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AUG 2026  Late summer winds up with fantasy titles to read in bulk. For one of the biggest books of August, it’s hard to tell what the primary hook will be; is it the fact that bestselling Alice Hoffman is starting a new series with The Witches of Cambridge (Scribner), that the novel is set at the women’s liberal arts school Radcliffe College in the 1950s, or that it features two brilliant women recruited into the centuries-old Lilith Society of witches? Another witch book with a fantastic hook is K. S. Shay’s Portrait of a Witch Undone (Erewhon), which features a spell gone terribly wrong, creepy settings, dual realities, and a famous theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

Award-winning T. Kingfisher keeps the fantasy thread going with Daggerbound (Bramble), set in the same world as Swordheart. In this story, a disillusioned scholar somehow releases an immortal warrior who has been trapped in a sword for hundreds of years, only to find a new meaning to endearing enchantment. Bestselling Natasha Pulley, who is similarly adept at writing about everyday, uncommon, and decidedly uncanny magic, returns with the genre-blending The Salt King (Bloomsbury), a fantasy mystery with a queer romance in which a Jesuit priest and a small-town doctor uncover the destructive powers of what becomes known as salt light.

Balancing the fantasy works are realistic novels asking contemporary questions. Award-winning Edwidge Danticat offers Dèy (Knopf), which centers around the questions of what home means, what family costs and provides, and how to reconcile the daily trauma of living. In Etna (Scribner), the award-winning Paul Yoon ponders similar questions through the eyes of the titular military working dog. Walking away from war, Etna tries to find home. In The Seekers of Deer Creek (Mariner), Thao Thai (who wrote the Read with Jenna pick Banyan Moon) poses questions about sisters and a family’s past, all tied up with a painting by a Vietnamese artist.

Crime novels of all kinds also feature in August. Just two for readers to note are My Sister Is Going To Kill Me (Morrow) by Nina Simon (who wrote the Reese’s Book Club pick Mother-Daughter Murder Night) and Under the Falls (Knopf) by Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo. In the first book, two sisters solve a crime as they raft down the Grand Canyon. The second is a literary thriller about small towns and big resentments.

Lastly, transtemporal trips are on the itinerary in two novels that showcase time-travel agencies. Time Travel for Beginners (Berkley) by Jaclyn Moriarty offers three people excursions to the past only to connect them in the present. In Time To Burn (Harper) by Ellery Lloyd, past time has the most dangerous ability to threaten the future.

In addition to the individual listings, the accompanying spreadsheet is sortable and searchable by BISAC, date, author, title, and publisher. We have also created an Edelweiss collection to reference. It contains a wide range of additional content, including egalleys, plot summaries, author biographies, and key selling points. We invite you into a moment full of books and hope that, as you browse the abundant material on offer, you find great works to add to your collections.