Paperbacks to Look Out For in August 2025: Part Two

Cover image for Small Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans This second instalment of August paperbacks begins with Lissa Evans’s Small Bomb at Dimperley, one of last year’s favourites for me. There’s no money for the patching up Dimperely so desperately needs when Valentine returns from the war in 1945, finding himself elevated to the baronetcy when his missing eldest brother is declared dead, but while Dowager Lady Iris’s solution is a wealthy match for Valentine, Zena Baxter, secretary to Valentine’s dullard uncle, hits on another plan. Evans takes some entertaining swipes at the aristocracy while the rest of the country happily throws deference to the winds, voting in a Labour government. I loved this one: an uncomplicated, funny, very British delight.Cover image for Edith Holler by Edward Carey

Edward Carey’s Little was one of my books of 2018 and I enjoyed The Swallowed Man which makes me keen to read Edith Holler, the story of a young woman trapped in a rundown Norwich theatre convinced by her father that her departure would cause it to fall down. Edith is horrified when he marries a stranger who she’s sure presents a threat to everything she knows. ‘Teeming with unforgettable characters and illuminated by Carey’s trademark illustrations, Edith Holler is a surprisingly modern fable of one young woman’s struggle to escape her family’s control and craft her own creative destiny’ says the blurb suggesting another enjoyably idiosyncratic novel from Carey complete with his characteristic illustrations.

Cover image for The Granddaughter by Bernhard Schlink It’s a very long time since I read The Reader, the novel which propelled Bernhard Schlink up the UK’s bestseller charts. Translated by Charlotte Collins, The Granddaughter follows Kaspar who discovers after her death the price Brigit paid when she fled East Berlin to be with him in the West as he becomes determined to understand her past. His pursuit leads him to a neo-Nazi community where he forms a bond with a young woman he begins to think of as his granddaughter. Sounds like an intriguing premise. Coer iumage for Colored Television by Danzy Senna

Danzy Senna’s Colored Television follows a writer struggling to finish her second novel, and her artist husband who’ve landed a housesitting gig in the hills above Los Angeles. When her plans founder, Jane turns to screenwriting, managing to get a meeting with an up-and-coming producer keen to work with a ‘real writer’ but things go terribly wrong. ‘Funny, piercing, and page turning, Colored Television is Senna’s most on-the-pulse, ambitious, and rewarding novel yet’ says the blurb, promisingly.

Cover image for So Late in the day by Claire Keegan Described by the publisher as a novella, Claire Keegan’s So Late in the Day weighs in at just over sixty pages, more of a short story, I’d say. It follows Cathal who’s taking the bus home after a hard week and thinking about Sabine with whom he could have built a life had he not behaved the way he did. After a lonely evening at home in front of the TV, the significance of this date in Cathal’s calendar becomes clear. ‘From one of the finest writers working today, Keegan’s So Late in the Day asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women’ says the blurb. I read this one last year and remember finding it moving although it’s not stayed with me in the way Keegan’s other work has.

That’s it for August. A click on a title will take you either to my review or to a more detailed synopsis should you want to know more, and if you’d like to catch up with part one it’s here. New fiction is here and here.

23 thoughts on “Paperbacks to Look Out For in August 2025: Part Two”

  1. Lissa Evans turns out reliably enjoyable reads, so I’ll enjoy this. The same applies to Edward Carey. I loved the Schlink: the last sentence of my review says ‘ A moving and illuminating account of the feelings informing modern German politics.’ Your last two choices look promising too. A great clutch of reads here, apparently.

  2. Definitely interested in the Evans, Carey, and Senna—the last has been on my wishlist for birthday/Christmas presents for a while!

      1. I’m interested to see what her voice is like. She’s married to Percival Everett and—I just realised—her mother is the poet Fanny Howe, so lots of cross-cutting influences!

  3. I have read The Granddaughter. It’s very good but I did wonder about the plausibility of some of the plot in later stages of the book. I much preferred The Reader, read many years ago. Haven’t read this book by Keegan yet, which I am sure is superb, as usual. Just finished Clear by Carys Davies. So impressive.

  4. I was just eyeing Lissa Evans to see what was available via ILL for me and there are a few options. Not this one, though, obviously. Do you have other favourites? Of the rest, Colored Television is the only one already on my TBR, but I think I’d like the others too, and will watch out for the Carey.

    1. I started with Old Baggage then read V for Victory, which picks up a few characters from OB, and loved them both. Keen to read Colored Television. She had such a interesting background.

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