Hello, book friends!

We have officially reached the last Pub Day of August, and apparently the publishing world has decided to send the month out with serial killers, haunted homes, murderous bears, immortal sword men, stalker cowboys, and one extremely inconvenient phone swap.

So, you know. A very normal Tuesday around here. 😂

Let’s get into it.

📚 NEW THIS WEEK

The last Pub Day of August is here! Here are the August 25 releases currently screaming the loudest from my TBR.

🔎 MYSTERY + THRILLER

They Say a Girl Died Here by Sarah Pinborough
Two women were murdered exactly three years apart in the same small town, and now Anna suspects the supposedly closed case is anything but. I already read this one, and while I loved the strange, genre-bending setup, that ending confused the hell out of me. 😂

Heart of Glass by Jennifer Hillier
A serial killer recants his decades-old confession, forcing two former best friends to revisit the night their friend disappeared. Five stars from me, and I especially recommend the fantastic full-cast audiobook.

The Opposite of Murder by Sophie Hannah
At 5:05 p.m., Jemma walks into a police station and says she thinks she’s going to murder someone, and at exactly 5:05, that woman is murdered elsewhere. An impossible confession AND an airtight alibi? I need answers.

Bad Intentions by Iliana Xander
Josie returns to the small town where her family has been infamous for decades, only for old secrets and new violence to start clawing their way back to the surface. Give me generational secrets and a town obsessed with the past and I’m listening.

👻 YA HORROR + THRILLER

The Harrow Home for Wayward Girls by Jessica Spotswood
In 1947, two girls begin uncovering the brutal history of a home once used to hide pregnant young women, and discover that one of its former residents may never have left. Historical horror + institutional secrets + ghosts feels VERY appropriate as we creep toward fall.

Natural Selection by Clare Edge
Three teenage girls have had enough of their town’s golden boy just as a grizzly begins attacking known abusers. It’s being pitched as darkly funny feminist YA for fans of The Honeys and Wilder Girls, and the tagline “When it comes to boys and bears, always choose the bear” certainly has my attention.

🐉 FANTASY

Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher
A sweet scholar accidentally summons the immortal warrior trapped inside the ancient sword he’s transporting, and naturally feelings get involved. I enjoyed returning to the Swordheart world, although the pacing dragged a bit for me this time.

❤️ ROMANCE

The Phone Swap by Lia Louis
A scientist and a famous actor accidentally swap phones after a delayed flight, except he’s about to disappear onto a remote movie set for a month. Forced digital proximity is such a fun setup, and I need to know how messy this gets.

Roped by Saffron A. Kent
A college student realizes a mysterious masked cowboy is watching her, and instead of staying away, she decides to lure him out of hiding. I LOVED this one: age gap, stalker romance, warring ranches, and completely unhinged cowboy obsession.

💬 THE BOOKISH GROUP CHAT

Okay. We have several things to discuss this week.

🔪 What are the best thrillers of the 21st century?

I’m sure you’ve seen some version of The New York Times’ “50 Best Thriller Books of the 21st Century” list floating around social media already.

Hundreds of novelists, librarians, editors and book influencers weighed in to help determine which thrillers published since 2000 deserved a spot.

Which means the internet has naturally responded in the calmest and most reasonable way possible: By arguing about the list. 😂

And honestly? This is why I love these things.

I don’t necessarily need a “best books” list to perfectly match mine. Half the fun is looking at what made it, immediately identifying the glaring omissions, and then mentally constructing your own superior version.

So I want to know: If you could put ONE thriller published since 2000 on that list, what would it be?

See The New York Times’ 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century.

🤖 What happens when an author is accused of using AI?

This piece from Miss Demeanors immediately caught my attention because we are entering a VERY strange era for writers. It looks at what authors can do if someone accuses them of using generative AI to write their book.

And one of the biggest takeaways is basically: Keep your receipts. Drafts. Version histories. Research notes. Backups. Anything that can document the actual evolution of a manuscript.

Because one of the problems with the current AI conversation is that accusations can spread incredibly quickly, while AI-detection tools themselves are far from foolproof.

Which means authors are increasingly being asked to prove a negative: How do you prove that you wrote something yourself?

That is such a bizarre position for writers to be in.

And it also gets complicated very quickly because there’s a huge difference between someone using an editing tool, an accessibility tool, a background remover, generative AI, or actually asking AI to write the work itself, and internet discourse does not always leave much room for nuance.

I’m very curious where everyone lands on this one: Do you think authors are eventually going to need to keep some kind of documented “paper trail” of their writing process?

Read “AI Accusations and What To Do If You’re Accused as an Author.”

✍️ ALSO IN THE GROUP CHAT: What actually happens at a writers conference?

I also loved this behind-the-scenes look at the Romance Writers of America Conference from Miss Demeanors. Because I think when most readers hear “writers conference,” we vaguely picture authors sitting around discussing books all day.

Which…yes. But there’s also SO much publishing business happening behind the scenes. I found it especially interesting seeing the conference through the eyes of someone coming from the mystery-writing world, because so much of what she learned crosses genre lines.

Turns out good character development remains good character development whether those characters are kissing, solving murders, fighting dragons or doing all three simultaneously.

Take an inside look at the Romance Writers of America Conference.

🎥 WANT TO UNDERSTAND FANTASY BETTER?

One of my favorite things about fantasy is also the thing that makes it completely overwhelming: Fantasy is HUGE and saying “I like fantasy” tells me almost nothing. 😂

• Do you want magical cities hidden inside our world?

• Muskets and magic?

• Monsters hiding among humans?

• A heroic warrior going on an extremely dangerous quest?

Over on YouTube, I broke down four fantasy subgenres: Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Fantasy, Flintlock Fantasy and Heroic Fantasy.

We talk about what actually defines each one, how to tell them apart, the vibes you can expect, and (most importantly) where I think you should start reading.

So if you've ever looked at the fantasy section and thought, Okay, but what kind of fantasy do I actually like? this is for you.

Watch “Fantasy Genres Explained” on my YouTube channel.

🐾 LINK’S CORNER

Link has reviewed this week’s important literary news and would like to talk about the only book that currently matters:

A novel narrated by a dog.

Paul Yoon’s Etna is told from the perspective of a dog traveling through southern Italy with her human.

Which is already enough information for Link to give it five stars.

But Yoon has also talked about the role his own dog, Oscar, played in helping him understand how to approach the world from a dog's perspective while writing the novel.

And I LOVE this concept.

Writing convincingly from an animal’s perspective feels incredibly difficult because you have to somehow give readers access to an interior world without simply making the animal feel like a human wearing a dog costume.

Meanwhile, Link has informed me that writing from a dog's perspective is actually very easy:

• Food.

• Walk.

• Squirrel.

• Food again.

• Why has the hooman been in the bathroom for four minutes? Possibly dead.

• Emergency.

• Dinner.

Hear Paul Yoon talk about Etna and the dog who helped inspire it.

That’s it for this week, and somehow that also means we have officially survived every August Pub Day.

Now I need to know: Which August 25 release are you adding to your TBR, what thriller belongs on YOUR best-of-the-century list, AND would you read an entire novel narrated by a dog?

Reply and tell me. This newsletter is basically one giant bookish group chat anyway.

Until next week,

Brittany + Link 🐾