New Releases: August 2023 Edition

New Releases: August 2023 Edition

Check out these highly anticipated August releases featuring fiction and nonfiction titles. Click on the title to request a copy or get your name on the waitlist. Don’t forget to watch for more featured releases next month!  

FICTION

Las Madres by Esmeralda Santiago - In her first novel since the widely acclaimed When I Was Puerto Rican, author Santiago tells the story of a close-knit group of Puerto Rican women bound by ties of family and friendship. It all begins in 1975 when aspiring ballerina Luz, is gravely injured in an automobile accident that takes the lives of both of her parents. Many years later, Luz, now living in the Bronx, returns to the island, accompanied by her daughter and the friends who helped raise her, to revisit the past and uncover the truth about the accident that inalterably changed the course of her life. When Hurricane Maria strikes and long-buried secrets come to light, they all get more than they bargained for.

Fever House by Keith Rosson - When leg-breaking debt collectors Hutch and Tim attempt to strong arm a drug addict named Wesley, who owes their boss $12,000, they find a severed hand hidden in a Wonder Bread bag and decide to take it home. Bad idea. Madness ensues. Full-throated splatter punk, gritty noir, rock and roll, break- neck pacing and, surprisingly well-realized characters. What’s not to love?

Mobility by Lydia Kiesling - The personal meets the political head on, in the story of Bunny a self-described “foreign service brat" who, after a privileged childhood in various exotic postings, moves on to an equally privileged adulthood as an oil company executive in Texas. But can she reconcile her comfortable life with her role in shaping the dire future she sees looming on the horizon?

NONFICTION

The Underworld:Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean by Susan Casey - For centuries, mariners have spun tales of a sinister undersea world of deadly peril and marvelous creatures. Now cutting-edge technologies have allowed scientists to dive miles beneath the ocean’s surface, and they have discovered both marvelous creatures and deadly peril. Soaring mountains, smoldering volcanoes, valleys 7,000 times as deep as Everest is high, shimmering creatures one hundred feet long, sharks that live half a millennium and an estimated three million shipwrecks littering the ocean floor, to name a few. In her new work, oceanographic enthusiast Casey chronicles her own literal and figurative deep dive into the past, present and precarious future of the watery world that lies beneath.  

Anansi’s Gold: TheMan Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington and Swindled the World by Yepoka Yeebo. Some consider him the most successful con man in history. Beginning in 1957 after Ghana achieved independence from Britain, John Ackah Blay-Miezah perpetrated a series of audacious frauds, raking in millions, living large on several continents, and luring in many notable figures including, Nixon’s attorney general John Mitchell and child star and one-time US ambassador to Ghana, Shirley Temple Black. In Anansi’s Gold, Ghanaian journalist Yeebo tells the story of this charismatic man who hoodwinked just about everybody he met and proved maddeningly adept at escaping justice all along the way.

Althea by Sally Jacobs - Before Venus and Serena Williams, there was Althea Gibson. Three years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in professional baseball, Althea Gibson entered the rarefied, largely upper-crust world of professional tennis. Many were skeptical. After all, apart from the color of her skin, her impoverished background, short hair and tattered jeans fit nobody’s image of how a tennis player looks. Never mind, Gibson’s ability to play soon silenced all critics. Now, author Jacobs chronicles the life and career of this woman who defied multiple obstacles to win Wimbledon, hobnob with dignitaries and become a personal hero to women and people of color who aspired to secure a place on the court.