10 books you should read in August, including Michael Mann’s Heat 2 and T.J. English’s Dangerous Rhythms

Also check out Scenes From My Life, a moving memoir from late actor Michael K. Williams

By Cat Auer | July 28, 2022 | 8:00am

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10 books you should read in August, including Michael Mann’s Heat 2 and T.J. English’s Dangerous Rhythms

Clockwise from bottom left: Complicit (Image: Simon & Schuster), Witches (Image: Catapult), Didn’t Nobody Give A Shit What Happened To Carlotta (Image: Brown), Dangerous Rhythms: Jazz And The Underworld (Image: William Morrow), A Career in Books: A Novel About Friends, Money, and the Occasional Duck Bun (Image: Plume) Graphic: Libby McGuire

Every month, a deluge of new books comes flooding out from big publishers, indie houses, and self-publishing platforms. To help you navigate the wave of titles arriving in August, The A.V. Club has narrowed down the options to 10 of the books we’re most excited about, including an exploration of the ways jazz and the mob intertwined, an on-page follow-up to the on-screen classic Heat, a biography of Man Ray’s muse, and a memoir from the late Michael K. Williams.

Didn’t Nobody Give A Shit What Happened To Carlotta

James Hannaham (August 2, Little, Brown) After more than 20 years behind bars, Carlotta is shocked to find herself sprung from jail and on parole just as the long Fourth of July weekend starts to unfold in New York, 2015. For Carlotta, who entered prison as Dustin, there was no justice to be had in a “justice” system that constantly did her worse than dirty. Yet she won’t let that keep her down. Freedom beckons—but can she follow the punitive rules put in place by a prickly PO? Like the transformed city she navigates to great comic effect, Carlotta is irrepressible. She endures. James Hannaham won multiple accolades for his previous outing, Delicious Foods; with Carlotta, it’s a good bet more are on the way.

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