7 New & Notable Books Coming in August 2026

Teenage genius Emma Branch is always the odd girl out. Her family doesn’t understand her science obsession, and neither do her classmates. And all anyone in her small town seems to care about is football. 

When her beloved golden retriever and best friend, Hudson, gets into an accident, Emma will do anything to save him. Including using him in one of her experiments. But instead of healing him, the procedure somehow turns him human. 

Soon, the entire town is about to learn how one enthusiastic boy can open hearts and minds—after he makes a giant mess first, of course.

After seven years of writer’s block, Mallory Maddock’s reputation as a literary sensation is fading fast. She’ll do anything to save her career, but that requires inspiration. 

When she finds Leo, a struggling addict sleeping under a bridge and trading sex for survival, she knows he’s exactly what she’s been looking for: a story. The world needs Leo’s story, and Mallory is convinced she’s the one to write it. 

But when Mallory’s own secrets threaten to undo everything, Mallory has to decide just how far she’s willing to go to publish the perfect story.

Katie is a bit adrift in life. Newly out of college, she’s no longer speaking with her mother, and her roommate suddenly moved out. 

When her boyfriend takes her on vacation to his family’s seaside town, Katie finds an instant and almost giddy sense of connection with his childhood cat. 

Silver doesn’t care that Katie doesn’t have a job or won’t talk to her mother. And she has the life Katie longs for. The one where she can lounge around all day and get pampered. Quickly, Katie and Silver are inseparable. 

But Katie knows that affection always has a price. As her other relationships falter, Katie has to look at what she actually wants… and what she’s willing to do to get it. 

Sophie Pattison’s life is almost perfect. She works a book lover’s dream job at a local book festival, has a husband she loves, a lifelong best friend, and a brother she’s close with. 

So why has she been living alone, avoiding everyone, and is on the brink of getting fired? All Sophie has left that makes her happy is reading. 

When she rediscovers an author she once loved, she devours every novel and begins imagining meeting her. What would it be like? Would it feel like Sophie already knew her? Could it feel like love?

Val and Milly fell in love with France at the same time they became best friends, bonding as the Black students studying abroad. Years later, they’re both married and expecting daughters. 

When Milly suggests that Val move to New York City so they can raise their girls together, she immediately agrees. 

But despite their years-long friendship, they both wonder if the glue that held them together in France was Helene, the older wealthy woman who showered them with money and attention. 

And then there’s the poisoned truth. That no matter how much Val and Milly try to avoid it, the rift they tried to bury might finally tear them apart.

In 1902, a boy went missing in the Old West town of Sunrise. A gunslinger and outlaw returns to the town after years on the run to helm the search. But what does he know? And why has he returned? 

A hundred years later, as the town readies for the annual reenactment, a would-be author starts asking questions that threaten to upend the town. Twenty years after that, Nina crashes her small-engine plane into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. 

Her boyfriend Ben is nowhere to be found. She’s lost, freezing, with only a few protein bars to survive. She stumbles on Sunrise. It’s strangely maintained for being abandoned. 

What secrets does the town hold? And who holds the key to unlocking them?

Korean American Jeon-Gi has competing identities. At school, he’s part of a pack of kids, wandering through the neighborhood, staking claim over the abandoned baseball field, rusted jungle gym, and weed-laden parking lot. 

At home, his working-class parents treat him like a prince. But the summer he turns eleven, he finds himself embroiled in a series of events with reverberating consequences that will impact not just himself, but his family and beyond.