A Scandalous Art-World Tell All and More of the Very Best Books Coming Out in August

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This month, pile your nightstand with a novel about what happens but the one percent try to outrun their problems, a biography of the next Queen of England, a look inside the women who changed the American fashion industry forever, and so much more. Here are T&C's picks for the best books of August 2024.

The Rich People Have Gone Away

Married couple Theo and Darla thought they were escaping danger when they fled New York City for their second home in the midst of a 2020 lockdown. But when, after a secret is revealed, Darla goes missing, the trouble for the couple—as well as the less fortunate friends they left behind in the city—is only just beginning.

Empresses of Seventh Avenue

For years, American fashion designers on Manhattan's Seventh Avenue had been taking what we'll call inspiration from their Parisian compatriots. But when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, suddenly the American designers were left to their own devices—and designs. What happened next changed the course of international fashion for generations, and set the stage for the homegrown talent we know today to rise to prominence. In Nancy MacDonell's book, the story of international intrigue and its sartorial consequences is told in fascinating detail.

Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King

The idea of how and why billionaires spend their money might never has been as impactful as it is right now. One way to understand the way the.001 percent operates is to dive into this unauthorized biography of Bill Gates, which uses hundreds of interviews with the people who've worked alongside him to shed light on the secret sides of one of the world's richest and most powerful men.

The Art of Power

It’s hard to believe Nancy Pelosi has never written a memoir about her extraordinary life and career, but certainly understandable: she has been busy, making history as the first woman to be elected U.S. House Speaker (twice), leading her party through some very tumultuous years, and fighting for democracy on (and since) January 6. To be clear, she is still very busy—the 84-year-old is currently serving her 19th term in Congress—but has had time to pen this highly anticipated tell-all charting her rise from housewife to the most powerful woman in America.

All That Glitters

A reader could be forgiven for picking up Orlando Whitfield's memoir about his life and career alongside the infamous art fraud Inigo Philbrick and expecting it to be all juice. The book isn't dry by any stretch—in fact, it's full of twists, turns, gossip, and cautionary tales—but it's also more than just a tell-all about adjacency to scandal. Whitfield is a thoughtful writer who spins an enchanting tale about ambition, friendship, power, and class, and his observations about the art world and the characters who populate it (himself included) are thought provoking and astute. In short, come for the infamy and intrigue, stay for the insight.

Cryptomania

At its height, the crypto boom promised to change everything about how finance—and much of the rest of the world—worked. In this deeply reported and fascinating look at the cryptocracy and specifically the firm FTX and its CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Andrew Chow uncovers the true story of how a financial revolution went spectacularly sour.

Peggy

It can be easy to reduce the life of Peggy Guggenheim, the trailblazing art collector, to images on a mood board. Sure, there's her slim memoir, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict, but the Peggy of today is often one we've imagined. In this new novel, Rebecca Godfrey and Leslie Jamison, who completed the book after Godfrey's death, dive deep into imagining her life, from her father's untimely demise on the Titanic to her struggles to find a place in both the art world and Europe's restrictive society. It's a smart, exciting, and big-hearted book that not only thinks about what a life can be but also how it becomes legendary.

The Unraveling

The latest from Hamrick, a choreographer and former American Ballet Theater dancer, once again uses the world of dance to tell a thrilling story about a life hanging in the balance. Here, the novel follows Jocelyn, an American in London who's desperate to prove her worth to the Royal National Ballet at the same time that she's caught between what she knows she should do and lurking temptation.

How to Leave the House

How much can happen in just 24 hours? Quite a bit if you're reading Nathan Newman's debut novel, about a young man with one day left at home before he departs for college. But what a day it is: a mysterious package has gone missing, a local teenager's life has been turned upside down, and the protagonist is at odds with everyone from his mother to his ex and seemingly everyone else. It's a witty, sprawling story about life's big changes and the things that never change, told with style and smarts by a remarkable new voice.

Worst Case Scenario

As delicious as T.J. Newman's books are, perhaps this one is best left home on your summer vacation. That's because the author's latest thriller follows a catastrophic accident—a plane plummeting into a nuclear power plant—and the incredible impact the event could have on the world. It's a thrilling, expertly assembled story about high stakes, courage, and the fate of the world—we're just not sure we want to be reading it anywhere near an airplane.

Too Good to Fact Check

In his decade editing a glossy magazine, Jeremy Murphy told countless stories about the rich and famous. But behind the scenes, things could be somewhat less perfect than they seemed on the page. In this fun, surprising look back at his life among Hollywood royalty, Murphy recalls the bumps in the road—and fights in bars, and arrests on airplanes—that were all just part of a day's work.

There Are Rivers in the Sky

Elif Shafak returns with another knockout novel, There Are Rivers in the Sky, which follows three characters who live on the banks of the River Tigris and the River Thames. There's Arthur, who lives in 1840 London; Narin, a 10-year-old Yazidi girl facing the rise of ISIS in 2014 Turkey; and Zaleekah, a newly-divorced woman to moves into a houseboat on the Thames in 2018 London. Shafak beautifully weaves together history and nature throughout the novel.

The Hypocrite

Jo Hamya burst onto the literary scene with Three Rooms, a modern take on A Room of One's Own. She's back with The Hypocrite, wherein feminist playwright Sophia is anxiously awaiting her father's feedback on her new work—he's the subject of the show, and it does not paint him in a flattering light, to say the least. The story is framed by one staging of Sophia's play, but flashes back to a vacation they took years ago to an island off the coast of Sicily. The Hypocrite features Hamya's astute insights into millennials as she grapples with the generational divide in responding to our post-#MeToo world.

The Pairing

Author of Red, White & Royal Blue Casey McQuiston is back with another contemporary queer romance. The Pairing follows exes Theo and Kit, who broke up en route to their dream European food and wine tour. Nearly two years later, they both decide—separately—to use their voucher for the tour, and now they're stuck spending three weeks together, drinking and eating their way through Europe. Can these two former best friends get over what happened and make it work?

Hum

The world of Hum feels not too far from our present day reality. In Helen Phillips's story, May is a struggling mom who loses her job to AI robots called "hums." She decides to sign up for an experiment that alters her face ever-so-slightly to make her unrecognizable by surveillance cameras, and then splurges on a vacation to the Botanical Garden for her family of four. But when May insists her children leave their devices behind, things begin to go horribly awry. It makes you, the reader, deeply uncomfortable (in a good way) about the advances in AI and our dependence on technology—Jeff VanderMeer said it best in his blurb: Phillips "has found a way to make visible uncomfortable truths about our present by interrogating the near-future."

Catherine, the Princess of Wales: A Biography of the Future Queen

Following Kate Middleton's shocking announcement in March that she is undergoing treatment for cancer, the Princess of Wales has largely remained out of the public eye. But despite a lack of appearances, interest in the royal remains piqued.Fortunately, a new biography of the future queen by British journalist Robert Jobson offers insights into Kate's childhood, her relationship with Prince William, and her life in the public eye—as well as context for how she's choosing to share her current health struggles.

Love and Other Conspiracies

Mallory Marlowe's delightful debut romance follows Hallie Barrett, a web series producer who's searching for her next hit. She stumbles across Hayden Hargrove, a paranormal conspiracy theorist, and decides to build a show around him. As they start to work on the series—which features a skeptical Hallie pushing back on Hayden's wild claims,—they begin to develop feelings for each other. It's charming, swoony, and such an unexpectedly fun premise for a romance novel.

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore

If you like books and bookstores, you're absolutely going to love Evan Friss's The Bookshop, which chronicles the history of American bookstores from Benjamin Franklin's first one in Philadelphia to the rise of Amazon in modern-day. "That bookstores continue to endure is, in some ways, something of a miracle," Friss writes in his introduction. But we're so thankful they do—and that there's this tribute to them.

The In Crowd: A Novel

This whodunnit set in English high society kicks off when rowers find a body floating in the Thames. The search for answers leads Detective Inspector Caius Beauchamp down a rabbit hole of two cold cases: one, a disappearance at a girls boarding school, and two, when a clothing executive stole his company's multi-million dollar corporate retirement fund. (Beauchamp is the detective in Vassell's first novel, The Other Half, but you don't need to read that one to read, or enjoy, this one!)

Christopher Isherwood Inside Out

Christopher Isherwood was born an heir to an old English estate, but spent his formative years in Berlin, where he sought sexual freedom—and where he would write the semi-autobiographical work that would later become Cabaret—and died an icon of the gay liberation movement in California. In a new biography, Katherine Bucknell sheds light on all the things in between that also inspired his writing, from his collaborative friendships with W. H. Auden and Truman Capote, his conversion to the Hindu philosophy of Vedanta, and, above all, his lifelong search for authenticity.

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