5 new books to read in August
August is a month of endings and beginnings; even though it signals the end of the summer, it also brings ahead new opportunities and planning, both on a personal and professional level.
Whether you’re looking for a few more beach reads or you’re back in the city and looking for a book to read on your commute, Moonshot News has selected 5 new books to accompany you.
The Husbands, by Chandler Baker
Can women ever really have it all? The question propels Chandler Baker’s latest page-turner, which follows an attorney named Nora Sprangler who is struggling to balance her successful career and the needs of her growing family.
Everything changes when the Spranglers move to Dynasty Ranch, an exclusive suburban enclave where ambitious women are married to men who happily share the domestic duties. There, Nora is asked to help with a neighbor’s wrongful death case, setting in motion a series of startling revelations about her new community.
As the case unravels, Nora uncovers a plot that may explain the secret to having-it-all. One that’s worth killing for. Calling to mind a Stepford Wives gender-swap, The Husbands imagines a world where the burden of the “second shift” is equally shared – and what it may take to get there.
No one is talking about this, by Patricia Lockwood
A woman known for her viral social media posts travels the world speaking to her adoring fans, her entire existence overwhelmed by the Internet – or what she terms ‘the portal’. Are we in hell? the people of the portal ask themselves. Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?
Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: ‘Something has gone wrong,’ and ‘How soon can you get here?’ As real life and its stakes collide with the increasing absurdity of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
Lockwood’s debut novel is a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection.
Against White Feminism: Notes on Disruption, Rafia Zakaria
Rafia Zakaria’s new book is a radically inclusive, intersectional, and transnational approach to the fight for women’s rights.
Upper-middle-class white women have long been heralded as “experts” on feminism. They have presided over multinational feminist organizations and written much of what we consider the feminist canon, espousing sexual liberation and satisfaction, LGBTQ inclusion, and racial solidarity, all while branding the language of the movement itself in whiteness and speaking over Black and Brown women in an effort to uphold privilege and perceived cultural superiority.
An American Muslim woman, attorney, and political philosopher, Rafia Zakaria champions a reconstruction of feminism in Against White Feminism, centering women of color in this transformative overview and counter-manifesto to white feminism’s global, long-standing affinity with colonial, patriarchal, and white supremacist ideals.
The book will be released in the U.S. on August 17.
Fierce Little Thing, by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
New York Times bestselling author Miranda Beverly-Whittemore’s Fierce Little Thing is a story of friendship and its reckonings.
Saskia was a damaged, lonely teenager when she arrived at the lakeside commune called Home. She was entranced by the tang of sourdough starter; the midnight call of the loons; the triumph of foraging wild mushrooms from the forest floor. But most of all she was taken with Abraham, Home’s charismatic leader, the North Star to Saskia and the four other teens who lived there, her best and only friends.
Two decades later, Saskia is shuttered in her Connecticut estate, estranged from the others. Her carefully walled life is torn open by threatening letters. Unless she and her former friends return to the land in rural Maine, the terrible thing they did as teenagers―their last-ditch attempt to save Home―will be revealed.
From vastly different lives, the five return to confront their blackmailer and reckon with the horror that split them apart. How far will they go to bury their secret forever?
Billy Summers, by Stephen King
Last, we could not possibly leave outside this list the legendary storyteller and master of horror Stephen King. His thrilling new noir novel is about a good guy in a bad job.
Billy Summers is a man in a room with a gun. He’s a killer for hire and the best in the business. But he’ll do the job only if the target is a truly bad guy. And now Billy wants out. But first there is one last hit. Billy is among the best snipers in the world, a decorated Iraq war vet, a Houdini when it comes to vanishing after the job is done. So what could possibly go wrong? How about everything.
This can’t-put-it-down novel is part war story, part love letter to small town America and the people who live there, and it features one of the most compelling and surprising duos in King fiction, who set out to avenge the crimes of an extraordinarily evil man. It’s about love, luck, fate, and a complex hero with one last shot at redemption.
Neil McRobert wrote in The Guardian that this is King’s best book in years.
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