August 2025 Book Releases to Wrap Up Your Summer

A pulse-pounding new Southern thriller from the author of the runaway bestseller A Flicker in the Dark.

Twenty-two years ago, Claire Campbell’s older sister, Natalie, disappeared shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Days later, her blood was found in a car, a man was arrested, and the case was swiftly closed.

In the decades since, Claire has attempted to forget her traumatic past by moving to the city and climbing the ranks as an investigative journalist . . . until an unexpected call from her father forces her to come back home and face it all anew.

With the entire summer now looming ahead—a summer spent with nothing to do in her childhood home, with her estranged mother—Claire decides on a whim to accept a seasonal job at Galloway Farm, a muscadine vineyard in coastal South Carolina less than an hour away from where she grew up. At first glance, Galloway is an idyllic escape for Claire.

A scenic retreat full of slow-paced nostalgia, as well as a place where her sister seemed truly happy in that last summer before she vanished, it feels like the perfect plan to pass the time.

However, as soon as Claire starts to settle in, she stumbles across an old diary written by one of the vineyard’s owners, and what at first seems like a story of young rebellion and love turns into something much more sinister as it begins to describe details of various unsolved crimes.

As the days stretch on, Claire finds herself becoming more and more secluded as she starts to obsess over the diary’s contents . . . as well as the lingering feeling that her own sister’s disappearance may be somehow tied to it all.

Galloway was supposed to be a place to help her move forward, but instead, Claire quickly finds herself immersed in her own dark and dangerous past.

When Julia’s first-love-turned-best-friend Gabe, a musician with a cultish following, dies unexpectedly at age twenty-nine, Julia launches herself into an intercontinental quest to recover the possessions he left with friends and acquaintances across the world.

Along the way she encounters Elizabeth, Gabe’s effortlessly perfect and endlessly cool ex-girlfriend. Now Julia can’t stop talking to, thinking about, and googling Elizabeth.

As the two women struggle to reconcile their respective claims on Gabe’s memory, can they find their way from rivalry to friendship?

A soaring, propulsive, and unforgettably poignant novel about two zookeepers at the last zoo in the world, in the vein of Téa Obreht and Charlotte McConaghy

Camille has always preferred animals to people. The wild has nearly disappeared, but as a zookeeper at the last zoo in the world, on Alcatraz Island, she spends her days caring for playful chimpanzees, gentle tree frogs, and a restless jaguar. Outside, resistance groups and brutal cartels fight to shape the world’s future, but Camille is safe within her routines. That is, until a new zookeeper, Sailor, arrives from Paris.

From their first meeting, Camille is drawn to Sailor, who seems to see something in Camille that no one has before. They bond over their shared passions and dream up ways to improve their lives. When Sailor whispers the story of an idyllic, secret sanctuary where wild animals roam free, Camille begins to imagine a new kind of life with Sailor by her side.

Sailor knows all too well the dangers beyond Alcatraz, but she increasingly chafes at the zoo’s rigid rules. She hatches a reckless plan to smuggle one of the most prized animals off the island to freedom, and invites Camille to join her. The consequences if they fail would be catastrophic, and Sailor’s contacts at the sanctuary go dark just as the threats from the cartels grow more extreme. Camille must decide if she’s ready to risk everything for the promise of a better world.

Propulsive and fiercely hopeful, with a heart-stopping final twist, The Island of Last Things is an elegy for a disappearing world and a gorgeous vision for the future.

Dark Matter meets Girl, Interrupted in this spellbinding psychological thriller about a young woman teetering on the edge of reality.

Virginia 1954. A young woman wakes, agitated and confused, on a patient transport bus arriving at Hanover State Psychiatric Hospital. She remembers nothing of her life before that moment, none of the dark things she must’ve seen—and done—that have forged her into such a skilled and cunning fighter.

Once she’s been subdued, doctors tell her she’s Dorothy Frasier, a paranoid schizophrenic, committed to Hanover for treatments they hope will quell her increasingly violent delusions.

She’s certain they’re wrong—until disturbing visions begin to invade her reality: of a dystopian future where frantic scientists urge her to complete “the mission” and save humankind. Convinced it’s Hanover causing the hallucinations, she tells no one, focuses only on escape. . . .

Until there’s a visitor, a man whose loving face—and touch—she remembers, a man who knows all about her visions because he’s spent years helping her cope with them: her husband, Paul Frasier.

Now she’s sure of nothing, caught between two realities. Believe in the future, and she might save the world. Believe in her doctors and Paul, and she might save herself.

She’s desperate for answers, but she’ll have to harness the darkness inside her to get them, risking her freedom, her mind, and ultimately her life in a heart-stopping quest for the truth.

The story acclaimed English author Penelope Fitzgerald never wrote, of her real-life journey to Mexico with her son in search of a much-needed inheritance, by Jessica Francis Kane, bestselling author of Rules for Visiting

Winter 1952. Penelope Fitzgerald’s husband is a struggling alcoholic, their literary journal is on the brink, and she is pregnant with their third child.

Out of the blue she receives a letter from two spinster sisters named Delaney, distant relations with a silver mine, who dangle the possibility of an inheritance.

Jessica Francis Kane’s brilliantly imagined Fonseca fictionalizes Penelope’s real and momentous trip to northern Mexico in pursuit of this legacy, a creative and practical lifeline.

She leaves her two-year-old, Tina, with relatives and sails for New York with her six-year-old, Valpy, in tow. From there, mother and son take a bus all the way to . . . Fonseca.

But when they arrive, nothing goes to plan. There are others vying for the Delaney money, and for three months, from Day of the Dead to Candlemas, Penelope must navigate a quixotic household and guide her impressionable son.

More and more people an ambitious American couple, various local entrepreneurs and artists (including Edward Hopper and his wife, Jo), and finally a handsome stranger who claims he is a Delaney.

With heart, humor, and a deep understanding of her subject that has characterized the range of her work her whole career, Kane (whose work “could have been written by Jane Austen’s great great-great-granddaughter” —Oprah Daily) has written much more than an Fonseca is an enthralling world of its own as well as a stunning fictionalization of a season in Fitzgerald’s life.

The Borrowers meets Matilida in this funny, winning story of a girl who finds herself an unlikely hero when she stumbles upon a big secret about little creatures. The latest book from the National Book Award winning author of the Penderwicks series.

Gwen MacKinnon’s parents are dreadful. Truly, deeply, almost impressively dreadful.

So Gwen’s not upset at all when she’s foisted onto her never-before-seen Uncle Matthew for two weeks. Especially when it turns out he has a very opinionated dog named Pumpkin.

Things take a turn for the weird when Gwen makes a discovery in the local library. A discovery that involves tiny creatures with wings.  And no, they’re not birds.

They’re called Lanukan. But why can only Gwen and the youngest children, gathered for storytime, see them?

The Ladhukan insist that Gwen is destined to help them find a new home.

But how can a girl as unwanted, uncourageous, and generally unheroic as Gwen possibly come to the rescue? Pumpkin has a few ideas. . . .

An electrifying novel about the complicated friendship between two ambitious and talented female writers in 1960s Los Angeles and the ultimate artistic one writes a book based on the other’s life . . . from the author of Reese’s Book Club Pick Before We Were Innocent.

After a steady descent from literary stardom, Lane Warren is back.

She’s secured a new book deal based off the life of her sometimes friend and more often rival, notorious free spirit and muse, Gala Margolis. Lane’s only problem is that Gala has been missing for months . . . nobody can find her.

Ten years earlier, Gala was a charming socialite and Lane was a Hollywood outsider amidst the glittering 1960’s LA party scene.

Though never best friends, Lane found Gala sharp and compelling. Gala liked that Lane took her seriously. They were both writers. They were drawn to each other.

That is until Gala’s star began to rise, and Lane grew more envious.

Then Lane decided to do something that she wouldn’t ever be able to take back . . . changing the trajectory of both their lives.

Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity.

All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.

One woman is forced to finally forgive herself–with the help of a winsome eight-year-old sidekick—for not being able to save her sister from her life-long substance abuse.

The impact of a person’s addiction on family is traumatic and all consuming. Lorna learned at an early age she would always play second fiddle to her older sister Kristen’s addiction and her problems. It has made Lorna hard and untrusting—everyone she should have been able to trust has betrayed her in some way.

As an adult, she has retreated into what she thinks of as her internal bomb shelter—always waiting for the other shoe to drop. She keeps to herself, her dog her only companion, until an eight-year-old boy from across the hall befriends her dog and then her.

Bean is the only person who doesn’t seem to mind Lorna’s gruff awkwardness, and at times, he speaks truth and wisdom beyond his years.

When an opportunity to buy her grandmother’s house comes up—the only place she has ever felt happy—Lorna is faced with the terms of a trust her mother left She must address the things in her life that have left her so bitter and make amends for them.

As she embarks on this journey through her life with Bean, her small Greek chorus, Lorna begins to realize that events that seemed ruined by her sister’s addiction may not have happened as she remembers.

And even if they did, her chance to make amends for them is freeing her from the guilt she has felt for her sister’s troubles.

She begins to accept that there is nothing she could have done to change the course of Kristen’s life, but she can change the course of her own. And maybe, her grandmother’s house is not the home she thinks it is.

For fans of Conversations with Friends and Vladimir comes a magnetic, fresh take on marriage and when two married professors tiptoe toward infidelity, their transgressions are brought to light in a graduate student’s searing thesis project.

Simone is the star of Edwards University’s creative writing renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon.

Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department.

But when Ethan and the department administrative assistant Abigail have sex, Simone and Ethan’s faith in their flawless marriage is rattled.

Simone has secrets of her own. While Ethan’s away for the summer, she becomes inordinately close with her advisee, graduate student Roberta “Robbie” Green.

In Robbie, Simone finds a new running partner, confidante, and disciple—or so she believes.

Behind Simone’s back, Robbie fictionalizes her mentor’s marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis.

Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie paints a revealing portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself, scratching at the very surface of what may—or may not—be the truth.

Innovative, witty, and tender, Seduction Theory exposes the intoxicating nature of power and attraction, masterfully demonstrating how love and betrayal can coexist.

In this lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers rom-com, two exes are faced with one deadline. Will they make it to the end?

Temi and Wale meet in London. They flirt, date, meet each other’s friends. . . . Then Wale dumps Temi to go on Love Villa.

Instead of giving in to heartbreak, Temi throws herself into her writing. She’s within touching distance of a book deal that would solve all her problems.

But publishers keep passing on her novel and bills still have to be paid. So, when the opportunity to ghost-write a celebrity autobiography arises, Temi finds herself accepting.

And, of course, the celebrity turns out to be Wale. . . .

Has too much time passed, or just enough to spark a whole new kind of relationship?

A fateful summer of secrets and lies alters the trajectory of a young girl’s life in this glimmering debut about love, addiction, and the power of storytelling.

I’d been raised on secrets, I knew they weren’t a good idea.

Sixteen and living in a small Michigan town, Gertie is harboring a secret heavy enough to fracture her closest friendship.

She and Cindy have been bonded since birth by the fact their fathers are addicts, but their unsteady home lives are a little easier when they’re together, sprawled on trampoline vinyl with pilfered vodka and dreams of moving to New York. 

Everything was changing so fast. I didn’t know what was real.

After an accident involving a bonfire and an aerosol can sends Gertie to the hospital, she finds herself with nowhere to go but to Sioux Falls to live with her newly clean father.

She sees it as a chance to escape the hometown drama she’s caused, but it finds her all the same: parties without curfews, boys without boundaries, a compromising photo, tragedy back home . . . and her father, once again teetering on the edge of oblivion.

Terrified of the consequences of being honest with Cindy, her sole refuge is the fantasy novel she’s writing, a portal to another world and the story of a young girl roaming a strange land, trusting her wits to survive.

I had to become a different person before I’d even figured out who I was in the first place.

Years later, when ghosts of the past surface, Gertie decides to write again about that explosive summer from the stabler shores of adulthood.

Powered by the fierce imagination of her youth, Gertie finally allows herself the grace to tell a version of her story that she always hoped would be true. 

Written with the feel and power of a ticking time bomb, Atomic Hearts is an unforgettable story of the ways we can be saved by friendship, love, and imagination.

For fans of The Ministry of Time and The Midnight Library, a sweeping, unforgettable novel following two remarkable women moving between postwar and Cold War-era America and the mysterious time space, a library filled with books containing the memories of those who bore witness to history.

Enter the time space, a soaring library filled with books containing the memories of those have passed and accessed only by specially made watches once passed from father to son—but mostly now in government hands.

This is where eleven-year-old Lisavet Levy finds herself trapped in 1938, waiting for her watchmaker father to return for her.

When he doesn’t, she grows up among the books and specters, able to see the world only by sifting through the memories of those who came before her.

As she realizes that government agents are entering the time space to destroy books and maintain their preferred version of history, she sets about saving these scraps in her own volume of memories.

Until the appearance of an American spy named Ernest Duquesne in 1949 offers her a glimpse of the world she left behind, setting her on a course to change history and possibly the time space itself.

In 1965, sixteen-year-old Amelia Duquesne is mourning the disappearance of her uncle Ernest when an enigmatic CIA agent approaches her to enlist her help in tracking down a book of memories her uncle had once sought.

But when Amelia visits the time space for the first time, she realizes that the past—and the truth—might not be as linear as she’d like to believe.

The Book of Lost Hours explores time, memory, and what we sacrifice to protect those we love.

The beloved author of Holes presents his first adult novel, a modern fantasy classic of forbidden love, a crumbling kingdom, and the unexpected magic all around us.

Long ago and far away (and somewhere south of France) lies the kingdom of Esquaveta. There, Princess Tullia is in nearly as much peril as her struggling kingdom.

Esquaveta desperately needs to forge an alliance, and to that end, Tullia’s father has arranged a marriage between her and an odious prince. However, one month before the “wedding of the century,” Tullia falls in love with a lowly apprentice scribe.

The king turns to Anatole, his much-maligned magician. Seventeen years earlier, when Anatole first came to the castle, he was regarded as something of a prodigy.

But after a long series of failures—the latest being an attempt to transform sand into gold—he has become the object of contempt and ridicule. The only one who still believes in him is the princess.

When the king orders Anatole to brew a potion that will ensure Tullia agrees to the wedding, Anatole is faced with an impossible choice.

With one chance to save the marriage, the kingdom, and, of most importance to him, his reputation, will he betray the princess—or risk ruin?