s footsteps as the recently appointed Shereford police chief, it’s good to see a fresh start for the derelict Dixon place. However, not everyone is happy about a new family in the old home and its hidden past may have returned with a vengeance.
When a stray dog leads to the discovery of a skeleton on the property, Raquel and Theo face a daunting choice of what to believe, who to trust, and how to survive. Because in the tiny village of Shereford the time has come. The local residents, the new neighbors, and the fledgling police chief must work together to unravel the terrifying events that happened one night thirty years ago, or …
You’ll be sorry.