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New Books for the First Tuesday of August!

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Liberty Hardy

Senior Contributing Editor

Liberty Hardy is an unrepentant velocireader, writer, bitey mad lady, and tattoo canvas. Turn-ons include books, books and books. Her favorite exclamation is “Holy cats!” Liberty reads more than should be legal, sleeps very little, frequently writes on her belly with Sharpie markers, and when she dies, she’s leaving her body to library science. Until then, she lives with her three cats, Millay, Farrokh, and Zevon, in Maine. She is also right behind you. Just kidding! She’s too busy reading. Twitter: @MissLiberty

Hello, reading superstars! I hope you are all having a wonderful week so far. Today is possibly the biggest new release day of the year. Just about every kind of genre you could want has a huge title coming out today, and probably some genres we haven’t even heard of yet, too. I love naming things and I think it would be fun to make up subgenres. Like technoromance, nonfiction fantasy, sci-finance, or sports horror. Yep, it’s definitely fun.

But let’s talk about the books in actual genres out now for new release day! At the top of my list of books to acquire are Hum by Helen Phillips, The Kill List by Nadine Matheson, and Better Left Buried by Mary E. Roach. On this week’s episode of All the Books!, Danika and I talked about great books we loved that are out this week, including The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, Five-Star Stranger, and The Pairing.

Today, I am doing a round-up of exciting books from the first Tuesday of August 2024. Below, you’ll find titles (loosely) broken up into several categories to make it easier for your browsing convenience. I hope you have fun with it! And as with each first Tuesday newsletter, I am putting asterisks *** next to the books that I have had the chance to read and loved. YAY, BOOKS!

cover of I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki: Further Conversations with My Psychiatrist by Baek Sehee; illustration of an Asian woman leaning her head on the table and holding up chopsticks

Biography and Memoir

Wanted: Toddler’s Personal Assistant: How Nannying for the 1% Taught Me about the Myths of Equality, Motherhood, and Upward Mobility in America by Stephanie Kiser 

The Mysterious Mrs. Nixon: The Life and Times of Washington’s Most Private First Lady by Heath Hardage Lee

I Want to Die but I Still Want to Eat Tteokbokki: Further Conversations with My Psychiatrist by Baek Sehee, Anton Hur (translator)

Fiction

Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang 

In a League of Her Own by Kaia Alderson

Plays Well with Others by Sophie Brickman

And So I Roar by Abi Daré

Love Lessons by Sidney Halston

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

cover of The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; photo of a Latine woman in fancy evening wear leaning back on a green couch

The Rich People Have Gone Away by Regina Porter

Unspeakable Home by Ismet Prcic 

There Is a Rio Grande in Heaven: Stories by Ruben Reyes Jr.

Jellyfish Have No Ears by Adèle Rosenfeld, Jeffrey Zuckerman (translator)

Yr Dead by Sam Sax

Mystery Lights by Lena Valencia

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Middle Grade and Picture Books

cover of A Bite Above the Rest by Christine Virnig; illustration of a young Black girl wearing fairy wings and a young white boy in a red sweatshirt over a red castle

Freedom Fire: Moko Magic: Carnival Chaos by Tracey Baptiste

Crushing It by Erin Becker

The Legend of the Last Library by Frank L. Cole

The Lonely Below by g. haron davis

The Crossbow of Destiny by Brandon Hoang

We Are Big Time by Hena Khan, Safiya Zerrougui

A Bite Above the Rest by Christine Virnig 

Mystery and Thriller

Eye of the Beholder by Emma Bamford

The Chamber by Will Dean

Strange Folk by Alli Dyer

The River View: A Jules Clement Novel by Jamie Harrison

The Kill List (An Inspector Anjelica Henley Thriller) by Nadine Matheson

After Oz by Gordon McAlpine

cover of After Oz by Gordon McAlpine; photo of a tornado ripping apart a red barn

A World of Hurt by Mindy Mejia

House of Glass by Sarah Pekkanen

The Devil Raises His Own by Scott Phillips 

Time of the Flies by Claudia Piñeiro, Frances Riddle

Wordhunter by Stella Sands***

Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor

The In Crowd (Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp) by Charlotte Vassell 

The Last Time We Met by Anna E. Wahlgren

Nonfiction

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss***

cover of The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss; photo of the front window of a bookstore

The Murmuring Grief of the Americas by Daniel Borzutzky 

McMillions: The Absolutely True Story of How an Unlikely Pair of FBI Agents Brought Down the Most Supersized Fraud in Fast Food History by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte

Scattered Snows, to the North: Poems by Carl Phillips

Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: Essays and Interviews by Adrienne Su

Romance

The Pairing by Casey McQuiston

The Friend Zone Experiment by Zen Cho***  

The Truth According to Ember by Danica Nava 

The Great Dating Fake Off by Livy Hart

Good Boy by Elle Kennedy, Sarina Bowen

Four Weekends and a Funeral by Ellie Palmer

Hot Earl Summer (The Wild Wynchesters) by Erica Ridley

Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Horror

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djèlí Clark***  

The Unmothers by Leslie J. Anderson

The Mercy of Gods (The Captive’s War, #1) by James S.A. Corey

Ghost Mother by Kelly Dwyer

cover of The Dead Cat Tail Assassins by P. Djeli Clark; photo of a young Black woman with cat's ears, a lace mask, and daggers

House of Bone and Rain by Gabino Iglesias

A Mask of Flies by Matthew Lyons

Blood Like Mine by Stuart Neville

Hum by Helen Phillips***

Full Speed to a Crash Landing by Beth Revis

Young Adult

Death at Morning House by Maureen Johnson***

HoverGirls by Geneva Bowers

The House Where Death Lives edited by Alex Brown

cover of Witty in Pink by Erica George; illustration of a young man and woman in Regency era dress standing back to back, and slightly holding hands

The Girl with No Reflection by Keshe Chow

Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch by Codie Crowley

This Ravenous Fate by Hayley Dennings

Witty in Pink by Erica George

Dance of the Starlit Sea by Kiana Krystle

The Empire Wars (The Empire Wars Series) by Akana Phenix

Better Left Buried by Mary E. Roach

An orange cat walking behind a stack of books; photo by Liberty Hardy

This week: I’m currently reading Tartufo by Kira Jane Buxton and Witchcraft for Wayward Girls by Grady Hendrix. I have started rewatching Gravity Falls for the gazillionth time, thanks to the new book, The Book of Bill by Alex Hirsch. There’s a website mentioned in the book that had a countdown clock that counted down to July 30th, but the site has been down since then. People were speculating that they were going to announce a third season of the show, but that is too exciting for me to even entertain right now. I’ll wait and get happy about it if it actually happens. The song stuck in my head is “Queen” by Perfume Genius. And here’s a cat photo: I was only trying to take a photo of these books, but Farrokh decided he needed to insert himself into the image. And it’s actually a great picture of him, tbh. He looks so serious and literary. Maybe he can use it for his author photo when he writes a book.


That’s it for me today, friends. I am sending you love and good wishes for whatever is happening in your life right now. Thank you, as always, for joining me each week as I rave about books! See you next week. – XO, Liberty

“For to know a man’s library is, in some measure, to know his mind.”—Geraldine Brooks, March

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