As the end of July nears, August looms before us, a horrid and terribly hot stretch before autumn welcomes us back with all things wonderful, warm, and spicy. The arrival of August feels like the beginning of my farewell to summer—goodbye, hot weather; goodbye, unreasonably late sunsets; goodbye, stifling humidity. The end of summer is something to celebrate—for me, at least. And, as with all things, I wish to celebrate with books.
Today I’m sharing five can’t miss late summer book releases. Though my own autumnal festivities begin in late August, summer technically doesn’t run out until September and, therefore, these book releases range from late July to mid September.
5 Can’t Miss Late Summer Book Releases
The Year of the Witching
by Alexis Henderson
Coming: July 21st
In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement. But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood. Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.
This debut novel from Alexis Henderson already has tons of buzz in the book community and it’s not difficult to understand why. I’m a sucker for any gothic, witchy book full of quiet contempt and anger where a woman realizes her full power—witchy or not. I am really looking forward to this novel.
The Book of Lost Names
by Kristin Harmel
Coming: July 21st
Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books one morning when her eyes lock on a photograph in a magazine lying open nearby. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in sixty-five years—a book she recognizes as The Book of Lost Names. The accompanying article discusses the looting of libraries by the Nazis across Europe during World War II—an experience Eva remembers well—and the search to reunite people with the texts taken from them so long ago. The book in the photograph, an eighteenth-century religious text thought to have been taken from France in the waning days of the war, is one of the most fascinating cases. Now housed in Berlin’s Zentral- und Landesbibliothek library, it appears to contain some sort of code, but researchers don’t know where it came from—or what the code means. Only Eva holds the answer—but will she have the strength to revisit old memories and help reunite those lost during the war? As a graduate student in 1942, Eva was forced to flee Paris after the arrest of her father, a Polish Jew. Finding refuge in a small mountain town in the Free Zone, she begins forging identity documents for Jewish children fleeing to neutral Switzerland. But erasing people comes with a price, and along with a mysterious, handsome forger named Rémy, Eva decides she must find a way to preserve the real names of the children who are too young to remember who they really are. The records they keep in The Book of Lost Names will become even more vital when the resistance cell they work for is betrayed and Rémy disappears.
The Book of Lost Names is exactly the type of historical fiction book I gravitate to. I love novels based on true stories about people’s extraordinary experiences during WWII and I enjoy learning about history through a more character-focused and emotional exploration of the facts. I’ve found that I’ve learned so much about the smaller (though actually momentous) acts of resilience and bravery many people showed but also about the many, many facets of the Holocaust that aren’t spoken about as regularly through historical fiction. I can’t imagine that I won’t enjoy this one.
Sisters
by Daisy Johnson
Coming: August 13th
Born just ten months apart, July and September are thick as thieves, never needing anyone but each other. Now, following a case of school bullying, the teens have moved away with their single mother to a long-abandoned family home near the shore. In their new, isolated life, July finds that the deep bond she has always shared with September is shifting in ways she cannot entirely understand. A creeping sense of dread and unease descends inside the house. Meanwhile, outside, the sisters push boundaries of behavior—until a series of shocking encounters tests the limits of their shared experience, and forces shocking revelations about the girls’ past and future. Written with radically inventive language and imagery by an author whose work has been described as “entrancing” (The New Yorker), “a force of nature” (The New York Times Book Review), and “weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling” (Celeste Ng), Sisters is a one-two punch of wild fury and heartache—a taut, powerful, and deeply moving account of sibling love and what happens when two sisters must face each other’s darkest impulses.
Perhaps I’m being influenced by a recent read of mine that had something to do with strange sisters, but I can’t help but be intrigued by this synopsis and the praise I’ve seen for Daisy Johnson’s writing. While the phrase “radically inventive language” brings to mind Finnegans Wake (which I haven’t read and certainly don’t want to), I am excited to see what I make of this.
The Harpy
by Megan Hunter
Coming: Early-mid September
Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but make a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage–she will hurt him three times. As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return. Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power, control and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.
There’s some confusion about the release date of this novel—it’s coming from one publisher in September (either the 3rd or the 17th, I’ve found conflicting information) and from another publisher in November. As far as I can tell, The Harpy should be available in September. This novel sounds so incredibly intriguing. I’ll admit I was sure I was going to disregard this book as I read the synopsis because I wasn’t drawn in by the idea of a domestic drama about infidelity in a marriage but that twist about the wife getting to do three bad things to her husband absolutely got me. I’m curious to see how it will play out and how mythology and magical realism might play a role.
The Evening and the Morning
by Ken Follett
Coming: September 15th
It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages, and in England one man’s ambition to make his abbey a centre of learning will take the reader on an epic journey into a historical past rich with ambition and rivalry, death and birth, love and hate. Thirty years ago, Ken Follett published his most popular novel, The Pillars of The Earth, which has sold over 27 million copies worldwide. Now, this novel, the prequel, will take the readers on an epic journey that will end where The Pillars of The Earth begins…
The Evening and the Morning is a novel I know many, many people are looking forward to and I’m certainly among them. I love The Pillars of the Earth, though I desperately need to finish the series since I only read the first book. However, news of this prequel has reminded me of my need to return to that series and has inspired me to pick up the next book perhaps sooner than I otherwise would have. I’m quite eager to read this novel.
Do any of these late summer book releases intrigue you? Let me know what you think of my choices in the comments!
Thanks for reading,
Madison