This month’s top picks crack open the hidden, the haunting, and the deeply human.
From the raw honesty of anonymous sexual fantasies to a supernatural crime thriller with bite, and a chaotic nightclub drama turned tender meditation on connection, August’s standout stories refuse to play it safe.
Whether you’re in the mood for the thrilling, the confessional, or the unexpected, these three bold reads dive headfirst into lives on the edge of change.
Want
A collection of sexual fantasies from women around the world, Want is a revelatory, sensational and game-changing exploration of women’s sexuality that asks, and answers: How do women feel about sex when they have the freedom to be totally anonymous?
When we talk about sex, we talk about womanhood and motherhood, infidelity and exploitation, consent and respect, fairness and egalitarianism, love and hate, pleasure and pain. And yet so many of us don’t talk about it at all.
In this groundbreaking book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous sexual fantasies of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous submission). They are all extraordinary: full of desire, fear, intimacy, shame, satisfaction and, ultimately, liberation.
From dreaming about someone off-limits to conjuring a scene with multiple partners, from sex that is gentle and tender to passionate and playful, these fantasies provide a window into the most secret part of our minds.
The Midnight Shift
A bestseller in Korea, a biting, fast-paced vampire murder mystery exploring queer love and the consequences of loneliness.
When four isolated elderly people die back-to-back at the same hospital by jumping out of the sixth-floor window, Su-Yeon doesn’t understand why she’s the only one at her precinct who seems to care. But her colleagues at the police force dismiss the case as a series of unfortunate suicides due to the patients’ loneliness.
But Su-Yeon doesn’t have the privilege of looking away: her dearest friend, Grandma Eun-Shim, lives on the sixth floor, and Su-Yeon is terrified that something will happen to her next.
As Su-Yeon begins her investigation alone, she runs into a mysterious woman named Violette at the crime scene. Violette claims to be a vampire hunter, searching for her ex-lover, Lily, and is insistent that a vampire is behind the mysterious deaths.
Su-Yeon is sceptical at first, but when a fifth victim jumps from the window, her investigation reveals the body was completely drained of blood. Desperate to discover the cause of the deaths, Su-Yeon considers Violette’s explanation that something supernatural is involved.
Gunk
From the award-winning author of the smash hit Send Nudes: an electrifying debut exploring love and desire, chaos and control – and family in all its forms.
Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for five years, but she still works alongside him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor.
But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar – and her arrival jolts Jules awake for the first time in years. When Nim discovers she’s pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.
Now, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she’s coming back. What could the future – for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby – possibly look like?
August doesn’t just deliver page-turners; it brings bold, emotionally complex storytelling that lingers long after the final chapter.
Whether you’re drawn to the sensual revelations of Want, the blood-soaked mystery of The Midnight Shift, or the bittersweet intimacy of Gunk, these titles offer a fresh and fearless literary escape.
