If You Need Some New Book Recs, Here Are 3 August Releases We're Loving Right Now

"Encountering Raven Leilani's one-of-a kind debut, Luster: A Novel ($16, originally $26), jolted me out of my mid-pandemic stasis. Her novel, which follows Edie, a young Black artist who begins dating an older married white man in an open relationship — and ends up forging complicated relationships with his wife and daughter — is like nothing else I've read this year. Leilani's vibrant language and unflinching willingness to get down into the muck of human behavior make each sentence of this novel feel like a revelation and a discovery." — Lindsay Miller, deputy editor