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Week of August 3, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of August 3rd include John Grisham's first-ever whodunit, THE WIDOW, in which a small-time lawyer accused of murder races to find the real killer to clear his name; THE ELEVENTH HOUR by Salman Rushdie, a spellbinding exploration of life, death and what comes into focus at the proverbial 11th hour of life; Philippa Gregory's BOLEYN TRAITOR, a dazzling historical novel of ambition, betrayal and survival in the court of Henry VIII; THE BREAK-IN by Katherine Faulkner, a gripping domestic thriller in which a wealthy London mother must unravel a terrifying mystery filled with twists and turns after killing an intruder in self-defense; and FLESH, David Szalay's Booker Prize-winning novel about a man whose life veers off course due to a series of unforeseen circumstances.  

August 4, 2026

In this newsletter, you will find books releasing the weeks of August 3rd and August 10th that we think will be of interest to Bookreporter.com readers, along with Bonus News, where we call out a contest, feature or review that we want to let you know about so you have it on your radar.

This week, we are calling attention to our special contest for THE MUNICH AFFAIR by James Patterson and David Ellis, which releases on September 21st and will be a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. We are awarding a copy of the book to 25 readers and giving them the chance to share their comments about it with us.

August 2026

August's Books on Screen roundup includes the series premieres of "The Shards" on FX and FX on Hulu and "Anna Pigeon" on USA Network; the season premieres of Prime Video's "Reacher," Apple TV's "Dark Matter," and Netflix's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"; the films The Whisper Man, The Dog Stars and Tony; the series finale of "Lucky" on Apple TV; the season finale of HBO's "House of the Dragon"; the continuation of "The Walking Dead: Dead City" on AMC and "Silo" on Apple TV; and the DVD/Blu-ray releases of Project Hail Mary and The Get Out.

August 4, 2026

This Bookreporter.com Special Newsletter spotlights a book that we think is a great summer reading selection. Read more about it, and enter our Summer Reading Contest by Wednesday, August 5th at noon ET for a chance to win one of five copies of CULPABILITY by Bruce Holsinger, which is an Oprah's Book Club pick and a Bookreporter.com Bets On selection. Please note that each contest is only open for 24 hours, so you will need to act quickly!

Joyce Maynard, author of In Wonderland

Frances believes she has found a ticket to paradise when a wealthy couple hires her for the summer as their mother’s helper at their lakefront summer home in Maine. Best of all, she gets to spend the summer with Forrest Emerson, her father's charismatic childhood friend who escaped their neighborhood when he married into money. But below the glittering surface of Lake Catherine, nothing is what it seems. When Forrest’s wife, Regina, pulls Frances into her private obsession, the girl finds herself witness to the intimate secrets of adult lives. As the summer heat builds, so do the tensions within Wonderland’s walls. By Labor Day, a death will shatter the seemingly perfect family, leaving Frances to question everything she thought she knew about privilege, power and the price of belonging.

Matthew Quick, author of Dad, Love, Me: A Memoir

Matthew Quick traveled all over the world advocating for mental health awareness, standing before crowds as a success story. But secretly, he was depressed. And some days, he didn’t want to live. Years earlier, when he first told his father that he wanted to be a novelist, the response was immediate and brutal: “Idiot!” Quick channeled his pain into his debut novel, THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK, which became a New York Times bestseller and was adapted into an Oscar-winning film. Still, the approval he longed for never came. His father remained cold and withholding. The deeper the rift between them grew, the deeper he sank into anxiety and addiction. In this book, Quick takes readers deep into his psyche, as he wrestles with both his own mental health and his father’s cognitive decline.

Nadia Hashimi, author of City of Widows

In February 2020, the US began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan after nearly 20 years of occupation. A whole generation of Afghan women had been born during that time --- women who had grown up in relative peace, gone to school, entered the professions, even served in the army and Parliament. The women of Afghanistan watched as the Taliban filled the streets again. In the bustling, cosmopolitan city of Kabul, women are TV newscasters, shop owners, doctors, teachers, lawyers, even soldiers. They include Marjan, who fought with the Afghan army and will risk everything to keep her daughter safe. Soraya led the army’s all-female combat force over the objections of her upper-class family. She is now a wanted woman whose brother may choose not to shelter her from the Taliban.

Shari Lapena, author of Getting Away with Murder

Jill and Ted adore their New York brownstone the way others adore their children. It reflects who they are, their status and tastes. With the grand mahogany staircase and state-of-the-art kitchen, it is the stuff of glossy magazines and real-estate dreams. It is their sanctuary. So when Ted’s inheritance runs out and he makes a bad investment, they panic. How can they protect their beloved home and enviable lifestyle? The answer is obvious. The death of one wealthy family member --- from whom they stand to inherit millions --- could solve all their problems. Together, they will get away with murder. As long as they trust each other. As long as neither makes a mistake. As long as there are no surprises.

Editorial Content for Beginning Middle End

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Norah Piehl

“I had been looking for something like a beginning,” writes Valeria Luiselli's first-person narrator on the opening page of BEGINNING MIDDLE END. “All I had to do, or so I thought, was to answer a simple question: How do I reinvent it, the story, our lives?”  Read More

Teaser

This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong? While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives as a duo, her daughter takes the reins of the story, and their journey soon becomes a quest for origins.

Promo

This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong? While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives as a duo, her daughter takes the reins of the story, and their journey soon becomes a quest for origins.

About the Book

From the beloved, award-winning author of the modern classics LOST CHILDREN ARCHIVE and TELL ME HOW IT ENDS comes her most powerful and page-turning novel yet: the tale of a mother and a daughter starting over, searching for a new story.

This story begins when a mother and her daughter take off on a trip. It is a summer of rapidly changing winds, volcanic rumbles and sudden tempests. They’ve landed in Sicily, near the ancient ruins where the mother’s grandmother worked long ago on an archaeological dig. The narrator’s marriage has collapsed, her mother is losing her memory, and her daughter is on the threshold of adolescence, starting to ask difficult questions and form complex memories. How do you begin again? the narrator wonders, pondering her family line. How do you begin again if you got the beginning wrong?

While the mother tries to figure out how to reconstruct their lives as a duo --- cooking meals side by side, reading out loud to each other, playing chess, bickering and making up --- her daughter takes the reins of the story, and their journey soon becomes a quest for origins, not just to the familial past across continents, languages and generations, but also farther back, to a mythical and even geological past.

BEGINNING MIDDLE END evolves into a road novel of exquisite tenderness, spanning four generations of women. In their travels through Sicily, mother and daughter cross paths with the island’s migrants, storekeepers and elders, and also its volcanoes, its winds and its waters. Weaving myths, ancient philosophy and natural history with fleeting moments of contemporary life, the unforgettable characters in this novel take us on a journey across time and confront some of life’s primary questions: How do stories shape our children’s memories and imagination? How do we situate ourselves deeply in the world while accepting our transience in it? How are a family’s memories made, and what happens when they disappear?

Warm, funny and poetic, this novel is an ode to imagination and possibility in dark times.

Audiobook available, read by Maia Enrigue Luiselli and Marta López Astrain

Editorial Content for Sea of Charms

Contributors

Reviewer (text)

Pamela Kramer

SEA OF CHARMS is the third installment in Sarah Beth Durst’s Spellshop series, romances that are set in a fantasy realm. This latest entry focuses on a character we met in THE ENCHANTED GREENHOUSE, Marin, a woman with a magic sailboat who delivers supplies to the various islands that make up the Crescent Island Empire. Read More

Teaser

Betrayed by love, Marin lives and works as a supply runner, sailing from island to island, delivering an array of goods with Perri the sea serpent and Ree the sailor shrub as her crew. On one of her routine trips to the capital, Alyssium, Marin finds a revolution underway --- and her friend, Dax, in the line of fire. What starts as a rescue evolves into a deal: Marin will keep Dax on as a member of her crew if he pretends to be her boyfriend at the End-of-Harvest Festival back home. But against her better judgment, Marin finds herself intrigued by his stubbornness, his passion for stories, his charming smile --- and realizes that perhaps she isn’t saving him. Maybe it’s the other way around.

Promo

Betrayed by love, Marin lives and works as a supply runner, sailing from island to island, delivering an array of goods with Perri the sea serpent and Ree the sailor shrub as her crew. On one of her routine trips to the capital, Alyssium, Marin finds a revolution underway --- and her friend, Dax, in the line of fire. What starts as a rescue evolves into a deal: Marin will keep Dax on as a member of her crew if he pretends to be her boyfriend at the End-of-Harvest Festival back home. But against her better judgment, Marin finds herself intrigued by his stubbornness, his passion for stories, his charming smile --- and realizes that perhaps she isn’t saving him. Maybe it’s the other way around.

About the Book

#1 New York Times bestselling author Sarah Beth Durst brings cozy fantasy romance to the high seas in SEA OF CHARMS, the third magical adventure in the Spellshop series.

Marin had always belonged on the great blue sea. When the man she thought was the love of her life schemed to ruin her parents’ business, she did what her heart knew best: she fled to the sea.

Now working as a supply runner on her own boat, Marin sails from island to island, delivering a varied array of goods: letters, flour, stories and even the occasional enchanted statue. It’s a lonely life, but it’s hers. Besides, she’s got the company of Perri the sea serpent and Ree the sailor shrub. They’re the best crew she could ask for.

On one of her routine trips to the capital of the Crescent Islands Empire, Alyssium, Marin finds the city on fire and a revolution underway --- so she offers transportation to Dax, a composer friend who refuses to leave behind his instruments. What starts as a rescue evolves into a deal: Marin will keep Dax on as a (temporary) member of her crew if he becomes her pretend boyfriend at the End-of-Harvest Festival back home.

Against her better judgment, Marin finds herself intrigued by his stubbornness, his passion for stories,  his charming smile --- and realizes that perhaps she isn’t saving him. Maybe it’s the other way around.

SEA OF CHARMS is a cozy fantasy romance about finding your crew, your family, and moreover, finding yourself.

Audiobook available, read by Caitlin Davies