The Best New Book Releases Out August 27, 2024

After a breakup, Farzan Alavi is a hot mess. When he decides to drown his sorrows in some fine red at Kansas City’s newest wine bar, he unexpectedly gets VIP treatment. He’s ushered to a special table for one and given extra special attention by a sommelier who’s super fine. This sommelier, David Curtis, thinks Farzan is Frank Allen, the city’s super influential food critic, and tries his best to razzle dazzle him. This razzle turns into some bedroom tussling, and once the case of mistaken identity is cleared up, both men have a good little kii. It starts to seem like their fun has come to an end since David is focused on studying to become a sommelier, until Farzan inherits his family’s bistro and needs someone’s restaurant knowledge. David agrees to help, as long as Farzan helps him study for his test, and things stay on a spicy and delicious path.

In this memoirifesto, Louisiana librarian Amanda Jones recounts how she went to advocate for the freedom to read at a local public hearing in 2022 and was immediately plunged into a nightmare. Right-wing book banners called her things like a pedo and a porn pusher, but she fought back. She sued her defamers and has been encouraging others to do the same. In That Librarian, she calls on all book lovers to stand up to the deluge of book bans the U.S. has been suffering through the last few years.

Protagonist Rae is a baddie. In more ways than one. As she’s dying, she takes advantage of a second chance at life, but it’ll mean striking a magical bargain that puts her in the world of her favorite fantasy series. This sounds all well and good, except the kingdom in the story is about to go to war, there are monsters, scheming and scamming court dwellers, and—most importantly—Rae is to be the villainess. Gasp. It’s all good, though, since villainesses stay with the best one-liners and fashions…even if she may not be able to live past the final page.

In this queer YA coming-of-age tale, Libertad (Libi) Morazán is a high school senior who writes political poetry for her anonymous Instagram account as the heated 2017 Honduran presidential election gets closer and closer. As protests ramp up, she finds out about her older brother’s involvement, and her crush on a girl gets discovered by her mother. Now, the homebound homophobia and corruption feel like it’s closing in around her, and once a tragedy strikes, leaving her home may be the only thing she can do.

Hotline takes it back to the ’80s, when Muna Heddad and her son escape to Montreal from a war-torn Lebanon. She assumed she’d be able to teach French, but schools don’t trust her to, and she very quickly finds herself in need of money quickly. The only job she can get is as a hotline operator at a weight-loss center, where she takes calls all day from people inquiring about ads. But the callers don’t want to just find out about losing weight—soon enough, the ease they feel speaking to Muna has them spilling their own tea. She finds out about all manner of bad marriages, personal insecurities, and grieving children, even as her life outside of the call center keeps her boxed out.

In this queer YA horror, five years ago, Fern, Jaq, and Mallory were girls seeking refuge from intolerance in an old abandoned house. But one day, Mallory never made it home. Now, as Jaq and Fern are about to graduate from high school, something that looks like Mallory starts to appear and it wants revenge. Suddenly, the cisgender and heteronormative identities the girls had shielded themselves with begin to crumble, and they start to remember what really happened all those years ago.