Book Mail: A Roundup of the Book Mail I Received Last Week

Late August has that bittersweet, golden quality when summer isn’t quite over but you can sense a new season waiting in the wings, and this week’s book mail feels like the perfect companion to it. My TBR pile has grown delightfully precarious, thanks to a book haul overflowing with new book releases that promise one last stretch of summer reading and plenty of cozy days ahead. Every package feels like a little surprise from the literary universe, filled with potential book recommendations I’m already eager to share. And somewhere in this stack, I’m certain, are a few of the best books of 2026—stories waiting to become favorites just as summer begins to turn the page toward fall.

Where to Buy These Books:

Shop This Stack on Bookshop.org to Support Local Bookstores

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I want to note that I do not get paid to do these posts, I just love authors and the book industry. However, they do take time and energy to create. If you want to donate a few dollars to my coffee fund, which keeps this blog going, you can do so here: https://venmo.com/AshleyHasty or here: http://paypal.me/hastybooklist.

This Week’s Book Mail Includes:

The Glam Reaper's Guide to Slaying by Bill Crisafi — A wickedly funny, fabulously illustrated guide to banishing your inner demons, embracing self-love, and becoming the certified diva you were meant to be.
Death on the Books by Victoria Gilbert — A mysterious death inside the library, a cryptic note, and a lost Romanov treasure send librarian Amy Muir racing to uncover a killer before another victim falls.
Survival Show by Juno Dawson — In a dystopian singing competition where stardom means survival and losing means execution, one teenage girl must literally sing for her life.
Tarot: The Open Labyrinth—40th Anniversary Edition by Rachel Pollack — Take your tarot practice deeper with Rachel Pollack’s illuminating exploration of readings, meditation patterns, psychological insight, and the mysteries hidden within the cards.
Blackthorn's Botanical Shadow Work by Amy Blackthorn — Discover how plants, aromatherapy, meditation, journaling, and witchcraft can become powerful tools for confronting your shadow and cultivating personal growth.
A Cauldron of Spells by Eileen Holland — From candle magic and charms to potions and protection spells, this practical collection offers solitary witches 87 approachable ways to bring a little more magic into everyday life.
Hive Mind by Allison Gunn — A murdered horror icon, a Hollywood manager accused of killing her, and whispers of something supernatural collide in a twisty Appalachian nightmare where reality becomes increasingly difficult to trust.
The Things You'll Never Know by Ashley Audrain — After her sudden death, a mother watches her family unravel as secrets, suspicions, and a revealing diary expose just how little they knew about the woman they loved.
Medicine for All People: Science and Ancient Wisdom for Revolutionary Healing — Blending science, ancestral wisdom, and a call for social change, this powerful manifesto reimagines medicine through food, movement, nature, community, and connection.
The Cosmos and Me: New and Selected Poems by Lucille Lang Day — Spanning more than fifty years, this expansive collection finds wonder, love, justice, and meaning everywhere from the vastness of the universe to the smallest moments of everyday life.
I Never Knew You At All by Christine Pride and Jo Piazza — A woman’s marriage, first love, and abandoned journalism career collide when an investigation into a decades-old disappearance uncovers troubling secrets connected to her husband’s powerful family.
The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass by Leslye Penelope — As Y2K approaches, a woman searching for the twin sister everyone else has forgotten uncovers family secrets and dangerous powers that could unravel reality itself.
Tuxedo Park by Thomas Kenniff — When a former flame disappears and the evidence leads to the president-elect, a young prosecutor must confront his buried past while racing to stop a dangerous man from reaching the White House.
The One Who Walked Away by Karen Rose — A guilt-ridden bounty hunter becomes a murder suspect—and develops an undeniable attraction to the detective investigating her—in this tense romantic suspense novel.
Dead Girls by Beck Kubrick — The daughter of an infamous serial killer sets out to clear her name and catch a copycat murderer in this funny, feminist graphic novel that gleefully turns slasher tropes upside down.
The Secrets We Hide by Karin Slaughter — Sheriff Emmy Clifton and her ex-federal-agent sister investigate a brutal attack that threatens to expose the dangerous secrets hiding beneath the surface of their small town.
The Aunt by Courtney Psak — After inheriting her estranged sister’s mansion, fortune, and newborn daughter, a grieving woman begins to suspect the fatal accident that changed everything was no accident at all.
Pia in the Forest by David Bruggink — A curious girl gets lost while recording the sounds of the forest and discovers adventure, friendship, fairy houses, and plenty of fun on her journey back to Dad.
Upstate by Kim Van Alkemade — A grieving writer impulsively buys an abandoned upstate New York bookshop and discovers a cache of letters revealing a decades-long secret love story that may help her heal her own heart.
Our Ancestors Want Us to Be Mushrooms by Madison Murphy Barney — Drawing on Indigenous wisdom and the remarkable qualities of mushrooms, this warm and whimsical book invites us to live with greater humility, creativity, connection, adaptability, and wonder.
Styled by the Stars by Alyssa Polinsky — Astrology meets fashion in this playful, practical guide to using your birth chart to cultivate a personal style that feels authentically and cosmically you.
I Won't See You Die by Antonia Munoz Molina — Reunited after fifty years apart, two former lovers confront memory, regret, desire, and the haunting question of who they might have been had their lives unfolded differently.
Maggie and Arthur's Magic Moment by Leslie Rene — A magical mishap forces a linguistics professor to share her tiny office with a brooding alchemist who might just be both her biggest annoyance and the mysterious man she kissed at a masquerade.
Mutual Discord by Liana de la Rosa — An influencer’s anonymous online flirtation becomes deliciously complicated when she discovers the man behind the screen is none other than her best friend’s boyfriend.
Love Wells Kept by Bailey Hannah — When an accident erases years of a husband’s memories, he and his devoted wife must rediscover their family—and find a way to fall in love all over again.
The Seance Garden by Juliet Blackwell — A skeptical occult historian investigating a murder at a supposedly haunted mansion begins to wonder whether a ghost might hold the key to solving crimes committed nearly two centuries apart.
I'm Sorry You Feel That Way by Rebecca Wait — Two generations of sisters navigate difficult parents, mental illness, family dysfunction, and the messy realities of adulthood in this sharp and darkly funny domestic comedy.
Lost and Found by Tarah DeWitt — Grief, friendship, and long-simmering love intertwine when a woman pursuing her dream of motherhood finds unexpected comfort and a possible future with her longtime firefighter friend.
Rainbow Boys by Alex Sanchez — Three teenage boys navigate friendship, first love, bullying, identity, and coming out in this groundbreaking and emotionally honest queer coming-of-age novel.
The Phone Swap by Lia Louis — An ambitious scientist and a movie star accidentally swap phones on a flight, sparking an intimate long-distance connection that becomes much more complicated when their private romance meets the real world.
The Survivors Guild: A Novel by Gabriella Saab — After surviving the Titanic, a Lebanese immigrant and an American heiress join forces to care for an unclaimed baby and discover that navigating New York society may require an entirely different kind of survival.
The Getaway by Kieran Scott — Longtime friends trapped at a luxurious Hamptons estate by an approaching hurricane discover mysterious cards exposing their darkest secrets—and soon those revelations turn deadly.
You Know Why by J.T. Ellison — When her husband disappears at the airport, a photographer’s search for answers leads to a stranger, an unsolved murder, and the terrifying possibility that her entire marriage has been built on lies.
The Boy with the Butterfly Mind by Lorelei Brush — When her four-year-old son’s struggles upend their family life, a mother must challenge expectations, ask for help, and learn to trust herself as she fights to give him the support he needs.