Best New Books To Read in August 2025

In what is being billed as "Dante's Inferno meets Susanna Clarke's Piranesi," from Nebula and Locus award winner, R.F. Kuang, two rival graduate students team up to save their professor's soul from the grips of Hell. Literally. (Out 8/26)

Jason Mott, whose Hell of a Book won the National Book Award, returns with a novel that follows two Black writers, one traveling the country on a book tour, the other facing a school community still reeling from a shooting. "A book that begs for an immediate reread, People Like Us hits the soul hard," raved BookPage. "It is haunting, vivid literary fiction at its finest." (Out 8/5)

This richly immersive account explores how Baldwin’s intimate artistic partnerships shaped his life and work—from Harlem to Istanbul, Paris to the South of France. Based on newly uncovered archival material and original interviews, it is a "dynamic portrait that deepens our understanding of a complex artist," according to a starred review from Kirkus. (Out 8/19)

For the first time, Miriam Toews turns to her own life in nonfiction. Prompted by a question she can’t quite answer—why write?—she traces the connections between grief, memory, and the impulse to tell stories. "Toews explores her writing career with storytelling that is at once propulsive and recursive, using her work as evidence of both her success and her inability to escape her past," writes The Los Angeles Times. "It's bracing, candid reading." (Out 8/26)

Since its 1978 publication, The Stand has become a touchstone of apocalyptic fiction. Now, for the first time, King authorizes a return to that world in this original anthology featuring new stories by Tananarive Due, S. A. Cosby, Alma Katsu, Paul Tremblay, and others. Includes an introduction by King and contributions that expand the novel’s legacy of horror, survival, and uneasy hope. (Out 8/19)

Elaine Castillo—known for her sharp cultural criticism and formally inventive fiction—returns with a satirical love story set in the virtual workplace. When a star content moderator rises into the elite world of VR surveillance, a guarded romance begins to upend her tightly managed world. “Castillo’s flinty satire of the tech industry [transforms] into a sultry romance novel,” writes The Atlantic, “as we watch Girlie’s defenses melt.” (Out 8/5)

McKibben, founder of Third Act and a contributing writer at The New Yorker, outlines how solar energy is reshaping the global energy landscape. Tracing its rapid rise and the fossil fuel industry's resistance, he argues for a future built on shared power, scientific realism, and political urgency. (Out 8/19)

Marking the 50th anniversary of Born to Run, this behind-the-scenes chronicle revisits the album that launched Springsteen into legend. Carlin—author of Bruce and definitive biographies of Paul Simon and R.E.M.—draws on rare access to reveal how pressure, ambition, and vision converged in a studio-bound crucible. A song-by-song portrait of a record that reshaped American rock. (Out 8/5)

This selection brings together Kincaid’s essays, reportage, and criticism from The Village Voice, Ms., and The New Yorker. From her early reflections on leaving Antigua to her writing on gardens, and language, the pieces trace five decades of clear-eyed, incisive observation. (Out 8/5)

Susana M. Morris traces Butler’s life through the civil rights movement, Black feminism, and the rise of climate and gender politics—revealing how her fiction imagined radical futures with Black women at the center. Drawing on archival material and Butler’s own reflections, this is a study of a writer who could not stop asking dangerous questions. (Out 8/19)