This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Erica Ezeifedi, Associate Editor, is a transplant from Nashville, TN that has settled in the North East. In addition to being a writer, she has worked as a victim advocate and in public libraries, where she has focused on creating safe spaces for queer teens, mentorship, and providing test prep instruction free to students. Outside of work, much of her free time is spent looking for her next great read and planning her next snack.
Find her on Twitter at @Erica_Eze_.
View All posts by Erica Ezeifedi
Can you believe it’s back-to-school season already? As I sit in disbelief, make sure to stock up on all manner of bookish back-to-school supplies, courtesy of Editor Kelly Jensen. There are also August’s new horror books to buy, TBR, or request from your library.
Speaking of new books—it’s always hard to whittle down the best books of the week, and doing so for the entire month is doubly challenging, which is why I outsource things a bit. I always love reading my fellow Book Riot writers’ recommendations, so I’ve included quite a few in this list.
There’s a memoir by an award-winning deaf poet; a cozy, foodie sci-fi novella; more dark academia by R.F. Kuang; a demonic possession in 18th century Mexico, and so much more.
Win a 1-year subscription to Book of the Month! Imagine this: every month, for a year, you get to choose from new releases, curated by the Book of the Month team. Enter today.
Nonfiction
The Quiet Ear: An Investigation of Missing Sound: A Memoir by Raymond Antrobus
The award-winning Raymond Antrobus uses his poet’s eye to look at a childhood spent in London, then Jamaica, then the US as a half Jamaican, half English boy. He recounts discovering he had missing sounds—like bird calls and alarms—how he was diagnosed as deaf at seven, and even how some people thought he was “slow” or faking it. There’s a particular view of masculinity, race, and even how deaf bodies act that he explores and disembles, too.—Erica Ezeifedi
New Books
Subscribe to the New Books! newsletter to get weekly updates about new releases.
Sci-Fi
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
I don’t read a lot cozy sci-fi, but I need to. In Newitz’s cozy, near-future set novella, San Francisco is rebuilding from war when a group of food service bots take things into their own, automated hands. They take over their delivery app account, rebrand as a lunch spot, and start serving the best hand-pulled noodles the neighborhood has ever had. Thing is, a grade A hater is review bombing them, and they’ll have to get to the bottom of who it is before bad ratings destroy everything they’ve built.—Erica Ezeifedi
Literary Fiction
The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis
The Mansfield girls have always been a little…odd, and Little Nettlebed has always been a bit…unusual. That was even before someone claimed one of the Mansfield sisters transformed into a dog right in front of their eyes. This is eighteenth-century England, and people may not believe in witches anymore, but they certainly believe in the weird. If you ask five of their neighbors, the Mansfields have always been weird, and if their strangeness is starting to affect Little Nettlebed, maybe it’s time to do something about that.—Rachel Brittain
Romance
Once Upon a Time in Dollywood by Ashley Jordan
As a rising playwright, Eve Ambroise’s professional life may be the only thing going half-way decently for her. That’s probably why she, after breaking up with her fiancé and cutting off her parents, dips out to the Tennessee mountains to start over. She’s there under the guise of being on a writing retreat, but that lie can only hold up for so long. Especially when it comes up against concerned townspeople and a neighbor who also has some things to work through. Speaking of that neighbor—Jamie Gallagher—he’s just come off a nasty custody battle, and is still figuring out what his life looks like as a single father. Spending time in his cabin helps…and so does spending time with the new pretty lady who moved in next door, prickly as she is. So Eve and Jamie start messing around, but what’s meant to be a little fling gets serious and has Eve ducking and dodging again.—Erica Ezeifedi
Graphic Novel/Manga
This Place Kills Me by Mariko Tamaki and Nicole Goux
This YA graphic novel comes courtesy of an award-winning writer and illustrator. It uses comics, diary entries, and news articles to tell the story of what happened to Wilberton Academy’s resident It Girl, Elizabeth Woodward, when she’s found dead the morning after the school’s opening night of Romeo and Juliet. Her death is ruled a suicice, but transfer student Abby Kita knows better. She was the last to see Elizabeth alive, and she knows the girl had secrets. Question is, were they enough to get her killed?—Erica Ezeifedi
Fantasy
Katabasis by R. F. Kuang
Kuang is back in her dark academia bag with her latest, which follows Alice Law as she vies to become the best in the field of Magick. And she does a lot to get there. But then Professor Grimes—the greatest magician in the world—dies, and it’s kind of her fault. To rescue him, she and her rival Peter Murdoch employ all the pentagrams, spells, and learning at their disposal to guide them through hell to retrieve him. Though it might not be enough.
Parts of this remind me of Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo, more deliciously hellish dark academia.—Erica Ezeifedi
Historical Fiction
This Here Is Love by Princess Joy L. Perry
The lives of three young people in seventeenth-century Virginia, a girl born into slavery, the enslaved son of a freed father, and an indentured servant making the crossing to America, cross paths on the same plot of land. While each of them face horrific circumstances and hardship, they’ll all have to decide how to face it and what it will turn them into in this haunting tale of slavery, indentured servitude, and survival.—Rachel Brittain
Horror
The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas
Cañas’s The Hacienda had me by the throat when it first came out. Listening to it on audiobook had me looking over my shoulder. The atmosphere was rich—very gothic, very demure. That’s why her latest—which has a demonic possession (!!)—is on this list. I also got an advanced copy of it and am super excited to get into it.
It’s 1765 when a plague strikes Zacatecas, Mexico. Alba is privileged and able to flee with her wealthy parents to her fiancé Carlos’s isolated mine. But then other things start happening: she starts having strange hallucinations, sleep walking, and having very violent convulsions. There’s also the matter of that thing that cold angry thing that’s lurking just beneath her skin.
Elías is Carlos’s cousin. He is off to the New World to make his own way outside of his family’s greed, but he can’t seem to stop thinking about Alba and the growing tension between them…or the way she’s started to deteriorate as the demon’s desires grow stronger. —Erica Ezeifedi
Mystery, Thriller, or True Crime
The Midnight Shift by Cheon Seon-ran, translated by Gene Png
This Korean bestseller is a bit of a genre bender. It’s described as a fast-paced queer vampire murder mystery, and starts off with four lonely elderly people who live on the sixth floor of a hospital. When they each die by suicide by jumping out of the window, Su-Yeon feels like she’s the only one at her precint who cares. But she needs to care, lest her good friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, who also lives on the sixth floor, meets the same fate. So, Su-Yeon does her own investigation, and what she finds is a trip: she meets the mysterious Wanda at the crime scene, and Wanda (who herself is trying to find her ex-boo thang Lily) says that a vampire did it. It’s farfetched, but then a fifth victim falls to their death, and Su-Yeon finds out that their body was drained of blood. This is exactly the kind of weird and trippy is it real or isn’t it type of story I will always be here for.—Erica Ezeifedi
Young Adult
Songs for Ghosts by Clara Kumagai
Adam found an old diary in his attic, and he’s immediately connecting with the story shared inside it by a young woman from Nagasaki, Japan. They have a lot in common, despite 100 years between them.
But as Adam reads on, he’s finding it hard to believe the girl who writes about being haunted by ghosts. That is, until he begins to feel those spirits himself and realizes the only way to figure out what’s going on–both for him and for the girl in the diary–is to figure out her identity.
Adam takes a homestay in Nagasaki and it’s an opportunity for him to reconnect with his heritage and discover the truth about the girl from the diary. He has so many experiences he didn’t know he needed, including reconnecting with family members and finding a crush in Jo. Together, they’re going to solve the mystery of the diary girl–that is, if it’s not too late to do so.—Kelly Jensen
Children’s/Middle Grade
The Pink Pajamas: A Story About Love and Loss by Charlene Chua
Dealing with loss is challenging for everyone, but can be especially difficult for young children who haven’t been through the experience before. In The Pink Pajamas, a little girl is initially unhappy that her beloved aunt has made her pajamas in her least favourite colour. Her aunt promises to make her a new pair, but becomes ill and passes away before she can do so. While working through her grief, the little girl comes to treasure her pink pajamas as a way of remembering her loved one. —Alice Nuttall
Other Book Riot New Releases Resources:
- All the Books, our weekly new book releases podcast, where Liberty and a cast of co-hosts talk about eight books out that week that we’ve read and loved.
- The New Books Newsletter, where we send you an email of the books out this week that are getting buzz.
- Finally, if you want the real inside scoop on new releases, you have to check out Book Riot’s New Release Index! That’s where I find 90% of new releases, and you can filter by trending books, Rioters’ picks, and even LGBTQ new releases!
