TThe best new books to read in August include bestselling author and former flight attendant TJ Newmanthe latest airplane thriller, a Robin Hood to the era of con artists and Rebecca Godfrey’s posthumous novel about an art collector Peggy Guggenheim.
The list also includes Helen Phillips’ sequel to her 2019 novel The necessity and a Hollywood thriller saga of Mexican Gothic author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. As well as the debut of artist Anne Marie Tendler, writer and owner of Umi Organic noodle company Lola Milholland, and TIME technology correspondent Andrew R. Chow, whose first book offers a fascinating post-mortem on the state of cryptography.
Below, the best new books to read in August.
CryptomaniaAndrew R. Chow (August 6)
Andrew R. Chow’s debut, Cryptomania, shows how the crypto boom went bust, resulting in one of the biggest financial frauds in US history. The book begins with the criminal trial against Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of cryptocurrency trading platform FTX who, last March, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors. Through meticulous reporting, Chow recounts the turbulent 20 months that brought Bankman-Fried to court, describing in detail the successes and costly failures of the digital currency industry. It does this by focusing on crypto’s key players — most notably, Vitalik Buterin, the Russian-born, idealistic creator of the Ethereum blockchain, who is portrayed as the antithesis of Bankman-Fried. But it’s Chow’s interviews with those who fell victim to the 2021 crypto crash that make Cryptomania a cautionary tale for anyone looking to invest in the currency of the future.
Buy now: Cryptomania about Bookstore | Amazon
Group life and other recipesLola Milholland (August 6)
When she was growing up in Portland, Oregon, in the 1990s, Lola Milholland’s childhood home was open to anyone—exchange students, poets, Tibetan monks—who needed a safe space to stay for a few days, months, or even years. Communal living was her free-spirited, food-obsessed parents’ way of bucking the traditions of a more conservative upbringing. Milholland often met these guests through the meals she shared with them. Part memoir and part recipe book, Group life and other recipes explores how the writer’s eccentric upbringing led her to seek community through food. With humor and empathy, the Filipino-American author writes about making vegetarian meals for 20 people in his dorm at Amherst College, dining with members of an “exclusive retirement community for well-off hippies” in Washington, and foraging for mushrooms in his hometown, where he now lives with his partner, older brother and your artist friends.
Buy now: Group life and other recipes about Bookstore | Amazon
Salome’s Seventh VeilSilvia Moreno-Garcia (August 6)
Set in 1950s Hollywood, Salome’s Seventh Veil begins with 21-year-old Vera Larios, a beautiful receptionist from Mexico City. She has just been chosen as the protagonist of a new swords and sandals film inspired by the biblical story of Salome, a Jewish princess known for seducing John the Baptist. It’s a great role, which is why Nancy Hartley, a struggling actress who is more famous for her off-screen partying than her on-screen performances, is out to steal it. When Vera catches the eye of Nancy’s crush, a charming musician, the one-sided rivalry only gets worse. This suspenseful saga captures how far someone is willing to go to make it in show business – and the price they pay to get there.
Buy now: Salome’s Seventh Veil about Bookstore | Amazon
BuzzHelen Phillips (August 6)
In Buzz, Helen Phillips’s unnerving dystopian thriller, highly sophisticated robots nicknamed “zombies” threaten to replace humans in the workplace and beyond. Protagonist May Webb knows this all too well after losing her job to the artificial intelligence beings she helped build. Desperate for money, May agrees to take part in an experimental facial surgery that makes her undetectable by security cameras. (It also makes her more like the AI she despises.) The big payday also offers her the opportunity to take her husband and two young children on a much-needed vacation to the Botanical Gardens, which have become accessible only to the wealthy this year. country. in a near future devastated by climate change. But when her dream trip turns into a nightmare, May is forced to team up with an untrustworthy drone to save the lives of those she loves most.
Buy now: Buzz about Bookstore | Amazon
Worst scenarioTJ Newman (August 13)
The latest thriller from bestselling author and former flight attendant TJ Newman, Worst scenario, begins with a commercial airline pilot suffering a widow’s heart attack shortly after takeoff. When the aircraft crashes in the small town of Waketa, Minnesota, it hits a nuclear power plant, killing nearly 300 people and causing a disaster worse than Chernobyl. Now the 900-member community, led by Waketa’s recently widowed fire chief Steve Tostig, must band together to contain the radiation before it spreads across the Midwest and triggers a national catastrophe. And they have less than 17 hours to do it.
Buy now: Worst scenario about Bookstore | Amazon
Mina’s matchboxYōko Ogawa (August 13)
Japanese author Yōko Ogawa’s 2006 novel, Mina’s matchbox, Recently translated by Stephen B. Snyder, it is a magical fairy tale about a pre-teen girl, her precocious asthmatic cousin, and a pet pygmy hippo. Set in 1970s Japan, Tomoko is sent to stay with her eccentric aunt and uncle in their mansion. There she approaches Mina, her younger cousin who carries matchboxes as a talisman. With Mina’s help, Tomoko uncovers the secrets of her complicated family history, forcing her to question everything.
Buy now: Mina’s matchbox about Bookstore | Amazon
PeggyRebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison (August 13)
Rebecca Godfrey began writing Peggy, a novel about socialite and art collector Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim almost a decade ago. When she died in 2022 From complications from lung cancer, her friend, author Leslie Jamison, finished the book using Godfrey’s manuscript and notes. What readers get is an empathetic (and fictional) look at the misunderstood daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, scion of a wealthy mining family that sank with the Titanic, and niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, founder of the New York museum of the same name. Peggy follows the deceased titular heiress from age 14 to age 60 as she discovers her love of the fine arts, finds her place in a sexist and anti-Semitic world, and makes a name for herself.
Buy now: Peggy about Bookstore | Amazon
I never saw myself comingTanya Smith (August 13)
Tanya Smith’s debut memoir, I never saw myself coming, details how an obsession with Michael Jackson led her to become an unlikely white-collar criminal. As a teenager in 1970s Minneapolis, Smith used his knowledge of technology to get the phone company to give him the pop star’s home address. From there, she tricked utility companies into thinking she had paid the bills of her struggling family and neighbors, eventually learning to forge bank transfers. By her own admission, she got a little arrogant and sloppy, pocketing millions of dollars, which put her on the FBI’s radar at a young age. But as a 21-year-old middle-class black woman, authorities did not take her seriously as a threat. That is, until she was arrested and charged with bank and wire fraud five years later. Smith’s story only gets wilder from there, in this fascinating stranger-than-fiction tale of a true American antihero.
Buy now: I never saw myself coming about Bookstore | Amazon
Men called her crazyAnna Marie Tendler (August 13)
For fans of Prozac Nation It is Girl, interrupted: debut memoir by artist Anna Marie Tendler, Men called her crazy, in which she details the time she spent in a psychiatric hospital. In 2021, Tendler, then 35, checked into a Connecticut facility because of anxiety, depression and eating disorders. There she unraveled the traumas of her past, reflecting on the men who had come and gone from her life since she was a teenager. Vulnerably, Tendler dissects his past romantic relationships in hopes of better understanding himself. But Men called her crazy It’s not really about her exes – it’s a portrait of a woman finally recovering and reclaiming her story.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
