92 new eBooks and audiobooks coming out August 29 – September 11, 2023

By Kobo • August 29, 2023New eBooks and Audiobooks

A rapid-fire roundup of the most anticipated books coming out August 29 – September 11, 2023

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, better known as J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, died 50 years ago, on September 2^nd 1973, at the age of 81. A death is a strange anniversary to note for a figure whose major work was accomplished decades before their passing, but maybe it’s reason enough for two books on Tolkien’s work to come out this week. Bradley J. Birzer’s J.R.R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth was originally published 20 years ago, when Peter Jackson’s trilogy of movies based on The Lord of the Rings was dominating the box office, but this edition includes a new introduction by the author. Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today by Nick Groom builds on Birzer’s book to explain what it is about Middle-Earth that still captures our imaginations, whether we’re reading the books or watching any of the screen adaptations of Tolkien’s works. Groom draws connections between Tolkien’s writing and our current cultural concerns about the environment, companionship, risk, and diversity of thought and identity and argues ultimately that his work is as relevant today as it ever was.

In Helen Knott’s 2019 memoir In My Own Moccasins the poet and social worker from the Prophet River First Nation shared her story of growing up amidst addiction, intergenerational trauma, and a number of other all-too-familiar hardships borne by too many Indigenous communities. With her new memoir Becoming a Matriarch, Knott picks up the story to tell of her journey through grief brought on by the devastating loss of her mother and grandmother in just a few months, and how she found her way, as the title says, to becoming a matriarch.

Activist Rueben George, member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, has been a leading figure in the movement opposing the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion. In It Stops Here: Standing Up for Our Lands, Our Waters, and Our People he tells both the story of his own and his family’s stories, illustrating his own beginnings in activism, and makes a stirring call to action against the relentless drive of the fossil fuel industry. After a summer of record wildfires, George’s voice is one worth listening to as we try to imagine how to turn the tide of climate change.

A pair of memoirs, Maria Bamford’s Sure, I'll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere and Meg Kissinger’s While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence, each address mental illness in very different ways. Kissinger is an award-winning journalist who has written about the failures of the American healthcare system, especially as it pertains to mental health. In her memoir, she reveals he difficulty of growing up in a household with a depressed mother and a father prone to violence, as one of eight children—many of which were themselves suffering with inherited and trauma-induced mental illness of their own. As an investigative journalist, Kissinger is extremely well-equipped to tell this story from the details of daily life up to the systemic issues framing it. Bamford, by contrast, is a comedian and actor whose book tells of the many “anonymous fellowships” (think Debtors Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, etc.) that she’s joined to try to solve the problems created in her life by mental illness. Bamford’s wit is on full display here, even if you choose to forego the author-narrated audiobook and experience her story as the written word—but either way it’s as profound and profoundly hilarious as fans of her work would expect.

Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a global phenomenon of the 00s that the author never experienced, since he passed away in 2004 shortly after completing and selling the first three books in the series. The original trilogy extended into an ongoing series with books written by David Lagercrantz, a Swedish journalist who hadn’t yet published fiction prior to being named as Larsson’s successor—and now after three entries of his own, Lagercrantz has bowed out. The Girl in the Eagle's Talons is by yet another Swedish writer, crime novelist Karin Smirnoff. In the series’ seventh installment, computer hacker Lisbeth Salander and beleaguered magazine publisher Mikael Blomkvist head to Sweden’s north, where a lucrative run on natural resources is drawing the attention and ambitions of some extremely unsavoury characters. Considering that the Swedish title for the very first book in the series translates to “men who hate women,” it’s notable that Smirnoff is the first woman to write for this series—and this is to be the first of three Salander books from her.

The unstoppable YA fantasy author Elizabeth Lim returns (can we say that if she’s always got a new book out?) with Her Radiant Curse, a “beauty and the beast” story of two sisters—Channi, cursed by the Demon Witch to appear with a serpent’s face to anyone but her sister, the beautiful Vanna, to whom Channi is the sister she’s always loved. When Vanna is to be married off to an awful man, Channi steps up to protect her and makes a powerful enemy in the process. Fans of Lim know what to expect here: deft parallels to mythology and folklore from a variety of sources, sweeping battles, thrilling romance, and high emotion to the very end.

Stephen King’s Bill Hodges trilogy is widely regarded as one of the prolific author’s late-career high points, and in his new novel Holly he turns his attention fully to a character from that series (as well as The Outsider), one who the author says “was supposed to be a walk-on character in Mr. Mercedes and she just kind of stole the book and stole my heart.” And you really can’t ask for much more of a sales pitch for a Stephen King novel than that.

British novelist Zadie Smith turns her attention to the Victorian England at the time of the “Tichborne Trial” in her latest novel The Fraud. Based on real events (an Australian butcher makes a claim to an estate and title, relying on the testimony of a young man born enslaved on a Jamaican plantation), it’s a novel that delights in our tendency to believe in and be deceived by stories of all kinds and all sizes, whether a con man’s pitch, the moralizing tales of Charles Dickens (who makes an appearance), claims of ownership, or myths of nation and empire.

Katherena Vermette’s The Circle is a novel in many voices about a community dealing with the stew of emotions around a young woman’s release from prison, where she served a sentence for assault. This is a novel about transgression, hurt and healing, how communities break—and unexpected ways they might hold together. Featuring characters from Vermette’s novels The Break and The Strangers, this is a “companion” to those earlier books, not exactly part of a series, so readers not yet familiar with her work can start here if they like.

As we head to school, whether to return or begin, or roll into workplaces buzzing with energy post-vacation, it’s a good time to hone some skills for meeting challenges with resilience. Master of Change: How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You by coach Brad Stulberg offers advice about handling change from the perspective that change isn’t a threat to mitigate, or a storm to weather, but an inherent part of existence. He counsels readers to see the change constantly happening within themselves and at their own direction, and how external forces pushing for change call for a mindset of “rugged flexibility.” Gelong Thubten’s Handbook for Hard Times: A monk's guide to fearless living speaks to similar themes, but from a more meditative perspective, teaching readers how to lean into suffering rather than constantly struggling to avoid it. And he directs us to look within for inner strength and the insight to see opportunities for growth in every challenge.

More books coming out in the first half of September