August books
July 30, 2024
Looking for a new book to read? Here are some notable new releases
compiled by Sally Brewster
There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak
In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the banks of the River Tigris, an erudite but ruthless king built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives. In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a 10-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, decides to take her own life until a curious book about her homeland changes everything. There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which re-manifests across the centuries.
Mississippi Swindle: Brett Favre and the Welfare Scandal That Shocked America by Shad White
This riveting exposé details how a small team of auditors and investigators uncovered a brazen scheme where the powerful stole millions in welfare funds from the poor in a sprawling conspiracy that stretched from Mississippi to Malibu. Well-connected donors, highly placed officials and popular public figures diverted tens of millions of dollars from a federal government program until a Republican auditor, his small team of dedicated investigators and a Democratic prosecutor joined forces to hold them accountable in the face of intense obstruction and harassment.
The Life Impossible by Matt Haig
When retired math teacher Grace Winters inherits a run-down house on a Mediterranean island from a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.
Burn by Peter Heller
Every year, friends Jess and Storey have made an annual pilgrimage to the most remote corners of the country, where they camp, hunt and hike. Although the state of Maine has convulsed all summer with secession mania — a mania that has simultaneously spread across other states — Jess and Storey figure it’s a fight reserved for legislators or, worst-case scenario, folks in the capital. But after weeks hunting off the grid, the men reach a small town and are shocked by what they find: a bridge blown apart, buildings burned to the ground, and bombed-out cars abandoned on the road. Trying to make sense of the sudden destruction all around them, they set their sights on finding their way home. Then, a startling discovery drastically alters their path and the stakes of their escape. Drenched in the beauty of the natural world and attuned to the specific cadences of male friendship, even here at the edge of doom, Burn is both a blistering warning about a divided country’s political strife and an ode to the salvation found in our chosen families.
Agony Hill by Sarah Stewart Taylor
In the hot summer of 1965, Bostonian Franklin Warren arrives in Bethany, Vermont, to take a position as a detective with the state police. Warren’s new home is on the verge of monumental change; the interstates under construction will bring new people, new opportunities and new problems to Vermont, and the Cold War and protests against the war in Vietnam have finally reached the dirt roads and rolling pastures of Bethany. Warren has barely unpacked when he’s called up to a remote farm. Former New Yorker and back-to-the-lander Hugh Weber seems to have set fire to his barn and himself, with the door barred from the inside, but things aren’t adding up for Warren. The people of Bethany — from Weber’s enigmatic wife to Warren’s amateur-detective neighbor — clearly have secrets they’d like to keep, but Warren can’t tell if the truth about Weber’s death is one of them. SP
Sally Brewster is the proprietor of Park Road Books, 4139 Park Rd.
