August 16, 2025
The lazy days of August bring books preoccupied with the many forms of love: desire, attraction, the bonds of friendship, a mother’s love, intellectual connection, and more. We offer a woman’s search for the baby she gave up for adoption; a historical debut about slavery during the late 17th and early 18th centuries; an epic biography of James Baldwin; tricky relationships in modern NYC; and an Emmy-winning comic writer who turns her eye toward how loss can transform love.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Love Forms
By CLAIRE ADAM
Published by HOGARTH
Whether the title ends in a noun or verb, this splendid Booker-longlisted novel works on many levels. Dawn, a Trinidadian woman from a wealthy family becomes pregnant at 16. She is sent on a treacherous voyage to a nunnery in Venezuela to have her baby. The family closes ranks—it was not to be discussed again. But in middle-age, divorced with two boys and living in England, the haunting questions about this lost daughter’s fate impel Dawn’s research. Dramatic events are gently conveyed, and Adam’s prose is matter-of-fact but so powerful. The moving journey of a mother in search of her daughter will haunt readers, too.
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This Here Is Love
By PRINCESS JOY L. PERRY
Published by NORTON
Historical forms of slavery in America are explored in Perry’s commanding debut novel that began as a story about Black soldiers in the two world wars. But in researching her subject, she became fascinated by stories from 17th-century Virginia and crafted a different novel altogether. We follow three characters: Bless, child of an enslaved mother and freed father; David, who was sold into slavery; and Jack whose family chose indentured servitude to escape poverty in England. Perry cites a song her grandmother used to sing to her, which included the lyric, “Why do the farmer hate us so?” These characters shine in their courage and resistance, creating families and communities that enabled them to endure.
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Information Age
By CORA LEWIS
Published by JOYLAND
Relax, put your feet up, and dig into this tasty novella you can read in an afternoon. Our narrator is a journalist working in the tech and political milieus. She lives in Brooklyn with her roommate and still has good friends from school. Her on-again-off-again relationship with Simon has the push/pull of animal attraction and an intellectual match. But Simon is flaky and not at all ambitious. When she asks her best friend whether she should continue seeing a certain painter who definitively doesn’t want kids, she is told, “It’s a naughty problem…” “A what?” I say. “Knotty” with a k.” The text is spare, pithy, playful, quotable, and shows great promise. More please.
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Loved One
By AISHA MUHARRAR
Published by VIKING
Muharrar’s writing will be familiar from her television work (Parks and Recreation, Hacks). Her debut novel has in common with those scripts a winning combination of humor and rich emotion. After the unexpected death of indie rock musician Gabe, his old pal Julia ruminates about how much they shared (they dated briefly, but had a deep bond) and what he meant to her. At his funeral, she struggles with her eulogy. She decides to go to England to see his most recent girlfriend and find out more about Gabe’s life. The author calls her novel an “emotional mystery,” and her finesse with story and character has produced a rich exploration of unresolved feelings.
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Baldwin: A Love Story
By NICHOLAS BOGGS
Published by FSG
This 700-page opus of the life of James Baldwin is told through four of the men in his life whom he loved most, focusing on the years 1940-1976. We learn about his life in Paris, his writings, and his commitment to social justice. The men include his mentor, Beauford Delaney, a Black Harlem painter; the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger, to whom Baldwin dedicated Giovanni’s Room; Engin Cezzar, a Turkish actor; and Yoran Cazac, a French painter who illustrated Baldwin’s children’s book Little Man, Little Man. Using these seminal relationships, Boggs paints an indelible portrait of one of America’s most influential writers.
