Happy August, book-fam!
From nonfiction, thriller, and sci-fi, there’s something for everyone with this month’s Amazon First Reads selections. PLUS, Prime members can read A Point in Time, an Amazon Original Stories collection consisting of 7 short stories from acclaimed authors, and includes audio narrations for free!

Select this month’s First Reads here

 

Synopsis Summary


About the Book

August Amazon First Reads

Rich Blood

Author: Robert Bailey
Series: Jason Rich #1
Pages: 380
ISBN: B09DYFQPNX
Genre: Suspense, Thriller
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

From Wall Street Journal bestselling author Robert Bailey comes a compelling legal thriller about a lawyer who takes on his sister’s case—and confronts small-town secrets and family skeletons.

Attorney Jason Rich has made a fortune off other people’s bad luck. His billboard slogan—“In an accident? Get Rich!”—accosts motorists on highways from Alabama to Florida. As ambulance chasers go, he’s exceptional.

But after a recent divorce and a stint in rehab, Jason has hit a rough patch. And things only get worse when his sister, Jana, is accused of her husband’s murder. Even though Jason has no experience trying criminal cases, Jana begs him to represent her.

Jason has mixed feelings about returning to Lake Guntersville, Alabama—and even more reservations about diving back into his sister’s life. Between the drugs, the affairs, and a tendency to gaslight everyone in her inner circle, Jana has plenty of enemies in town.

But did Jana hire someone to kill her husband? Jason isn’t so sure. He heads back to his hometown to unravel the truth and face off against opponents old and new.


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About the Book

August Amazon First Reads

Big Chicas Don't Cry

Author: Annette Chavez Macias
Series: B09LM3RRSW
Pages: 367
ISBN: B09LM3RRSW
Genre: Women's Fiction
Publisher: Montlake
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

Four cousins navigate love, loss, and the meaning of family over the course of one memorable year in this heartfelt family drama.

Cousins Mari, Erica, Selena, and Gracie are inseparable. They aren’t just family but best friends—sharing secrets, traditions, and a fierce love for their abuelita. But their idyllic childhood ends when Mari’s parents divorce, forcing her to move away. With Mari gone, the girls’ tight-knit bond unravels.

Fifteen years later, Mari’s got the big house and handsome husband, but her life is in shambles. Erica’s boyfriend just dumped her, and her new boss hates her. Selena can’t seem to find her place in the world—not Mexican enough for her family, not white enough for her colleagues. And Gracie is a Catholic school teacher with an all-consuming crush, but she can’t trust herself when it comes to romance.

As rocky as the cousins’ lives have become, nothing can prepare them for the heartbreaking loss of a loved one. When tragedy reunites them, will they remember their abuelita’s lessons about family and forgiveness—or are fifteen years of separation too much to overcome?


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About the Book

August Amazon First Reads

Real Bad Things

Author: Kelly J. Ford
Pages: 333
ISBN: B09KLL1TKX
Genre: LGBTQ+, Suspense
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

From the author of Cottonmouths, a Los Angeles Review Best Book of 2017, comes an evocative suspense about the cost of keeping secrets and the dangers of coming home.

Beneath the roiling waters of the Arkansas River lie dead men and buried secrets.
When Jane Mooney’s violent stepfather, Warren, disappeared, most folks in Maud Bottoms, Arkansas, assumed he got drunk and drowned. After all, the river had claimed its share over the years.

When Jane confessed to his murder, she should have gone to jail. That’s what she wanted. But without a body, the police didn’t charge her with the crime. So Jane left for Boston—and took her secrets with her.

Twenty-five years later, the river floods and a body surfaces. Talk of Warren’s murder grips the town. Now in her forties, Jane returns to Maud Bottoms to reckon with her past: to do jail time, to face her revenge-bent mother, to make things right.

But though Jane’s homecoming may enlighten some, it could threaten others. Because in this desolate river valley, some secrets are better left undisturbed.


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About the Book

August Amazon First Reads

A Harvest of Secrets

Author: Roland Merullo
Pages: 268
ISBN: B09G9YZ4V3
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

From the bestselling author of From These Broken Streets comes a sweeping novel of love, resistance, and courage set against the backdrop of WWII Italy.

Italy, 1943. The seeds of terror planted by Hitler have brought Allied forces to Italian soil. Young lovers separated by war—one near a Tuscan hill town, the other a soldier on the Sicilian front—will meet any challenge to reunite.

Vittoria SanAntonio, the daughter of a prosperous vineyard owner, is caught in a web of family secrets. Defying her domineering father, she has fallen for humble vineyard keeper Carlo Conte. When Carlo is conscripted into Mussolini’s army, it sets a fire in Vittoria, and she joins the resistance. As the Nazi war machine encroaches, Vittoria is drawn into dangers as unknowable as those faced by the man she loves.

Badly wounded on the first day of the invasion, Carlo regains consciousness on a farm in Sicily. Nursed back to health by a kind family there, he embarks on an arduous journey north through his ravaged homeland. For Carlo and Vittoria, as wartime threats mount and their paths diverge, what lies ahead will test their courage as never before.


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August Amazon First Reads

Exiles

Author: Ashley Saunders, Leslie Saunders
Pages: 267
ISBN: B09K7JP66H
Genre: Science Fiction
Publisher: 47North
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

Is fear the killer of dreams?

It’s been twelve years since the 2040 Quake rocked the Golden State, fracturing Los Angeles and the fortunes of millions. It’s been six years since tech billionaire Damon Yates founded his elite academy, giving Unfortunates from the wrong side of his hyperloop tracks a new future at Quest Campus, tucked away in the Santa Monica Mountains. But an endeavor that sought to bridge a divide only tore eighteen-year-old twin sisters apart.

Jade is a street-savvy adrenaline seeker ruling the city’s downtrodden eastside. Crys is an influential socialite ensconced in Yates’s westside mansion—every bit her adoptive father’s daughter. After the mysterious murder of one of the academy’s brightest, Jade sets out with her factious band of exiles to prove there’s something sinister going on behind the walls of Yates’s exclusive empire. But to expose the earthshaking truth, Jade needs her estranged sister back on her side.

There’s a big problem, though: Crys is inexplicably terrified of her own twin’s face.

Combining a thrilling mystery with an examination of class difference, Exiles is an explosive coming-of-age adventure about living in—and doing anything to survive—the technologically advanced metropolis of the unshakable City of Dreams.


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About the Book

August Amazon First Reads

No One Crosses the Wolf: A Memoir

Author: Lisa Nikolidakis
Pages: 272
ISBN: B09N3P7L6K
Genre: Memoir, Nonfiction
Publisher: Little A
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

A powerful memoir about the traumas of a perilous childhood, a shattering murder-suicide, and a healing journey from escape to survival to recovery.

Growing up, Lisa Nikolidakis tried to make sense of her childhood, which was scarred by abuse, violence, and psychological terrors so extreme that her relationship with her father was cleaved beyond repair. Having finally been able to leave that relationship behind, surviving meant forgetting. For years, “I’m fine” was a lie Nikolidakis repeated.

Then, on her twenty-seventh birthday, Nikolidakis’s father murdered his girlfriend and her daughter, and turned the gun on himself. Nikolidakis’s world cracked open, followed by conflicted emotions: shock, grief, mourning for the innocent victims, and relief that she had escaped the same fate. In the tragedy’s wake, questions lingered: Who was this man, and why had he inflicted such horrors on her and his last victims? For answers, Nikolidakis embarked on a quest to Greece to find her father’s estranged family and a reckoning with the past she never expected.

In her gripping and moving memoir, Nikolidakis explores not only the making of a killer but her own liberation from the demons that haunted her and her profound self-restoration in the face of unimaginable crimes.


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August Amazon First Reads

Broken Summer: A Novel

Author: J.M. Lee, An Seon Jae
Pages: 251
ISBN: B09PBJ813F
Genre: Domestic Thriller, Literary Fiction
Publisher: Amazon Crossing
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

A death, a lie, a secret. For twenty-six summers he didn’t have the courage to face the past.

Lee Hanjo is an artist at the peak of his fame, envied and celebrated. Then, on his forty-third birthday, he awakens to find that his devoted wife has disappeared, leaving behind a soon-to-be-published novel she’d secretly written about the sordid past and questionable morality of an artist with a trajectory similar to Hanjo’s. It’s clear to him that his life is about to shatter and the demons from his past will come out. But why did his wife do it? Why now?

The book forces Hanjo to reflect on a summer from his youth when a deadly lie irreversibly and tragically determined the fates of two families.

From master storyteller J. M. Lee, one of Korea’s most renowned authors, comes an unforgettable novel of hidden truths, denials, and their inevitable repercussions. Everyone still left standing from that terrible summer so long ago must finally reckon with the deceptions that started it all and, twist after shocking twist, reap both the suffering and the vindication that comes with revenge.


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About the Book

August Amazon First Reads

Anni Dreams of Biryani

Author: Namita Moolani Mehra
Pages: 40
ISBN: B09NKNM2BJ
Genre: Childrens
Publisher: Two Lions
Released: September 1, 2022

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Synopsis

Anni’s on a mission to YUM!

The café across the street from Anni’s home in Little India makes the best biryani in the world. Fluffy and fragrant, spicy and succulent—Anni could eat it every day. In fact, Anni loves that biryani so much that she’s determined to uncover the secret to the recipe. She has so many questions for Uncle, the grumpy chef and owner of the café. But he isn’t providing any easy clues. So, with some careful planning, Anni sets out on a mission to find out the secret ingredients to this most special dish. Will Anni get the answers she’s looking for…before it’s too late?


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