August Books from the Book Expo

Every year I attend the Book Expo, one of the biggest publishing conferences in the country where publishers give out copies of the books they will be promoting in the near future. Each month I will post a photo of the books I picked up that will be published that month.
(June books are here.)
(July books are here.)

Here are the books I picked up that publish in August.

 Karen Abbott's The Ghosts of Eden Park recounts the true story of legendary bootlegger George Remus, who owned 35% of all the liquor in 1921. Mabel Willebrandt, a pioneering female prosecutor sets her sights on bringing down Remus' empire, along with her investigator Franklin Dodge. When Dodge begins an affair with Remus' wife, things get really crazy. This one has gotten rave reviews and sounds fantastic for people who like true crime that reads like fiction.

In thriller writer Karen Slaughter's newest novel The Last Widow, Atlanta medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner, Georgia Bureau of  Investigations Will Trent, are tasked with investigating a two deadly bombings when Sara is kidnapped and Will must save her and prevent more bombings from happening. Slaughter is at the top of her game here.

Lisa Lutz's The Swallows is about "a teacher at a New England prep school who ignites a gender war- with deadly consequences". I loved her last novel, The Passenger, and this one looks to be pretty intense and a little controversial.

Sarah M. Broom' memoir The Yellow House is about the shotgun house she and her family of eleven siblings grew up in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans. Her widowed mom raised her family in that house until Hurrican Katrina came along. It's about race, class, inequality and family and it's gotten great reviews.

Rob Hart's novel, The Warehouse, was chosen as one of the Editor's Buzz Books at the Book Expo. Paxton works for Cloud (think Amazon) that has taken over a large portion of the American economy. Zinnia has gone undercover at Cloud trying to discover exactly what is going on there. It sounds fabulous and a little scary.

In Brock Clarke's Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe, when the titular hero's mother passes away, a mysterious woman shows at her funeral and claims to be his aunt. She convinces Calvin to accompany her to Europe, where he is followed by secret agents, religious fanatics, and his stalker ex-wife. It's  being called a cross between a Wes Anderson movie and John Irving book, with that odd comic sensibility.

 Rick Moody tells the tale of the first month of his second marriage in his memoir The Long Accomplishment. His hope for a smooth matrimonial start is beset by "miscarriages, the death of friends and robberies, just for starters." Moody wrote the book The Ice Storm, so it will interesting to read his take on a real marriage.

See you in September.