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Publishing This Week
Hello,

When I started BookBrowse back in the late 1990s, August was a slow month for new books. This was because publishers generally publish two or three catalogs a year and, before the internet, the tail end of the previous season was a quiet time for new titles because the bricks and mortar bookstores would generally clean out slow-moving inventory at the end of one season to make room for the next. So, books published in early August risked being unceremoniously removed from shelves weeks after going on sale to make room for new Fall titles.

But these days things are quite different; although there are peaks and troughs, just as the news cycle never rests, neither does the publishing industry—except for two or three weeks in December when things go blessedly quiet.

A case in point being this week’s 18 new and notable books which include Hayley Scrivenor’s debut mystery Dirt Creek which our First Impressions reviewers rated a stellar 4.6 stars, with many positive comparisons to fellow-Australian Jane Harper.

Also, look out for Mercury Pictures Presents by Anthony Marra and Properties of Thirst by Marianne Wiggins—both of which I thought wonderful; and The Many Daughters of Afong Moy by Jamie Ford.

And because we’ll be discussing it in our book club forum starting late August, I’ve also included Mike Gayle’s All the Lonely People, which first published this time last year and is now available in paperback.

So, get yourself to a comfy chair without delay, put the kettle on and start reading!

With best wishes,

Davina, BookBrowse Publisher


This Week's New and Notable Books
There are too many books published each week for you to read about them all, let alone read them all. So we do the legwork for you, scouring the publishers' catalogs and the pre-publication reviews to pick out what we believe to be among the best and most interesting. For more about our process, see “Picking Books” and “Rating Books”.
Dirt Creek book jacket
Dirt Creek: A Novel
by Hayley Scrivenor


Debut Author
On sale Aug 2 from Flatiron Books
Genre: Mysteries. 336 pages
Members' Opinion: 4.6/5
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

A small-town debut mystery described as The Dry meets Everything I Never Told You, a girl goes missing and a community falls apart and comes together.

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Reader Reviews
All the Lonely People book jacket
All the Lonely People
by Mike Gayle


Paperback on sale Aug 2 from Grand Central Publishing
Genre: Literary Fiction. 400 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

If you loved A Man Called Ove, then prepare to be delighted as Jamaican immigrant Hubert rediscovers the world he'd turned his back on in this "warm, funny" novel (Good Housekeeping).

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Get notified when the discussion opens
All This Could Be Different book jacket
All This Could Be Different: A Novel
by Sarah Thankam Mathews


Debut Author
On sale Aug 2 from Viking
Genre: Literary Fiction. 320 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

From a brilliant new voice comes an electrifying novel of a young immigrant building a life for herself - a warm, dazzling, and profound saga of queer love, friendship, work, and precarity in twenty-first century America.

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Mercury Pictures Presents book jacket
Mercury Pictures Presents: A Novel
by Anthony Marra


On sale Aug 2 from Hogarth Books
Genre: Literary Fiction. 432 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5

The epic tale of a brilliant woman who must reinvent herself to survive, moving from Mussolini's Italy to 1940s Los Angeles—a timeless story of love, deceit, and sacrifice from the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

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Properties of Thirst book jacket
Properties of Thirst
by Marianne Wiggins


On sale Aug 2 from Simon & Schuster
Genre: Literary Fiction. 544 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

Fifteen years after the publication of Evidence of Things Unseen, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist Marianne Wiggins returns with a novel destined to be an American classic: a sweeping masterwork set during World War II about the meaning of family and the limitations of the American Dream.

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The Many Daughters of Afong Moy book jacket
The Many Daughters of Afong Moy: A Novel by Jamie Ford

On sale Aug 2 from Atria Books
Genre: Literary Fiction. 384 pages
Critics' Opinion: 4/5

The New York Times bestselling author of the "mesmerizing and evocative" (Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants) Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet returns with a powerful exploration of the love that binds one family across the generations.

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The Rabbit Hutch book jacket
The Rabbit Hutch: A novel
by Tess Gunty


On sale Aug 2 from Knopf
Genre: Literary Fiction. 352 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

The Rabbit Hutch is a stunning debut novel about four teenagers - recently aged out of the state foster-care system - living together in an apartment building in the post-industrial Midwest, exploring the quest for transcendence and the desire for love.

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All the Ruined Men book jacket
All the Ruined Men: Stories
by Bill Glose


Debut Author
On sale Aug 2 from St. Martin's Press
Genre: Short Stories. 288 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

For readers of Phil Klay, Kevin Powers, and Tim O'Brien: Dramatic, powerful, authentic short stories of soldiers fighting a "forever war," in combat and back home.

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Alias Emma book jacket
Alias Emma: A Novel
by Ava Glass


Debut Author
On sale Aug 2 from Bantam Books
Genre: Thrillers. 288 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

In this breakneck, race-against-the-clock thriller, a British spy has twelve hours to deliver her asset across London after Russia hacks the city's security cameras. Can she make it without being spotted...or killed?

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Inventor of the Future book jacket
Inventor of the Future: The Visionary Life of Buckminster Fuller
by Alec Nevala-Lee


On sale Aug 2 from Dey Street Books
Genre: Biography. 672 pages
Critics' Opinion: 5/5

From Alec Nevala-Lee, the author of the Hugo and Locus Award finalist Astounding, comes a revelatory biography of the visionary designer who defined the rules of startup culture and shaped America's idea of the future.

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Publishing This Week is one of BookBrowse's four free newsletters. We also publish BookBrowse Highlights every Thursday; and Book Club News and Librarian News monthly.

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