Summer may be winding down, but that doesn't mean that there isn't still a lot to look forward to this month.
August brings us a number of thrilling books about cataclysmic conclusions and promising new beginnings. Whether you're looking to learn more about the history of Chicago house music or want to reckon with hearing loss, our 12 must-read books of the month offer a window into worlds seen and unseen. Get ready to settle in and lose yourself with your next read!
The Murmuring Grief of the Americas
By Daniel Borzutzky
Coffee House Press
National Book Award winner Daniel Borzutzky has already cemented his place as one of our favorite poets working today, so his latest collection The Murmuring Grief of the Americas is a welcome sight this August. Borzutzky takes an incisive look at the immense toll of exploitative labor practices and the increasing authoritarianism over bodies—covering topics such as America's labyrinthine immigration policies, militarized policing, and mass capitalism. Lyrical and bittingly elegiac, The Murmuring Grief of the Americas is unapologetically powerful in reclaiming individual and collective autonomy.
The Registry of Forgotten Objects: Stories
By Miles Harvey
Mad Creek Books
From Chicago author Miles Harvey comes The Registry of Forgotten Objects, a probing and heartfelt short story collection about our relationship with longing. In one story, an artist discovers an uncanny ability to transform modern sculptures into priceless ancient treasures, while in another a grieving couple returns again and again to the beach where their son disappeared. Moving and resonant, Harvey's work pulsates with the mysteries of our incomprehensive internal desires.
Bluff
By Danez Smith
Graywolf Press
August is an exciting month for new releases, and chief among them is Danez Smith's Bluff. Written after two years of artistic silence during the COVID-19 pandemic and the global protests following the murder of George Floyd, Bluff is a deeply powerful and personal reckoning around their role as a poet and with the hometown of the Twin Cities. Smith's writing is urgent, honest, and teetering between rage and hope, creating a manifesto of artistry and resilience in search of an alternative to a desolate future.
Napalm in the Heart
By Pol Guasch
Translated from the Catalonian by Mara Faye Lethem
FSG Originals
Set in a near future devastated by war and unspecified natural disaster, Napalm in the Heart follows a young man and his mother as they cling to survival at the edge of a forest. When the young man commits a brutal act of desperate violence to protect his mother, he embarks on a journey that threatens his life and his precarious relationships. The latest from poet and novelist Pol Guasch is lyrical in its intimacy and devastating in its grimness, but through darkness of our war-torn future shines a unforgettably gorgeous story of love persevering.
Chicago House Music: Culture and Community
By Marguerite L. Harrold
Belt Publishing
House music was born and perfected in Chicago, originating in the city's Black, gay underground in the late seventies before growing into one of the most popular genres by the end of the century. Chicago House Music: Culture and Community is a beautiful ode to the influential music genre, the artists who shaped it, and the communities that formed around it. Weaving together history, interviews, and first-person narrative explorations, Marguerite L. Harrold creates a comprehensive portrait of a Chicago staple and the lives who've found freedom and acceptance through music.
Mystery Lights
By Lena Valencia
Tin House Books
Literary horror fans, prepare to be terrified and delighted. In Mystery Lights, Lena Valencia grapples with the familiar and fantastic realities that haunt us by weaving together a collection of surreal stories that will grab you from page one. An influencer attempts to derail a viral TV marketing campaign with her violent cult following. A slasher-flick screenwriter looking for inspiration escapes a pack of wild dogs only to find herself locked in an SUV with a strange man beside her. Valencia's writing is consistently startling in both its freshness and dynamism, which makes Mystery Lights a debut you don't want to miss.
Scattered Snows, to the North
By Carl Phillips
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
In Scattered Snows, to the North, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Carl Phillips distorts and reveals the contours of human memory. Perhaps his most vulnerable collection to date, Phillips asks whether we should embrace or release ourselves from the past and if remembering is reality or our perception of it. New work from Phillips is always a treat, and Scattered Snows, to the North may be one of his most remarkable releases yet.
Unspeakable Home
By Ismet Prcic
Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster
It's been two years since our narrator divorced his beloved and lost his safest and most adoring home when he fled Bosnia as a teenager. Writing a series of candid fan letters to the comedian Bill Burr, he begins to attempt to communicate his trauma to someone outside of himself. Unspeakable Home offers laugh-out-loud humor with a razor sharp edge, as Ismet Prcic unravel's his narrator's bomb-ravaged childhood in a series of revelatory fragments that prod at both the reader and our understanding of memory.
Jellyfish Have No Ears
By Adéle Rosenfeld
Translated from the French by Jeffrey Zuckerman
Graywolf Press
Since she was little, Louise has been not quite hearing and not quite dear—her life with this invisible disability has been one of in-betweenness. When her doctor suggests getting a cochlear implant—an irreversible decision that would give Louise a new sense of hearing—she must reckon with the ways her natural hearing has shaped her unique relationship with the world. Adéle Rosenfeld's Jellyfish Have No Ears is a literary marvel that brings light to the experience of hearing loss with generosity, curiosity, and enlightening prose.
The Hypocrite
By Jo Hamya
Pantheon
In one of the most intriguing conceits of the year, The Hypocrite is set through one staging of a play about the playwright's vacation to Sicily with her father—a novelist whose work has not aged well in the modern era—where he dictated his new novel to her. As the theater lights dim, he begins to understand that his daughter has exposed their innermost conflicts for the stage. Jo Hamya writes passages reminiscent of the tightest knots—gorgeous in the construction, dizzying in their intricacy, and ready for you to untangle.
Black Butterflies
By Priscilla Morris
Knopf
In the spring of 1992, Sarajevo was a city divided and ready to erupt into violence. Priscilla Morris's debut follows Zora, an artist and teacher who stays behind when her family flees to safety in England and works to rebuild when her city falls under siege. Black Butterflies carefully charts a story of resilience in the face of destruction, fiercely finding beauty in one's home even in its darkest moments.
The Rich People Have Gone Away
By Regina Porter
Hogarth Press
When Theo Harper and his pregnant wife, Darla, head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown of 2020, an ensuing argument leads to Darla's disappearance. With the search in full force and Theo the prime suspect, Darla's friends from New York Ruby and Katsumi arrive to broker peace and uncover what truly happened. The Rich People Have Gone Away is an fascinating character study that expertly interrogates class and privilege.
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