It’s hard to believe we’re already talking about August book releases. There are some fun titles in this group. And, don’t forget to check the titles at the end of the annotated ones as well. Then, let us know what books I missed. What August releases are you waiting to read?

My sister, Christie, is one of those readers waiting for the thirty-third Meg Langslow mystery, Donna Andrews’ Birder, She Wrote. Meg is relaxing in the hammock, taste-testing Michael’s latest batch of Arnold Palmers and watching the hummingbirds at their feeders when her hopes for a relaxing early summer morning are dashed. First her father recruits her to help him install a new batch of bees in the hive in her backyard. Then Mayor Shiffley recruits her to placate the NIMBYs (Not in my backyard), as she calls them – a group of newcomers to Caerphilly who have built McMansions next door to working farms and then do their best to make life miserable for the farmers. And finally Meg’s grandmother, shows up, trailed by a nosy reporter who is writing a feature on her for a genteel Southern ladies’ magazine. Cordelia drafts Meg to accompany her and Deacon Washington of the New Life Baptist Church – and the reporter, alas – in their search for a long-lost African-American cemetery. Unfortunately what they discover is not an ancient cemetery but a fresh corpse. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

North of Nowhere is Allison Brennan’s latest standalone. After five years in hiding from their murderous father, the day Kristen and Ryan McIntyre have been dreading has arrived: Boyd McIntyre, head of a Los Angeles crime family, has at last tracked his kids to a small Montana town and is minutes away from kidnapping them. They barely escape in a small plane, but gunfire hits the fuel line. The pilot, a man who has been raising them as his own, manages to crash land in the middle of the Montana wilderness. The siblings hike deep into the woods, searching desperately for safety―unaware of the severity of the approaching storm. Boyd’s sister Ruby left Los Angeles for the Army years ago, cutting off contact in order to help keep her niece and nephew safe and free from the horrors of the McIntyre clan. So when she gets an emergency call that the plane has gone down with the kids inside, she drops everything to try save them. As the storm builds, Ruby isn’t the only person looking for them. Boyd has hired an expert tracker to find and bring them home. And rancher Nick Lorenzo, who knows these mountains better than anyone and doesn’t understand why the kids are running, is on their trail too. (Release date is Aug. 8.)

In Melanie Benjamin’s California Golden, two sisters navigate the thrilling, euphoric early days of California surf culture in this dazzling saga of ambition, sacrifice, and the tangled ties between mothers and daughters from the New York Times bestselling author of The Aviator’s Wife.. Southern California, 1960s: endless sunny days surfing in Malibu, followed by glittering neon nights at Whisky a Go Go. In an era when women are expected to be housewives, Carol Donnelly breaks the mold as a legendary female surfer struggling to compete in a male-dominated sport—and her daughters, Mindy and Ginger, bear the weight of Carol’s unconventional lifestyle.. (Release date is Aug. 8.)

Dez Limerick returns in the sequel to The Gatekeeper, James Byrne’s Deadlock. Desmond Aloysius Limerick (“Dez” to his friends and close personal enemies) is a man with a shadowy past, certain useful hard-won skills, and, if one digs deep enough, a reputation as a good man to have at your back. Now retired from his previous life, Dez is just a bloke with a winning smile, a bass guitar, and bullet wounds that paint a road map of past lives. Jaleh Swann, a business journalist hot on the trail of an auditor who was mugged and killed, lands in the hospital just one day after her Portland apartment is ransacked. When Jaleh’s sister, Raziah, reaches out to an old friend for help, Dez has no choice but to answer. The Swann sisters have been pulled into a dizzying web of cover-ups and danger. At the center lies an insidious Oregon-based tech corporation, Clockjack, which has enough money and hired guns to silence just about anyone—including this rag-tag trio. Luckily, Dez’s speciality is not just to open doors, but keep them open—and protect those working to expose Clockjack’s secrets. (Release date is Aug. 8.)

CJ Connor’s Board to Death “is an ultra-charming new mystery series starring Ben Rosencrantz, a queer 30-year-old English professor (and self-proclaimed nerd) who’s returned to his hometown of Salt Lake City to run his family’s board game shop in the trendy Sugar House neighborhood, a community hotspot for players of all ages…and killer collectors!” (Release date is Aug. 22.)

I thought Sara DiVello’s true crime novel, Broadway Butterfly, was terrific. New York in the Roaring Twenties—a riveting true-crime novel, based on one of the most notorious unsolved murders of the era, where power, politics, and secrets conspire to bury the truth. Manhattan, 1923. Scandalous flapper Dot King is found dead in her Midtown apartment, a bottle of chloroform beside her and a fortune in jewels missing. Dot’s headline-making murder grips the city. It also draws a clutch of lovers, parasites, and justice seekers into one of the city’s most mesmerizing mysteries. Among them: Daily News crime reporter Julia Harpman, chasing the story while navigating a male-dominated industry; righteous NYPD detective John D. Coughlin, struggling against city corruption; and Ella Bradford, the victim’s Harlem maid, closest confidante, and keeper of secrets. Fascinating book, and I liked the format. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Watch those cupcakes this Halloween. Carlene O’Connor, Liz Ireland, and Carol J. Perry each submitted a story to Halloween Cupcake Murder, a cozy mystery collection. O’Connor takes readers to Galway, Ireland, for the city’s Halloween Mystery Tour. Mrs. Claus has to deal with a candy corn shortage and murder in “Mrs. Claus and the Candy Corn Caper”. Carol J. Perry takes readers to Salem, Massachusetts as WICH-TV’s Lee Barrett investigates a disappearance. All three authors bring back series characters in this enjoyable collection. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

Evergreen is the sequel to Naomi Hirahara’s award-winning mystery, Clark & Division. It’s been two years since Aki Ito and her family were released from Manzanar detention center and resettled in Chicago with other Japanese Americans. Now the Itos have finally been allowed to return home to California—but nothing is as they left it. The entire Japanese American community is starting from scratch, with thousands of people living in dismal refugee camps while they struggle to find new houses and jobs in over-crowded Los Angeles. Aki is working as a nurse’s aide at the Japanese Hospital in Boyle Heights when an elderly Issei man is admitted with suspicious injuries. When she seeks out his son, she is shocked to recognize her husband’s best friend, Babe Watanabe. Could Babe be guilty of elder abuse? (Release date is Aug. 1.)

It took me a little while to get into Hugh Lessig’s Fadeaway Joe, but the characters grow on you. Sixty-four-year-old Joe has known violence his entire life. For forty years, he’s worked as an enforcer for loan shark and close friend Maxie Smith, breaking more than a few bones along the way. When Maxie abruptly fires him, Joe isn’t sure where to lay the blame—on Maxie, the man he once considered his brother, or on the early-onset Alzheimer’s that made Maxie lose faith in him in the first place. To keep his head above water, he begins to operate a food truck that’s barely getting by. Desperate to regain some purpose in his life, Joe makes a life-altering decision: he’s going to take down Maxie Smith by any means necessary, once and for all. However, his plan of revenge is sidelined when he meets twenty-two-year-old Paula Jessup, a wise-cracking amateur detective with a few scheming cards up her sleeve, who’s on the run from a trafficking ring she’s been investigating. The two form an unlikely bond: Paula needs some protection and Joe needs a purpose. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

Alyssa Maxwell’s eleventh Gilded Newport Mystery is Murder at the Elms. The glorious mansions of Newport house many mysteries—murder, theft, scandal—and no one is more adept at solving them than reporter Emma Andrews . . .
1901: Back from their honeymoon in Italy, Emma and Derrick are adapting to married life as they return to their duties at their jointly owned newspaper, the Newport Messenger. The Elms, coal baron Edward Berwind’s newly completed Bellevue Avenue estate, is newsworthy for two reasons: A modern mansion for the new century, it is one of the first homes in America to be wired for electricity with no backup power system, generated by coal from Berwind’s own mines. And their servants—with a single exception—have all gone on strike to protest their working conditions. Summarily dismissing and replacing his staff with cool and callous efficiency, Berwind throws a grand party to showcase the marvels of his new “cottage.” Emma and Derrick are invited to the fete, which culminates not only in a fabulous musicale but an unforeseen tragedy—a chambermaid is found dead in the coal tunnel. In short order, it is also discovered that a guest’s diamond necklace is missing and a laborer has disappeared. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

Mark Pryor brings back Henri Lefort in The Dark Edge of Night. Winter 1940: With soldiers parading down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, Nazi flags dangling from the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower defaced with German propaganda, Parisians have little to celebrate as Christmas approaches. Police Inspector Henri Lefort’s wishes for a quiet holiday season are dashed when the Gestapo orders him to investigate the disappearance of Dr. Viktor Brandt, a neurologist involved in a secret project at one of Paris’s hospitals. Being forced onto a missing persons case for the enemy doesn’t deter Henri from conducting his real job. A Frenchman has been beaten to death in what appears to be a botched burglary, and catching a killer is more important than locating a wayward scientist. But when Henri learns that the victim’s brother is a doctor who worked at the same hospital as the missing German, his investigation takes a disturbing turn. (Release date is August 15.)

I really need to try Joanna Schaffhausen’s Detective Annalisa Vega series. Dead and Gone is the third one. For Chicago police detective Annalisa Vega, Sam Tran’s death presents an ominous puzzle. The ex-cop turned PI is found hanging from a cemetery tree with a message across his chest that suggests someone holds a murderous grudge against the police. Annalisa suspects the real answer lies in one of Tran’s open cases. She believes he stumbled on a dark secret during his investigations and someone killed him to keep him quiet. Her own family harbors plenty of secrets, something Annalisa is reminded of when her brother turns out to be one of Sam’s last clients. Vinny Vega hired Tran to find a dangerous stalker on his daughter’s college campus. Now Sam is dead and the stalker remains at large, with Annalisa’s niece Quinn firmly in his sight. (Release date is Aug. 8.)

Although there were senior sleuths years before Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club, I blame him for the surplus of senior sleuths. Now, there’s Leonie Swann’s The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp. It has been an eventful morning for Agnes Sharp and the other inhabitants of Sunset Hall, a house share for the old and unruly in the sleepy English countryside. Although they have had some issues (misplaced reading glasses, conflicting culinary tastes, decreasing mobility, and gluttonous grandsons), nothing prepares them for an unexpected visit from a police officer with some shocking news. A body has been discovered next door. Everyone puts on a long face for show, but they are secretly relieved the body in question is not the one they’re currently hiding in the shed (sorry, Lillith). It seems the answer to their little problem with Lillith may have fallen right into their laps. All they have to do is find out who murdered their neighbor, so they can pin Lillith’s death on them, thus killing two (old) birds with one stone (cold killer). (Release date is Aug. 29.)

I’ll admit I read David P. Wagner’s Rick Montoya Italian mysteries as much for the food in different regions of Italy as much as for the mystery. In Best Served Cold, an old college friend leading a religious tour in Assisi asks interpreter Rick Montoya to fill in for their guide who’s gone missing, Rick is happy to oblige. He’s looking forward to seeing his old friend, and the food and wine of Umbria sound like the perfect reward for a tense translation job he’s just completed for the police in Palermo involving witness testimony against the mafia. But when the shady tour guide is found dead the next morning under suspicious circumstances, Rick’s relaxing gig turns into an unofficial job assisting the local police inspector with her interviews of the tour group members. Could one of the pious pilgrims be a cold-blooded killer? Or has one of the victim’s many shady dealings finally caught up with him? (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Tracey Emerson Wood brings us the historical novel about the First Lady who clandestinely assumed the presidency, The President’s Wife. Socialite Edith Bolling has been in no hurry to find a new husband since she was widowed, preferring to fill her days with good friends and travel. But the enchanting courting of President Woodrow Wilson wins Edith over and she becomes the First Lady of the United States. The position is uncomfortable for the fiercely independent Edith, but she’s determined to rise to the challenges of her new marriage—from the bloodthirsty press to the shadows of the first World War. Warming to her new role, Edith is soon indispensable to her husband’s presidency. She replaces the staff that Woodrow finds distracting, and discusses policy with him daily. Throughout the war, she encrypts top- secret messages and despite lacking formal education becomes an important adviser. When peace talks begin in Europe, she attends at Woodrow’s side. But just as the critical fight to ratify the treaty to end the war and create a League of Nations in order to prevent another, Woodrow’s always-delicate health takes a dramatic turn for the worse. In her determination to preserve both his progress and his reputation, Edith all but assumes the presidency herself. (Release date is Aug. 15.)

Check these titles as well!

Alam, Nigar – Under the Tamarind Tree (8/15)
Brecher, Christin – Mugshots of Manhattan (8/22)
Burdette, Lucy – A Clue in the Crumbs (8/8)
Cast, P.C. – Out of the Dawn (8/8)
Danvers, Holly – Read To Death at the Lakeside Library (8/8)
Day, Maddie – Murder at a Cape Bookstore (8/22)
Glatt, John – Tangled Vines: Power, Privilege, and the Murdaugh Family Murders (8/8)
Guillen, Mauro F. – The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society (8/22)
Gupta, Prachi – They Called Us Exceptional and Other Lies That Raised Us (8/22)
Kelly, Vanessa – The Highlander’s Kilted Bride (8/22)
Kennedy, James – Bride of the Tornado (8/15)
Lange, Tracey – The Connellys of County Down (8/1)
Lloyd, Catherine – Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld (8/22)
Morgan, Sophie H. – The Witch is Back (8/15)
Pekkanen, Sarah – Gone Tonight (8/1)
Plunkett, Genevieve – In the Lobby of the Dream Hotel (8/15)
Roberts, Amber – Text Appeal (8/8)
Rosson, Keith – Fever House (8/15)
Skye, Evelyn – The Hundred Loves of Juliet (8/1)
Waddell, Mark – The Body in the Back Garden (8/22)
Wilton, Traci – Mrs. Morris and the Wolfman (8/22)