If you’re wondering what to pick up this month, we’ve got you covered with the 9 Best Books to Read in August 2025, curated by Storizen. This list brings together a mix of gripping fiction, powerful nonfiction, moving memoirs, and stories that question the world we live in. From epic historical battles and courtroom dilemmas to war-torn lives, personal journeys of exile, and fearless investigations into power, these books promise to keep you hooked while also making you think. Whether you want something intense, thought-provoking, or simply unforgettable, there’s a title here waiting for you.
1. The Chola Tigers: Avengers of Somnath by Amish Tripathi
In 1025 CE, after Mahmud of Ghazni ravaged Somnath—shattering the sacred Shiva Linga and leaving thousands slain—he believed Bharat’s spirit lay broken. But from the ruins rose an unyielding oath of vengeance. A Tamil warrior, a Gujarati merchant, a devout Ayyappa follower, a scholar-emperor from Malwa, and the mighty Rajendra Chola himself unite in a daring mission to strike back at the very heart of Ghazni’s empire. Spanning the opulence of the Chola dynasty to the blood-soaked halls of Ghazni, The Chola Tigers unfolds as a tale of defiance and retribution—where pain forges unity, despair breeds courage, and vengeance transforms into Dharma.
2. The Tesla Files by Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden
In November 2022, when a former Tesla insider anonymously approached the German newspaper Handelsblatt, the newsroom was rocked by revelations that peeled back the veil on one of the world’s most secretive companies. The disclosures exposed a culture where spectacle eclipses substance and a CEO who thrives on loyalty and fear, sending shockwaves through Musk’s empire. The Tesla Files captures this explosive saga—an edge-of-your-seat narrative that begins with a whistleblower’s knock at dawn and unravels into a fearless investigation of the automaker’s hidden world. Both a gripping piece of investigative journalism and a startling exposé, it reveals what happens when innovation blurs into unchecked power, and when the richest man alive finds himself under fire from the truth.
3. Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers by Anil Yadav and Vaibhav Sharma
In Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers, Anil Yadav brings together stories that blur the line between reality and illusion, forcing readers to confront uncomfortable truths hidden in plain sight. A reporter torn by a moral dilemma, a colony of courtesans fighting for survival, a riot that both destroys and redeems, a singer whose art is hijacked by politics, and lives stitched together by memory and loss—all unfold in sharp, haunting detail. With empathy and unflinching honesty, Yadav turns everyday struggles into piercing narratives, showing us that while the world may appear ordinary, through his lens it becomes stranger, deeper, and more human than we ever imagined.
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4. The Chinese Mansion by Siddique Alam and Jaideep Pandey
In The Chinese Mansion, Siddique Alam weaves a haunting meditation on memory, grief, and the fragile illusions that shape human lives. A boy’s fleeting glimpse of a dragon shadows him into adulthood, where he becomes a lawyer in a quiet West Bengal town, his days marked by muted trials and unfinished relationships. Across the street looms the decaying Chinese Mansion, a silent witness to his inner unraveling, its secrets echoing his own unspoken questions. Through cases that test morality, companions bound by odd histories, and a world that seems to fade more than it falls apart, Alam crafts a narrative at once intimate and dreamlike. Both a portrait of small-town India and an excavation of the human psyche, the novel unfolds with lyrical intensity, blurring myth and reality until they become inseparable.
5. Refuge: Stories of War (And Love) by Sunny Singh
Refuge is a searing and tender collection that turns its gaze toward the overlooked lives shaped by war—women, children, and civilians caught in its brutal shadows. From Nur and Abid rediscovering love after their escape, to Marie facing an impossible choice in a village scarred by violence, to an ageing MI-6 officer confronting unsettling truths in a London park, these stories unravel with quiet power. Lyndsey’s tulips carry the weight of a hidden past, while a soldier’s jeweled armor becomes her final act of defiance. Spanning continents and decades, this collection explores both the unspeakable cruelties of conflict and the resilience of the human spirit—revealing how, even in the darkest corners of violence, love, dignity, and compassion refuse to be extinguished.
6. The Book of Death by Khalid Jawed and Naseeb A. Khan
In this haunting masterpiece, Khalid Jawed crafts a story within a story, where ruins, memory, and madness converge. A narrator arrives in Gilgitia Til Mas to assess prospects for steel plants, only to uncover the resurfaced remains of a long-submerged city once known for its infamous mental asylum. Among the debris lies a manuscript—a madman’s diary—that becomes the novel’s pulsing heart. As the narrator deciphers its fractured confessions, another world unfolds: a son scarred by a violent father even before birth, his struggles with self-destruction, the two women who shape his fractured existence, and the eerie metaphysical void he cannot escape. Blending decay with desire, philosophy with banality, Jawed’s novel lingers as both a chilling excavation of human suffering and a profound meditation on the fragile borders between sanity, violence, and meaning.
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7. Boats In A Storm by Kalyani Ramnath
Winner of the 2024 Asian Law & Society Association Distinguished Book Award, Boats in a Storm offers a powerful re-examination of migration, law, and decolonization across the Indian Ocean world. Long before World War II, traders, laborers, and financiers moved fluidly between India, Burma, Ceylon, and Malaya, but the war and the collapse of empire disrupted these rhythms, reshaping lives and identities. Through rich archival research spanning India, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, London, and Singapore, Kalyani Ramnath reveals how migrants struggled to assert their histories and rights within emerging citizenship regimes, even as new nation-states sought to erase their cross-border ties. By centering these overlooked stories of wartime displacement and its long afterlives, the book unsettles the myth of neatly formed national identities, showing decolonization instead as a turbulent process marked by contested memories, fractured loyalties, and shipwrecked empires.
8. Why the Constitution Matters by Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud
In Why the Constitution Matters, Justice D.Y. Chandrachud reflects on the Constitution as the living backbone of India’s democracy, shaping both governance and everyday life. Drawing on nearly twenty-five years of judicial experience, he unpacks complex principles with clarity, weaving in real-life cases and landmark judgments that illuminate themes of democracy, free speech, pluralism, gender equality, environmental justice, and the right to dissent. More than a legal treatise, this book is a deeply accessible meditation on why the Constitution is not merely a document of law, but the moral and structural foundation of a just, inclusive, and equitable society—making it essential reading for citizens and scholars alike.
9. A Return to Self: Excursions in Exile by Aatish Taseer
In this moving blend of travelogue and memoir, Aatish Taseer traces the journey of exile after the Government of India revoked his citizenship in 2019, cutting him off from the country that shaped his first three decades of life. What begins as a personal reckoning unfolds into a wider exploration of belonging, identity, and the cultural forces that define nations. From Istanbul, where he confronts the ghosts of his younger self, to Uzbekistan’s faded Silk Road grandeur, to India’s uneasy relationship with its own Buddhist heritage, Taseer threads together history, memory, and the present moment—shaped by pandemics, shifting food cultures, and resurgent politics. With sharp observation and lyrical honesty, he asks how centuries of migration, collision, and reinvention shape who we are today, and what it means to belong in a world where culture is both a vessel of connection and a battlefield of exclusion.
These nine books remind us why reading still feels like the best way to travel through time, ideas, and emotions without leaving our chair. Each story has something lasting to offer—whether it’s courage, reflection, or a new way of looking at the world. As you dive into the Best Books to Read in August 2025, curated by Storizen, let them challenge you, comfort you, and stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page. This month’s reading list isn’t just about books—it’s about experiences you’ll carry forward.
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