Did I mention that Louise Penny’s Glass Houses comes out on August 29? A mysterious figure appears in Three Pines, and Chief Inspector Gamache knows something is wrong. However, because no laws are being broken, he does nothing. There’s an uneasy atmosphere in the town, though. Soon after  the figure disappears, a body is found. After the investigation, a trial begins, and Gamache knows there will be a reckoning. In the end, Gamache knows he’ll have to face his conscience.

Pieces of Happiness is Norwegian author Anne Ostby’s debut in the United States. When four friends in their sixties receive letters in the mail, their answer is yes. Their old high school friend, Kat, the adventurer who ran off to the South Pacific, invites them to live on her cocoa farm in Fiji. They not only start a chocolate business, but strengthen their friendship and rediscover themselves. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

A Promise of Ruin, the second mystery in Cuyler Overholt’s series featuring Dr. Genevieve Summerford follows the young psychiatrist while she investigates the disappearance of a young Italian woman. (Release date is Aug. 8.)

T. Jefferson Parker introduces Roland Ford in The Room of White Fire. P.I. Roland Ford is good at finding people, but when he’s hired to locate Air Force veteran Clay Hickman, he knows there’s something dark about his assignment. The young man, shattered by war, is on the run from a mental institution. And, Ford gets a different story from everyone involved. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

In the first Chuck Restic mystery by Adam Walker Phillips, The Silent Second, Chuck, a successful HR manager in LA, puts his specialized skills set to the test. He moonlights as a private detective. (Release date is Aug. 15.)

Someone is spying on American author Helen Hancock, and she turns to the US Embassy and Hugo Marston in Mark Pryor’s The Sorbonne Affair. While in Paris to conduct research and teach a small class of writers, she discovers a spy camera hidden in her room at the Sorbonne Hotel. But, it isn’t long before the case turns into murder. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

Natasha Pulley, author of The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, now brings us The Bedlam Stacks. It’s a treacherous quest in the magical landscape of nineteenth century Peru, where one man has to separate fact from fairy tale. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Erika Raskin’s Best Intentions takes Marti Trailer, a mother, daughter of a congressman, and wife to a
successful obstetrician, back into the work force. But, in her job as a hospital social worker, she witnesses something she can’t unsee, and does the “right thing”. But, Marti goes from stay-at-home mom to murder trial defendant in this domestic mystery. (Release date is Aug. 15.)

Leona: The Die is Cast by Jenny Rogneby was a bestseller in Scandinavia. The thriller follows Leona Lindberg of Stockholm’s Violent Crime Division as she investigates a high-profile robbery. But, Leona herself has issues – a gambling addiction and a troubled marriage – that could impact her investigation. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

In Augustus Rose’s debut, The Readymade Thief, he pits a seventeen-year-old against the powerful men who pull the strings in society. After she took the fall for a rich friend, Lee Cuddy takes refuge in the Crystal Palace, a cooperative of runaway kids in Philadelphia. But homeless kids are disappearing from the streets in suspicious numbers, and Lee discovers the charitable cooperative is too good to be true. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Sometimes true life is more intriguing than fiction. Take Tom Sanction’s The Bettencourt Affair. Was the world’s wealthiest woman the victim of a con man or her own family members. This is the true story of the scandal that rocked Paris. (Release date is Aug. 8.)

The brutal murder of a business tycoon leaves Acton Tangler, family liaison officer for the Minneapolis Polis Department, reeling as much as others in the Twin Cities. But that’s just the beginning of a gruesome crime spree in Gerry Schmitt’s Shadow Girl. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Jonathan Skariton’s debut novel, Seance Infernale, is set in contemporary and nineteenth-century Europe, the United States, and Scotland. It involves the inventor of moving pictures, his lost film, Seance Infernale, made in Edinburgh in 1888, and a shocking series of crimes terrorizing that city in present time. (Release date is Aug. 29.)

In Triss Stein’s latest Erica Donato mystery, Brooklyn Wars, the historian discovers a body in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, and sets out to track down the man’s history, a history that is linked to her own family. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Military veterans, local heroes, and first responders are targeted in David Thurlo’s Kill the Heroes. Charlie Henry, co-owner of a pawn shop and Iraq war veteran, is invited to attend the dedication of a memorial in a park in Albuquerque. But, shots ring out, missing Charlie and hitting the veteran next to hi. Charlie vows to find the person who would attack American heroes. (Release date is Aug. 29.)

The Hidden Light of Northern Fires is Daren Wang’s debut novel. It’s rooted in the remarkable true history of the only secessionist town north of the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s the story of an outspoken abolitionist who finds herself drawn to a fugitive in forbidden ways, as she helps him on the dangerous path to freedom. (Release date is Aug. 29.)

Leah Weiss’ debut novel,  If the Creek Don’t Rise, was one of the most talked about books at Book Expo. Baines Creek is a North Carolina mountain town filled with moonshine and rotten husbands – and not much else. And Sadie Blue is only the latest girl to face a dead-end future at the mercy of a dangerous drunk. She’s only been married for fifteen days, and she already knows she made a mistake. But then a stranger sweeps into town, and Sadie starts to think there might be more to life than being Roy’s wife. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

The Clockwork Dynasty is a “thriller that weaves a path through history, following a race of humanlike machines that have been hiding among us for untold centuries.” It’s written by Daniel H. Wilson, bestselling author of Robopocalypse. (Release date is Aug. 1.)

Gabrielle Zevin, author of The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry, takes on slut-shaming in her novel Young Jane Young. It follows three generations of women, and captures the mood the highly charged political arena, and also the double standards in every aspect of a woman’s life. An ambitious young congressional intern makes the mistake of having an affair and blogging about it. The congressman doesn’t take the fall. Aviva does, and, years later, after moving and changing her life, her past catches up with her. (Release date is Aug. 22.)

Here’s the list of books I didn’t summarize.

Mrs. Fletcher by Tom Perrotta
Reincarnation Blues by Michael Poore
New People by Danzy Senna
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
My Absolute Darling by Gabriel Tallent
The Lauras by Sara Taylor
The End of the World Running Club by Adrian J. Walker
Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang

So, besides Louise Penny’s Glass Houses, what books jump out at you for August?