August's Best Debut Novels

CrimeReads editors select the month’s best debuts in crime, mystery, and thrillers.

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LaTanya McQueen, When the Reckoning Comes
(Harper Perennial)

This book details, in full, exactly what I would like to happen to every person who attends a plantation wedding expecting a “quaint” experience. In LaTanya McQueen’s stunning new addition to the growing world of Black horror fiction, a woman heads to her best friend’s plantation wedding, deeply offended by the choice of venue but ready to support her childhood bestie nonetheless. The ghosts of the estate, however, have something other than celebration in mind…As well they should because absolutely no one should ever have a wedding on a plantation. I cannot stress this enough.

Ashley Winstead, In My Dreams I Hold A Knife
(Sourcebooks Landmark)

Ashley Winstead’s debut contributes to the growing and diverse subgenre of academic noir, earning comparisons in particular to the works of Amy Gentry and Layne Fargo, and sure to please not only fans of the cutthroat world of the ivory tower, but any reader of psychological thrillers. Ten years after six tight-knit friends were ripped apart by a horrific murder, the group returns to their elite Southern university for a reunion—and a reckoning.

Gordy Sauer, Child in the Valley
(Hub City Press)

In a desperate and searing portrayal of Gold Rush America, Gordy Sauer’s debut follows orphaned teenager Joshua Gaines as he heads to the California Hills from Independence, Missouri with an enigmatic criminal and his formerly-enslaved travel companion, fighting to survive the privations of the Old West while trying to process his growing feelings of attraction to other men.

Sarah Zachrich Jeng, The Other Me
(Berkley)

Kelly’s celebrating her birthday at her bestie’s art show in Chicago, living her best life, when she heads to the bathroom and instead walks through the door into a nightmarish version of her own life, one in which she never went to art school and is happily married to a former high school classmate she barely remembers. What happened to her perfect life? And how did she get trapped in someone else’s fantasy? The Other Me works as both a suspenseful psychological thriller and an astute reinvention of the time travel narrative.

Steven Tingle, Graveyard Fields
(Crooked Lane) 

Steven Tingle’s debut is that rare example of rural noir with a sense of humor that wouldn’t be entirely out of place in an English village mystery, despite the Appalachian setting. Ex-cop-turned-private-eye-turned-wannabe-writer Davis Reed spends his days drinking home brew and anxiously avoiding working on his book when he finds a mysterious set of keys and embarks on an adventure with the power to jolt him out of his complacency. With plenty of village characters to fill out Tingle’s small-town setting, and gorgeous natural descriptions, Graveyard Fields is not to be missed.