The Best New Book Releases Out August 12, 2025

I find Samantha Downing’s books (For Your Own Good; My Lovely Wife) to have the highest level of fun when I know nothing about them prior to reading them. That’s why I selfishly almost left this off the list so I could continue being a blank slate before I get to it, but I couldn’t do that to you. Plus, my terrible memory will probably forget after I write this. Retired serial killer Lottie Jones finds her past coming for her in the form of a journalist at her doorstep who has questions about unsolved murders…—Jamie Canaves

This YA graphic novel is taking it all the way back to 2004 around the time of the Indian Ocean tsunami. We follow Nimmi, who is 16 and really wants to see her mother, who she hasn’t seen since her and her father left Sri Lanka. She gets her chance to finally confront her mother when her father is given a reporting assignment and must travel back. Though he refuses to take Nimmi with him, she still finds a way to go, and eventually her father relents and brings her around with him through all manner of check points, armed soldiers, and other war time things. Then christmas comes, and the aformentioned tsunami ravashes the island. Nimmi is stranded and surrounded by destruction—the question is, will she be able to reunite with her mother, after all?—Erica Ezeifedi

This lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers has everything from mess (see: the aformentioned trope) to a reality dating show to writerly things. It starts with Temi and Wale, who met in London and had a little ting going on. But then Wale broke up with Temi to go on Love Villa, and instead of succombing to breakup despair, Temi pours herself fully into her writing. She’s really close to a book deal, but publishers are stalling her out. Thing is, rent is due, so when she gets the chance to ghost-write a celebrity autobiography, she takes it. And you-know-who turns out to be the celebrity. Can they really get over their past so Temi can get to the bag? And what other things will she get to?—Erica Ezeifedi

I don’t know who got this picture of my internal state, but here we are. The Dilemmas of Working Women was first published a quarter of a century ago, and since then, it’s been seen as a feminist and anti-capitalist look at contemporery women’s lives. In five funny stories, we follow women who are seen as ambivalent, or “difficult,” about their lives and jobs. One woman loses her job and husband only to find out that she’d much rather stay home and make stuffed animals, even if others look down on her for it, while another women—who is recovering from cancer—tells her friends and boyfriend she’d rather be a literal worm. All these years later, the “spiky” women in this collection are as relatable as ever.—Erica Ezeifedi

This Korean bestseller is a bit of a genre bender. It’s described as a fast-paced queer vampire murder mystery, and starts off with four lonely elderly people who live on the sixth floor of a hospital. When they each die by suicide by jumping out of the window, Su-Yeon feels like she’s the only one at her precint who cares. But she needs to care, lest her good friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, who also lives on the sixth floor, meets the same fate. So, Su-Yeon does her own investigation, and what she finds is a trip: she meets the mysterious Wanda at the crime scene, and Wanda (who herself is trying to find her ex-boo thang Lily) says that a vampire did it. It’s farfetched, but then a fifth victim falls to their death, and Su-Yeon finds out that their body was drained of blood. This is exactly the kind of weird and trippy is it real or isn’t it type of story I will always be here for.—Erica Ezeifedi