Atlanta Magazine • Atlanta Magazine August 2025 • Hot Off the Press

From memoirs to murder mysteries, some of the season’s best books are penned by local authors

It wouldn’t be Atlanta without those long summer days—perfect for burning through some pages. This year’s summer reading list keeps it close to home. A slew of Georgia authors have new books out this year, from a moving memoir by Erika J. Simpson to Stacey Abrams’s latest in the Avery Keene thriller series. Get your bookmarks ready for your next favorite read.

This debut memoir by Erika J. Simpson will have you sobbing, laughing and, of course, calling up Mom. Set between Simpson’s childhood in Atlanta in the ’90s and her adulthood in 2013, when she’s dealing with her mom’s cancer, This Is Your Mother is a touching but unflinching tribute to a complex mother-daughter relationship. With spare yet lyrical prose, Simpson crafts a stunning song to daughter-hood as well as a kind of “gospel according to Mom.” To quote the Book of Sallie Carol (aka, Simpson’s mom): “Home still feels like home, when you’re surviving together.”

There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone (Crown)

Told through a rotating ensemble of five Atlanta families, There Is No Place for Us is a novelistic and insightful investigation into a disturbing yet distinctly American crisis: the rise of the “working homeless.” Written like gripping fiction, this is one of the best works of narrative nonfiction of the year, with prose so searing and incisive, it will either inspire or enrage—or, most likely, both. “What we’re seeing today is an emergency born less of poverty than prosperity,” Goldstone states in the introduction. “Families are not ‘falling’ into homelessness. They’re being pushed.”

The third installment in the Avery Keene series, this new novel by New York Times bestselling author and local political dynamo Stacey Abrams is her most prescient and daring thriller yet. Coded Justice follows former Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene into a tech heart of darkness via medical field artificial intelligence. Part murder mystery, part investigation into the corrosive effects of power married with technology, Coded Justice is more than a beach read—it’s a must-read.

Some books take a decade to write . . . or three. The latter is the case for The Fantasies of Future Things by Atlanta native Doug Jones, who began the book in grad school in the ’90s. However, patience paid off with this scintillating and sexy fiction debut, released by Simon & Schuster in April. Pitched by the author as “Moonlight meets Brokeback Mountain,” this book interweaves secret attractions, real-estate development displacing Black communities, and the 1996 Olympics.

Martin Padgett’s newest book is a page-turning, humanizing look at Michael Hardwick and the 1986 U.S. Supreme Court case Bowers v. Hardwick. This landmark decision, which upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia sodomy law that barred certain sexual acts between consenting adults, established a quiet “gay ban” that persisted for decades. Padgett, whose last book explored the wild gay nightlife scene that once festooned Cheshire Bridge Road, illuminates the hidden figure at the center of this history, penning an ode to the indomitable human spirit in the face of incredible injustice.

Gentrification, civil rights movement history, and deadly snakes (plus a deranged zoo employee) converge in Josh Green’s latest novel, Goodbye, Sweetberry Park. A veteran of the Atlanta writing scene and editor of Urbanize Atlanta, Green was uniquely positioned to write this quirky, darkly humorous tale set in “the era of utmost urban absurdity.” This ode to old Atlanta is a dizzying belly laugh and a gut punch, rolled into one.

New Vision As the art of photography evolved 100 years ago, photographers experimented with new techniques. The High Museum of Art exhibition Photography’s New Vision showcases that evolution. • Through January 4

Texas Blues Born in Gause, Texas, Ruthie Foster has become a force in modern blues, with a 2025 Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Her current tour brings her to the intimate confines of Eddie’s Attic. • August 10

Collective Soul Originally from Stockbridge and powered by brothers Ed and Dean Roland, Collective Soul’s debut album in 1995 spent 76 weeks on the charts. The band comes home to perform at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre. • August 9