The 10 best books to read this August, picked by Hilton Head bookworms
With the oceans of Hilton Head teeming with sharks, stingrays, and even alligators this time of year, it’s a good time for beachgoers to lay out under a beach umbrella and dive into a good book instead of into the water.
We asked our readers to share books they’re reading right now as well as what book they’re read in the past that holds a special place in their heart. Here are 10 must-reads to stick your nose into this August, as suggested by our readers.
#1: American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins
“I was stunned by the danger the migrants face in their travels but more so the danger if they do not leave.
It’s really a story that if more people read, perhaps we would become more sympathetic to those who give up everything to come to America.”
– Kathryn McAllister, Hilton Head Plantation
Genre: Historical Fiction, Thriller, Contemporary
Summary: Lydia lives in Acapulco. She has a son, Luca, the love of her life, and a wonderful husband who is a journalist. And while cracks are beginning to show in Acapulco because of the cartels, Lydia’s life is, by and large, fairly comfortable. But after her husband’s tell-all profile of the newest drug lord is published, none of their lives will ever be the same.
Forced to flee, Lydia and Luca find themselves joining the countless people trying to reach the United States. Lydia soon sees that everyone is running from something. But what exactly are they running to?
#2: Tar Baby by Toni Morrison
“A book that defined me as a young woman making poor decisions about men and trying to live up to societal pressures.”
– Anika Goss, Long Cove via Detroit
Genre: Fiction, African American
Summary: Ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary, Tar Baby is Toni Morrison’s reinvention of the love story. Jadine Childs is a black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women.
#3: The Waters by Bonnie Jo Campbell
“I completely related to the family and the monsters we choose to keep instead of dealing with them directly.”
– Anika Goss, Long Cove via Detroit
Genre: Fiction, Mystery, Thriller
Summary: On an island in the Great Massasauga Swamp—an area known as “The Waters” to the residents of nearby Whiteheart, Michigan—herbalist Hermine “Herself” Zook has healed the local women of their ailments for generations. As stubborn as her tonics are powerful, Herself inspires reverence and fear in the people of Whiteheart, and even in her own three daughters. The youngest, beautiful and inscrutable Rose Thorn, has left her own daughter, eleven-year-old Dorothy “Donkey” Zook, to grow up wild.
Donkey spends her days searching for truths in the lush landscape and in her math books, waiting for her wayward mother and longing for a father, unaware that family secrets, passionate love, and violent men will flood through the swamp and upend her idyllic childhood.
With a “ruthless and precise eye for the details of the physical world” (New York Times Book Review), Bonnie Jo Campbell presents an elegant antidote to the dark side of masculinity, celebrating the resilience of nature and the brutality and sweetness of rural life.
#4: Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa
“Travel is my absolute favorite thing in the world, and one of the best things I love to do is go to bookstores wherever I go. I picked up a copy of Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa last year when I was in London, and it’s the most precious book I’ve ever read. No one that I know has ever heard of it, but I saw it at Waterstones in King’s Cross, London, and I was hooked. It’s so special to me because it explores the importance of reading, being with family, and finding happiness in the places where you least expect to find it.”
– Mackenzie, Spanish Wells
Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Japanese Literature
Summary: Twenty-five-year-old Takako has enjoyed a relatively easy existence--until the day her boyfriend Hideaki, the man she expected to wed, casually announces he’s been cheating on her and is marrying the other woman. Suddenly, Takako’s life is in freefall. She loses her job, her friends, and her acquaintances, and spirals into a deep depression. In the depths of her despair, she receives a call from her distant uncle Satoru.
#5: Heartwood by Amity Gaige
“Loving it! Much more than the average “Lost Hiker” story; told from so many different points of view.”
– Sandy Holz, Sun City
Genre: Mystery, Thriller
Synopsis: In the heart of the Maine woods, an experienced Appalachian Trail hiker goes missing. She is forty-two-year-old Valerie Gillis, who has vanished 200 miles from her final destination. Alone in the wilderness, Valerie pours her thoughts into fractured, poetic letters to her mother as she battles the elements and struggles to keep hoping.
#6: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didon
“My daughter, Jessica, gave me [this] and I am finding it fascinating. The author, who recently died, was a brilliant investigative journalist who exposed the shocking underworld of the hippies in her bestseller, “Slouching Towards Bethlehem.” Her memoir documents her journey through the acute stages of grief following the sudden death of her husband, the famous American writer John Gregory Dunne and the life-threatening illness of their daughter, Quintana during the same year.”
– Kim Kachmann, Chinaberry Ridge
Genre: Nonfiction, Memoir
Summary: From one of America’s iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage–and a life, in good times and bad–that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.
#7: Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
“I highly recommend [it] … It’s a modern retelling of David Copperfield, set in Kingsolver’s native Appalachia. [Barbara] writes with the same familiarity and empathy for her mountain people as Dickens had for poverty-trapped Londoners, and with a clear understanding of the snares that their mutual poverty sets for them.”
– Bob Fell, Sun City
Genre: Historical Fiction, Coming of Age
Summary: Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.
#8: Yellowface by R. F. Kuang
“Its a thrilling mystery that has you on the edge of your seat! Perfect summer read!”
– Anika Goss, Long Cove via Detroit
Genre: Contemporary
Summary: Authors Juniper Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena is a literary darling while June is a nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls?, June thinks. So when June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse, stealing Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song—complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? This piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller. That is what June believes, and The New York Times bestseller list agrees.
But June cannot escape Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens her stolen success. As she races to protect her secret she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
#9: The Secret History by Donna Tartt
“My favorite book in the world and such a classic!”
– Mackenzie, Spanish Wells
Genre: Dark Academia, Mystery
Summary: Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality they slip gradually from obsession to corruption and betrayal, and at last—inexorably—into evil.
#10: The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang
“So intense but so good”
– Mackenzie, Spanish Wells
Genre: Fantasy, Historical Fiction
Summary: An epic historical military fantasy, inspired by the bloody history of China’s twentieth century and filled with treachery and magic.
Li’s Pick: Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
“As residents of Hilton Head, we live in a hotspot of luxury hotels, resorts, and golf clubs. But deep in the cracks of this island lies a hidden underworld of crime, addiction, and poverty that most would rather pretend doesn’t exist. Although the inequalities of Mumbai are far more extreme than in Hilton Head, the truth about what lies in the shadow of luxury is relevant to tourist towns all over the world.”
– Li Khan, Hilton Head
Genre: Creative Nonfiction
Summary: In this breathtaking book by Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a bewildering age of global change and inequality is made human through the dramatic story of families striving toward a better life in Annawadi, a makeshift settlement in the shadow of luxury hotels near the Mumbai airport.
Have a book you’d like to recommend? Fill out this form or send Li Khan and email at lkhan@islandpacket.com with the subject “Book Recommendation.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2025 at 12:47 PM.
