Hey bookworm friends. New Month, New Books: A Tale as Old as Time…well, at least as old as books but that doesn’t have a good ring to it😂. My list of anticipated releases for August predictably has a healthy supply of fantasy but also a decent amount of mystery and horror books. Here are 21 Awesome August Releases; I hope you find something you enjoy! As always, they’re organized loosely by genre categories and then by publishing date.
Book Titles lead to TheStoryGraph links. Except for when it’s not on SG in which case it goes to bookshop.org.
Awesome August Releases
Fantasy
The Castle & The Cloister by Laura E. Weymouth
⟡ Pub Date: August 4, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Epic Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Amid a treacherous landscape of enemies, allies, and intrigue, three lives will intertwine—a wet nurse, a heretic queen, and a priest. Each will have to risk the wrath of gods and kings alike to alter the course of nations.
(Mostly) Human Resources by Grace Viall
⟡ Pub Date: August 6, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Fantasy / Supernatural
⟡ Publisher: Head of Zeus
Working in Human Resources was not what Alexys had in mind when she joined Entity, the company who categorize and manage the monsters and cryptids of the world.
The Dungeon Book by Gareth Hanrahan
⟡ Pub Date: August 11, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Epic Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: Orbit
A young girl is left to die in a wizard’s dungeon but finds a new home with the monsters around her.
Siren Says by Jennifer Herrera
⟡ Pub Date: August 18, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Witchy
⟡ Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Twenty-five-year-old Raven Wynn knows that the ancient plant magic running through her veins brings nothing but destruction. It doomed her Welsh ancestors. It killed her mother. It’s the reason she’s now bound by a painful curse—one that will destroy her if she can’t find a way to break its hold.
The Divine Gardener’s Handbook: Or What To Do If Your Girlfriend Accidentally Turns Off the Sun by Eli Snow
⟡ Pub Date: August 18, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Dystopian Fantasy Romance
⟡ Publisher: Saturday Books
In a Jenga-stacked megacity where glowing blue flowers hum in the dark and palace doors open into secret worlds, getting a job in the Divine Gardens is almost impossible. But Cyprin has spent her whole life trying.
Her only chance is winning the annual flower pageant, dominated by Purcell: brilliant head gardener, unbearable rival, and the one person Cyprin can’t stop thinking about.
The Demon Overlord’s Retirement Plan by M. H. Foster
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Cozy Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Galornus Prime was the Scourge of Nations, Ender of Hope, and Master of the Cardinal Sins. After achieving all that, what else was left?
His retirement plan was Get a goat, farm quietly, and don’t accidentally conquer anything. Evil never sleeps… but it does plant turnips.
Science Fiction
The Infinite State by Richard Swan
⟡ Pub Date: August 4, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Dystopian
⟡ Publisher: Tor Books
WHO GIVES YOU LIFE?
PATER AETERNUS.
It begins at a flashpoint in the lives of a widowed party member, a disgraced investigator, and a hypersled pilot—entangled in a plot to escape the suffocating authority of a fascist state.
A Plagued Sea by Kim Bo-Young
⟡ Pub Date: August 11, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Sci-Fi Horror /Dystopian
⟡ Publisher: Tor Nightfire
First the flood
Next the sickness
Last the change
Haewon Village is home to horrors. An earthquake unleashed an ancient plague that transforms its victims into fishy monsters, and the government’s lockdown has cut off any hope for help.
Maya: Seed Takes Root by Anand Gandhi and Zain Memon
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Science Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: Authors Equity
On the planet Neh, the living forest called Maya is the planet’s neural network. Each citizen tethers daily to Maya, entering shared dreamscapes for work, play, and learning. The immortal Divyas harvest the data. Every thought and memory; predicting futures and bending reality itself.
Romance
Queen of Shadow by P.C. Cast
⟡ Pub Date: August 4, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Historical Romantasy
⟡ Publisher: William Morrow
Step into the mystical world of the Isle of Skye in 200 BCE, where legends come to life and the Queen of Shadow holds court. But Scáthach is no ordinary queen. Daughter of the Underworld goddess Bēfionn, golden-haired Scáthach is gifted with the Sight, able to glimpse all the possibilities of the future and pass between the world of men and the world of gods.
Daggerbound by T. Kingfisher
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Romantasy
⟡ Publisher: Bramble
Learned Edmund, a disillusioned scholar, is transporting yet another precious relic from one stuffy temple to a different stuffy temple. Another great adventure for the ages…
But when Edmund is set upon by bandits, in desperation, he breaks the cardinal rule and grabs for the relic, an ancient sword. To his surprise, instead of unsheathing a rusty, ancient weapon, an alarmingly handsome man appears.
Horror
Stay Buried by Jennifer McMahon
⟡ Pub Date: August 11, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Historical / Folk Horror
⟡ Publisher: Gallery Books
Some towns stay isolated for a reason.
1919: The black sheep of an isolated small town and her uncle desperately search for for a logical explanation to a mysterious illness.
2016: Two siblings inherit a property in Boone’s Ferry—a place they’ve heard of but their grandmother has always refused to talk about.
Reliquary by Hannah Whitten
⟡ Pub Date: August 11, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Gothic Horror / Fantasy /
⟡ Publisher:
Sometimes, you just want to belong.
A young woman is lured to her late fiancé’s remote island estate—only to uncover eerie family secrets, a haunting past, and a monstrous hunger stirring beneath the sea.
The Halls of the Dead by S. M. Hallow
⟡ Pub Date: August 18, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Gothic Horror / Romance
⟡ Publisher: Harper Voyager
London, December 1849
Irene Shallcross Haley has dedicated her life to necromancy, a forbidden, reviled art that is passed along through sentient grimoires bound in human skin. With her undead husband St. John—a marriage of kindred spirits and platonic convenience—she has been protecting the knowledge of generations of witches that came before her.
The Sunken, the Adored by Donyae Coles
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Lovecraftian Horror / Historical Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: Amistad
Mercy, a recently freed slave from America making a new life for herself in 1700 Venice finds the mysterious plague that killed her former master may have followed her to Italy . . . and now stalks the canals.
The Devil Knows Her Name by C. N. Vair
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Horror Thriller/ Mystery / Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: Berkley
In the isolated Appalachian town of Burrsville, Tess Wynne lives in precious quiet. Having been left for dead a century earlier, Tess made a deal with the devil to stay in the only home she’s known. Tending to her wildlife sanctuary, she keeps the land and its people safe – pulling on spidering threads of ancient magic, trying to preserve the balance of nature against the encroaching ravages of human influence.
Mystery
Be Still My Unbeating Heart by Josh Winning
⟡ Pub Date: August 4, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Cozy Mystery/ Supernatural Romance
⟡ Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Bastian may be a vampire, but he doesn’t bite. Not anymore, at least.
These days, Bastian just wants to live his best undead life: visit charming Italian villages, maybe dance in the square with a cute boy, all with Whitby, his best friend (and magical talking cat) by his side. What he doesn’t want? To stumble across a dead body on the beach, a girl who appears to have been killed by a vampire.
A Betrothed’s Betrayal by Deb Marlowe
⟡ Pub Date: August 11, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Historical Mystery
⟡ Publisher: Deb Marlowe/ Self Pub
Lady Lisette Birtwhistle is feeling bereft and very much alone after ending her betrothal, then losing her brother, the Duke of Winbury, to an unexpected illness.
The duke knew his sister well, however, and has inexplicably left her the leases on nearly the entirety of Lockstone Hollow, a village near one of the ducal estates. Perplexed, but hopeful, Lisette travels to the small Cotswold village.
Portrait of a Witch Undone by K. S. Shay
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Historical Mystery / Magical Realism
⟡ Publisher: Erewhon Books
A contemporary New England coven hides the mysteries that lurk in the marshes north of Boston—and how they are connected to the largest unsolved art heist in modern history.
The Whitechapel Full Moon Society by Elizabeth DeLozier
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Historical Mystery / Fantasy / Thriller
⟡ Publisher: Dutton
Caroline Foster arrives at the Whitechapel Full Moon Society in search of her missing brother. In exchange for room and board, Caroline is hired as the Full Moon’s maid, where she’s given three orders: don’t ask personal questions, stay out of the iron-barred room on the second floor, and remain in her bedroom from sunup to sundown on the full moon.
Any More Questions for the Corpse? by J. J. Unthank
⟡ Pub Date: August 25, 2026
⟡ Sub-genre: Mystery / Fantasy
⟡ Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Twenty-one-year-old Malowin Gladstone was raised by the dead—two skeletons to be precise. While his parents keep a close eye-socket on him, he just wants to get through the rest of university without using any more of his much-loathed necromancy. A hope that gets all the more difficult when he’s recruited by a secret Order to hunt a serial killer.
Link-ups
BookWorms Monthly is hosted by Anne @ At Home A Lot
A Good Book & Cup of Tea is hosted by Lisa R. Howeler @ Boondocks Ramblings, Erin @ Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, & Cat @ Cat’s Wire
Happy reading!🖤
I did my best to list the expected pub dates but you never know, dates can change. If you’re interested in any of these releases please make sure you keep an eye on the latest updates in your part of the world.
Let’s chat in the comments!
Are you looking forward to any of these? Or, did I miss any that you would add to the list?
