5 poignant books to read this August

Fall is just around the corner, but this season is closing out with a few more book titles to round out your summer reading. August's releases include literary star Gayl Jones's return, a posthumous collaboration between friends and a glimpse into a future with AI. 

'Hum' by Helen Phillips (Aug. 6)

Helen Phillips new novel taps into both our fears and curiosities about the imminent future. Her books "straddle the concerns of contemporary life" with those of a "future wrapped up with the pervasive nature of technology, disastrous climate change and our increasing curiosity with AI," said LitHub. "Hum" follows May after she loses her job to AI bots. To make ends meet, she signs up to be a part of an experiment that alters her face so she cannot be recognized by surveillance cameras. With the money, she whisks her family away to an exclusive exotic botanical garden where lakes, forests and streams still exist. When she briefly loses track of her children, she is forced to team up with one of the hums in order to save their lives. This "chilling vision of a near future" where the void is unavoidable "resonates unnervingly with the way things already are," said Publishers Weekly. Pre-order here.

'The Hypocrite' by Jo Hamya (Aug. 13)

Author and critic Jo Hamya's sophomore novel centers around a young playwright and her father, a famous novelist. He arrives at a London theater to join the audience of his daughter's latest play, only to find that it is a fictionalization of an argument they had on a Sicilian vacation years earlier. The novel "skewers a generation of artists" embodied by Sophia's father, whose "success has rested on the precise controversy and misogyny now on display for his daughter’s generation to laugh at," said The New York Times. The book bounces back and forth between the father's memories of the event and a tense lunch between Sophia and her mother, who has her own baggage with Sophia's father. Like her debut "Three Rooms," Hamya's new book "possesses a poised, almost guarded self-awareness," said The Guardian, "but when her writing strays into more emotional territory, it really shines." Pre-order here.

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'Peggy' by Rebecca Godfrey, with Leslie Jamison (Aug. 13)

When author Rebecca Godfrey was diagnosed with cancer, she asked her colleague and friend Leslie Jamison to finish her last novel in case she died. Jamison fulfilled her wishes and helped complete Godfrey's manuscript. The posthumous collaboration's result is a story about the exploits of art collector and heiress Peggy Guggenheim and her quest to distinguish herself outside of her family name. "A vivid, indulgent imagining of the legendary collector," said Kirkus Reviews. Pre-order here.

'Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde' by Alexis Pauline Gumbs (Aug. 20) 

This is not the first biography about poet, essayist, and activist Audre Lorde, but fellow poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs is among the first researchers able to delve into Lorde's manuscript archives. The results of her efforts "highlights the late author's commitment to interrogating what it means to survive on this planet" and shows how "Lorde's radical understanding of ecology can guide us today," Ericka Taylor said on NPR. Gumbs explores Lorde's Harlem upbringing, romantic relationships and her experiences teaching poetry to cops at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in the 1970s. Gumbs forgoes the "strictures and linearity of traditional biography" and "enlivens her narrative with unconventional flourishes that in lesser hands might feel like a gimmick but here come across as revelation," Publishers Weekly said. Pre-order here.

'The Unicorn Woman' by Gayl Jones (Aug. 20)

Gayl Jones follows up her 2021 return to the literary scene with her new novel, "The Unicorn Woman." The enigmatic "1970s literary wunderkind" had her debut, "Corregidora," edited by Toni Morrison, who said, "no novel about any Black woman could ever be the same after this," per LitHub. Since her return three years ago after a twenty-two-year absence, Jones has been named a finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. Her latest novel follows Buddy Ray Guy, a Black WWII veteran and "true self-educated intellectual" who returns home to the Jim Crow South in search of meaning. Pre-order here.