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TIME
The Best New Books to Read in August 2024
By Shannon Carlin,
2024-07-31
T he best new books to read in August include best-selling author and former flight attendant T.J. Newman ’s latest airplane thriller, a Robin Hood for the scammer age, and Rebecca Godfrey ’s posthumous novel about art collector Peggy Guggenheim .
The list also includes Helen Phillips’ follow-up to her 2019 novel The Need and a suspenseful Hollywood saga from Mexican Gothic author Silvia Moreno-Garcia. As well as debuts from artist Anne Marie Tendler, writer and owner of noodle company Umi Organic Lola Milholland, and TIME technology correspondent Andrew R. Chow , whose first book offers a fascinating postmortem on the state of crypto .
Below, the best new books to read in August.
Cryptomania , Andrew R. Chow (Aug. 6)
Andrew R. Chow’s debut, Cryptomania , shows how the crypto boom went bust, resulting in one of the largest financial frauds in U.S. history. The book begins with the criminal trial against Sam Bankman-Fried , the 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 landed Bankman-Fried in court, describing in great detail the successes and costly failures of the digital currency industry . He does this by focusing on crypto’s key players—most notably, Vitalik Buterin , the idealistic Russian-born creator of blockchain Ethereum , who is portrayed as the antithesis of Bankman-Fried . But it’s Chow’s interviews with those who fell victim to the 2022 crypto crash that makes Cryptomania a cautionary tale for those looking to invest in the currency of the future.
Group Living and Other Recipes , Lola Milholland (Aug. 6)
When she was growing up in Portland, Ore., in the ‘90s, Lola Milholland’s childhood home was open to anyone and everyone—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 and food-obsessed parents’ way of bucking the traditions of a more conservative upbringing. Often, Milholland got to know these guests through the meals she shared with them. Part memoir and part cookbook, Group Living 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 of making vegetarian meals for 20 in her Amherst College dorm, eating dinners with the members of an “exclusive retirement community for well-to-do hippies” in Washington, and foraging for mushrooms in her hometown, where she now lives with her partner, older brother, and their artist friends.
The Seventh Veil of Salome , Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Aug. 6)
Set in 1950s Hollywood, The Seventh Veil of Salome begins with 21-year-old Vera Larios, a gorgeous receptionist from Mexico City. She’s just been cast as the lead in a new sword-and-sandals film inspired by the Biblical story of Salome , a Jewish princess who is known for seducing John the Baptist. It’s a plum role, which is why Nancy Hartley, a struggling actor who is more famous for her off-screen partying than her onscreen performances, is hellbent on stealing it away. When Vera catches the eye of Nancy’s crush, a charming musician, the one-sided rivalry only worsens. This suspenseful saga captures the lengths one is willing to go to make it in show business—and the price they pay to get there.
In Hum , Helen Phillips’ unnerving dystopian thriller, highly sophisticated robots nicknamed “hums” 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 to security cameras. (This also makes her more like the A.I. she despises.) The major payday also offers her an opportunity to take her husband and two small children on a much-needed vacation to the Botanical Gardens, which has become accessible only to the rich in this near-future ravaged by climate change. But when their dream trip turns into a nightmare, May is forced to team up with an untrustworthy hum in order to save the lives of those she loves the most.
Best-selling author and former flight attendant T.J. Newman’s latest thriller, Worst Case Scenario , begins with a commercial airliner pilot suffering a widow-maker heart attack shortly after takeoff. When the aircraft crashes in the small town of Waketa, Minn., it hits a nuclear power plant, killing nearly 300 people and causing a disaster worse than Chernobyl. Now, the 900-member community, led by Steve Tostig, Waketa’s recently widowed fire chief, must band together to contain the radiation before it spreads across the entire midwest region and causes a national catastrophe. And they’ve got less than 17 hours to do it.
Japanese author Yōko Ogawa’s 2006 novel, Mina’s Matchbox, newly translated by Stephen B. Snyder, is a magical fairytale 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 oddball aunt and uncle in their mansion. While there she becomes close to Mina, her younger cousin who carries matchboxes as her talisman. With Mina’s help, Tomoko uncovers the secrets of their complicated family history, forcing her to question everything.
Peggy , Rebecca Godfrey with Leslie Jamison (Aug. 13)
Rebecca Godfrey began writing Peggy, a novel about socialite and art collector Marguerite “Peggy” Guggenheim, nearly a decade ago. When she died in 2022 of 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 fictionalized) look at the misunderstood daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, the scion of a wealthy mining family who went down with the Titanic, and niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, the founder of the New York City museum of the same name. Peggy follows the titular late heiress from the ages of 14 to 60 as she discovers her love of fine art, finds her place in a sexist and anti-Semitic world, and makes a name for herself.
Tanya Smith’s debut memoir, Never Saw Me Coming, details how an obsession with Michael Jackson led her to become an unlikely white-collar criminal. As a teen in 1970s Minneapolis, Smith used tech savvy to get the phone company to give her the pop star’s home address. From there, she tricked the utility companies into thinking she had paid off the bills of her struggling family and neighbors, eventually learning how to fake bank transfers. As she admits herself, she got a little cocky and a little sloppy, pocketing millions of dollars, which landed her on the FBI’s radar at a young age. But, as a 21-year-old middle class Black girl, law enforcement didn’t 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 anti-hero.
Men Have Called Her Crazy , Anna Marie Tendler (Aug. 13)
For fans of Prozac Nation and Girl, Interrupted : artist Anna Marie Tendler’s debut memoir, Men Have Called Her Crazy, in which she details her time spent in a psychiatric hospital. In 2021, then 35-year-old Tendler checked into a Connecticut facility for anxiety, depression, and disordered eating. While there she unpacked the traumas of her past, reflecting on the men who had come in and out of her life since she was a teenager. With vulnerability, Tendler dissects her past romantic relationships in hopes of understanding herself better. But Men Have Called Her Crazy is not really about her exes—it’s a portrait of a woman finally coming into her own and reclaiming her story.
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