The best new books for August
From family dramas and literary fiction to fantasy adventures and futuristic satire, these are the new books worth reading this month.
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From family dramas and literary fiction to fantasy adventures and futuristic satire, these are the new books worth reading this month.
Perthshire, 1957. The Camerons have left their Glasgow tenement to run a youth hostel in the middle of remote Rannoch Moor. Their sweet, wise mother is dying, their father is intemperate and their granny is a tough old bird, so eldest child Moira assumes the care for her siblings, headstrong Alison and vulnerable little Ewan.
Soho, 1982. Ewan is now a celebrated artist with a new life, but past trauma, betrayal, and the rugged beauty of Rannoch still course in his veins. Family ties bind, so when Moira reaches out to him, he struggles to resist.
A stupendous debut, richly atmospheric, which – whirling us from Britain’s last remaining wilderness to Thatcherite London – takes the breath away.
With his deadpan humour, a fine line in self-deprecation, an eye for life’s absurdities and an undertow of peevishness, Sedaris is one of the funniest writers on the planet. A large, loving, dysfunctional family helps, of course.
His late mother is a constant source of mirth. One of her rules for the boy David and his siblings: no stealing her fags (‘Buy your own, that’s what your allowance is for’).
The land of Nevereach is stalked by jackal-faced horsemen, sent by the dictator Tanas to stamp out rebellion.
The world is famished, without hope, but three unlikely heroes, Mel, Rosa and Apibus, brave danger and follow a star to find the witch who will wake the fabled sleeping warriors so they can save the day.
A hair-raising adventure, as if Arthurian legend were played out on a board of snakes and ladders.
Crewing a catamaran around the Aegean? What could be lovelier? At least, if you have passport, money, plastic (Jay doesn’t), and if there are no assassins on your tail (he does have those).
An ingenious thriller featuring AI and cryptocurrency, mayhem and marathons, exorcism, sex and spreadsheets, brilliantly blending the bizarre and the tenderly observed banal. I sprinted through it.
When Harold’s beloved wife Edie dies, the all-seeing Grid – which now controls everything – decrees that he must move out of his precious home.
But in a dystopian world of AI and data harvesting, his sentient, smart household appliances – heroic little vacuum cleaner Scout, dependable Clock, stalwart Fridge – weigh in to help him.
So quirky, so sweet and so strangely moving.
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