Celebrities, both literary and popular, from Richard Ford to Caitlyn Jenner, are out there this season with their stories. But everyone has a story to tell: of food, of struggle, of love, of adventure. Or you can just tell someone else’s.
Top 10
Between Them: Remembering My Parents
Richard Ford. Ecco, May 2
The Pulitzer Prize-winning author mines his life to write a memoir in two parts about his love for the parents he lost too young.
Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order)
Bridget Quinn. Chronicle, Mar. 7
An art historian takes a look at the lives and careers of 15 important women artists and includes beautiful reproductions of their work.
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body
Roxanne Gay. Harper, June 13
An exploration of one woman’s struggle to understand the anxieties around pleasure and denial and the meaning of self care.
Island Home: A Landscape Memoir
Tim Winton. Milkweed, Apr. 11
An evocative portrait of the unique landscape of Australia and the author’s lifelong connection to its singular environment.
The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince
Mayte Garcia. Hachette, Apr. 4
The first wife of the popular musician takes a candid, intimate, and revelatory look at his personal and professional life.
Schadenfreude, a Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For
Rebecca Schuman. Flatiron, Feb. 7
A young Jewish intellectual falls in love with a boy, a language, and a landscape as well as Kafka, and tries to figure them all out.
The Secrets of My Life
Caitlyn Jenner. Grand Central, Apr. 25
The story of the most famous transgender woman in the world, from her childhood as Bruce and Olympian Gold to her transition and her life today.
Theft by Finding Diaries (1977–2016)
David Sedaris. Little, Brown, June 6
Favorite selections from four decades of diaries that inspire the comic’s autobiographical essays.
This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression
Daphne Merkin. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Feb. 7
A personal account of a life afflicted with depression, from an affluent but neglected childhood to the present day.
This Is Not a Border: Reportage and Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature
Ahdaf Soueif. Bloomsbury USA, May 9
A collection of essays, poems, and sketches celebrating, in the words of Edward Said, “the power of culture over the culture of power.”
Memoirs & Biographies Listings
Abrams
Obama: The Call of History by Peter Baker (Apr. 18, hardcover, $50, ISBN 978-0-935112-90-0) takes the measure of Barack Obama’s achievements and disappointments during his eight years in office in this account that includes color photographs by New York Times photographers and others of the events that defined Obama’s presidency. 75,000-copy announced first printing.
Arte Público
Deep in the Shadows: Undercover in the Ruthless World of Human Smuggling by Hipólito Acosta (Mar. 31, trade paper, $17.95, ISBN 978-1-55885-844-2). The U.S. Special Agent recalls his often dangerous exploits as a law enforcement agent over more than 30 years, offering an eye-opening look at smugglers and other criminals involved in the sale of counterfeit documents, narcotics, and weapons.
Atria
Poetry Will Save Your Life by Jill Bialosky (June 13, hardcover, $24, ISBN 978-1-4516-9320-1). Using poems by Robert Frost, Emily Dickinson, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath, Bialosky examines her own life: the death of a father, adolescence, first love, leaving home, the suicide of a sister, marriage, the birth of a child, the day in New York City the Twin Towers fell, while celebrating the enduring value of poetry.
Atria/37 INK
Life’s Work: From the Trenches, a Moral Argument for Choice by Dr. Willie Parker, with Lisa Miller (Apr. 4, hardcover, $26 ISBN 9781501151125). A Christian abortion provider in Mississippi and Alabama combines his personal and professional life with his medical and scientific training to reveal how he came to believe that helping women in need is precisely the Christian thing to do.
Backbeat
Roger Waters: The Man Behind the Wall by Dave Thompson (Mar. 14, trade paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-61713-668-9). The life of the songwriter and man behind classic Pink Floyd and some of the greatest albums of the rock era, beginning with his childhood in war-torn England; features exclusive interviews with friends and associates, rare photos, and a detailed discography.
Bloomsbury USA
Overmapped and Uncharted: Ten Years of Writings from the Palestine Festival of Literature, edited by Ahdaf Soueif and Omar Robert Hamilton (May 9, trade paper, $17, ISBN 978-1-63286-884-8). Writers from Richard Ford to Alice Walker, Michael Ondaatje to Claire Messud share their thoughts on the Palestine Festival of Literature, established in 2008 with the aim of strengthening artistic links with the rest of the world, and to reaffirm, in the words of Edward Said, “the power of culture over the culture of power.”
Chelsea Green
Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray by Adam Federman (May 31, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-60358-608-5). For more than 30 years, Patience Gray (1917–2005) lived in a remote area of Puglia in southernmost Italy without electricity, modern plumbing, or a telephone; grew much of her own food; and wrote, as a woman ahead of her time, about what today we would call the Mediterranean diet and Slow Food.
Chicago Review
The General’s Niece: The Little-Known de Gaulle Who Fought to Free Occupied France by Paige Bowers (June 1, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-61373-609-8). The first English-language biography of Charles de Gaulle’s niece, Geneviève, a woman who become a foot soldier of the French Resistance, and led campaigns to force France to acknowledge its collaborators with the Nazis.
Chronicle
Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order) by Bridget Quinn (Mar. 7, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-1-4521-5236-3). Art historian Quinn follows the lives and careers of 15 female artists from 1600 to the present day in a volume filled with beautiful reproductions of the artists’ works and portraits of each artist by illustrator Lisa Congdon.
Crown Archetype
Are You Anybody by Jeffrey Tambor (May 9, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-451-49635-5) collects humorous, autobiographical essays by the star and actor of Transparent and Arrested Development in which Tambor discusses his creative process, along with stories of his career and colleagues.
Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life by Jonathan Gould (May 16, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-307-45394-5). A definitive biography, timed to the 50th anniversary of Redding’s memorable performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, of Redding’s short life, it explores race and music in America in the 1960s.
Da Capo
Hannibal’s Oath: The Life and Wars of Rome’s Greatest Enemy by John Prevas (July 11, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-306-82424-1). This biography of Rome’s enigmatic nemesis looks at Hannibal’s extraordinary character in the context of his legendary success and victories in Italy and his ultimate failure and humiliating defeat in the North African desert. 25,000-copy announced first printing.
Doubleday
Casey Stengel: Baseball’s Greatest Character by Marty Appel (Mar. 28, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-0-385-54047-6) presents a portrait of a man who lived baseball, first as a player (he was the only person in history to play for all the New York teams) and then as a manager for the Yankees, Mets, and others, a man who lived in the limelight yet remains an enigma.
Ecco
Between Them: Remembering My Parents by Richard Ford (May 2, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-266188-3). For Richard Ford, the Pulitzer Prize–winning storyteller, the story of his mother and father, a memoir in two parts, is a meditation on memory, connection, and love, asking how we can better understand ourselves by knowing the ones who made us. 200,000-copy announced first printing.
ECW
Director’s Cut: My Life in Film by Ted Kotcheff and Josh Young (Mar. 14, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-77041-361-0). Director Kotcheff looks back on his life, which began in the slums of Toronto during the Depression, and his craft as a director of films including The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, North Dallas Forty, and First Blood; includes a foreword by Mariska Hargitay.
Flatiron
Schadenfreude, A Love Story: Me, the Germans, and 20 Years of Attempted Transformations, Unfortunate Miscommunications, and Humiliating Situations That Only They Have Words For by Rebecca Schuman (Feb. 7, hardcover, $26.99, ISBN 978-1-250-07757-8). The Germans invented the word schadenfreude, deriving pleasure from others’ misfortune. Slate columnist Schuman recounts her passion for all things German, but also how she learns to embrace all the reasons why she never would be German.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression by Daphne Merkin (Feb. 7, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-0-374-14036-6). In this personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, Merkin looks back to try to sort out the causes of her affliction, discusses her early love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer, and how she’s learned to cope.
FSG/Crichton
Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe (June 13, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-374-24813-0). A biography, with dozens of in-person interviews with Mitchell, reveals the backstory behind the famous songs—from her youth on the Canadian prairie, the child she gave up for adoption, through her albums and love affairs, to the present.
Grand Central
The Secrets of My Life by Caitlyn Jenner (Apr. 25, hardcover, $29, ISBN 978-1-4555-9675-1) offers her story, from her time as Bruce Jenner, a gold medal–winning Olympic decathlete, to her transition into the world’s most famous transgender woman. 450,000-copy announced first printing.
Hachette
The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince by Mayte Garcia (Apr. 4, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-316-46897-8). The first wife of legendary musician Prince, as the partner with him in the most pivotal moments of his life, shares an intimate and candid look into the private and professional figure. 250,000-copy announced first printing.
Hachette/Center Street
Death Need Not Be Fatal by Malachy McCourt (May 16, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-4789-1706-9). McCourt explores the role death has played and continues to play in his life and in the world, from the dead babies and starving children in the Limerick of his childhood, to Angela’s famous ashes, the deaths of his brothers Frank and Mike, and his own impending demise. 65,000-copy announced first printing.
Hachette/Twelve
Al Franken, Giant of the Senate by Al Franken (May 30, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-4555-4041-9). The award-winning comedian who ran for office talks about his unlikely campaign and its improbable ending of serving in the United States Senate. He recounts the most dramatic and humorous moments of his new career in politics. 325,000-copy announced first printing.
Harper
Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay (June 13, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-0-06-236259-9). In her popular essays and Tumblr blog, Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and body. She takes readers along on her journey to understand herself in a memoir of food, weight, self-image, and learning how to feed your hunger while taking care of yourself. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Nevertheless by Alec Baldwin (Apr. 4, hardcover, $28.99, ISBN 978-0-06-240970-6). The outspoken Baldwin chronicles the highs and lows of his life, from his artistic success to his battles with sobriety, in this candid and revelatory memoir. 250,000-copy announced first printing.
Harvard Univ./Belknap
Paradise Lost: A Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald by David S. Brown (May 22, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-674-50482-0). Known as a Jazz Age epicurean and an emblem of the Lost Generation, Fitzgerald gets a new interpretation as Brown veers away from this image and looks at him as a moralist, who, struck by the nation’s shifting mood and manners after WWI, wrote powerfully about change in America
Holt
I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad by Souad Mekhennet (June 13, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-62779-897-6). The daughter of a Turkish mother and a Moroccan father, born and educated in Germany, Mekhennet reports from the Middle East to North Africa to explain the rise of Islamic radicalism.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Papi: My Story by David Ortiz and Michael Holley (May 16, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-544-81461-5). “Big Papi” Ortiz looks back at his storied career, from his poor upbringing in the Dominican Republic to the many milestones of his Red Sox career. He opens up about the problems he sees in Major League Baseball and about former teammates, opponents, coaches, and executives. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
This Is Just My Face: Try Not to Stare by Gabourey Sidibe (May 1, hardcover, $25, ISBN 978-0-544-78676-9). The Oscar-nominated star of Precious shares her life story, including her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father, a mother who supported her two children by singing in the subway, and her unconventional rise to fame as a movie star. 150,000-copy announced first printing.
Knopf
Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage by Dani Shapiro (Apr. 11, hardcover, $22.95, ISBN 978-0-451-49448-1). Novelist and memoirist Shapiro delivers a memoir about marriage and memory with this inquiry into how marriage is transformed by time. She writes on literature, poetry, philosophy, and theology to explain the joys and challenges of married life.
Robert Lowell, Setting the River on Fire: A Study of Genius, Mania, and Character by Kay Redfield Jamison (Feb. 28, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-307-70027-8). A biography of one of the major American poets of the twentieth century is also a study of the relationship between manic-depressive (bipolar) illness, creative genius, and character by a psychologist who examines how Lowell’s illness and treatment came to bear on his work.
Little, Brown
Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977–2016) by David Sedaris (June 6, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-15472-7). For the first time in print, Sedaris shares his favorite entries from the diaries that he’s kept for 40 years on the odd and funny events he’s witnessed that are the source of his autobiographical essays; a look into the mind of a classic comic. 750,000-copy announced first printing.
You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me by Sherman Alexie (June 13, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-0-316-27075-5). A moving memoir about family, love, and loss from the National Book Award winner features 78 poems, 78 essays, and intimate family photographs in which Alexie shares raw, angry, funny, and sweet memories of growing up dirt-poor on an Indian reservation, one of four children raised by alcoholic parents. 100,000-copy announced first printing.
Milkweed
Island Home: A Landscape Memoir by Tim Winton (Apr. 11, trade paper, $18, ISBN 978-1-57131-124-5). Australia’s unique landscape comes alive in Winton’s evocative and sometimes provocative memoir about how that singular place has shaped him and his writing, from his boyhood relationship with the world around him to his view of the landscape as a living process.
New Directions
These Possible Lives by Fleur Jaeggy, trans. by Minna Proctor (July 25, trade paper, $12.95, ISBN 978-0-8112-2687-5). Jaeggy’s strange and engrossing biographical essays about the writers Thomas De Quincey, John Keats, and Marcel Schwob, among others, show her stylist chops. Are they essays—or are they prose poems?
New Press
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn (Apr. 18, hardcover, $26.95, ISBN 978-1-62097-212-0). One woman’s odyssey from tragedy to prison to recovery—and recognition as a leading figure in the national justice reform movement. Burton cycled in and out of prison for 15 years and once clean, dedicated her life to supporting women facing similar struggles. 17,500-copy announced first printing.
Oneworld
The Amazing Story of the Man Who Cycled from India to Europe for Love by Per J Andersson, trans. by Anna Holmwood (Mar. 14, trade paper, $19.99, ISBN 978-1-78607-033-3). Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia, born into a poor, untouchable family in a small village in eastern India, meets a young Swedish woman. Armed with nothing more than a handful of paintbrushes and a secondhand Raleigh bicycle, he made his way across Asia and Europe in 1978 in search of her.
Penguin
Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste by Bianca Bosker (Mar. 28, trade paper, $17, ISBN 978-0-14-312809-0). Amateur drinker and professional tech reporter Bosker stumbled on an alternate universe of master sommeliers and, fascinated by their sensory powers, she set out to discover what drove their obsession, and whether she, too, could become a “cork dork.”
The Girl from the Metropol Hotel: Growing Up in Communist Russia by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya, trans. by Anna Summers (Feb. 7, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-0-14-312997-4) is a memoir of coming-of-age amid the hardships of Stalinist Russia. Petrushevskaya, from a family of Bolshevik intellectuals, was reduced to singing for alms in the streets yet she became a writer, recording the trials and wiles of everyday Russians with a combination of empathy and gallows humor.
Picador
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool: A True Love Story by Peter Turner (May 2, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-1-250-13685-5) recounts a story of friendship, love and stardom that began when Turner’s former lover, Hollywood actress Gloria Grahame, collapsed in a Lancaster hotel, and he took her into his eccentric family’s home in Liverpool. Soon to be a major feature film starring Annette Bening, Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, and Vanessa Redgrave.
Random House
The Rules Do Not Apply by Ariel Levy (Mar. 14, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-0-8129-9693-7). Levy describes her own ill-fated assumptions—thinking that anything is possible, that marriage doesn’t have to mean monogamy, that aging doesn’t have to mean infertility—and tells her story of starting over after she loses everything.
Riverhead
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood (May 2, hardcover, $27, ISBN 978-1-59463-373-7). A heartbreaking and heartwarming memoir about having a married Catholic priest for a father and the eight-month adventure she and her husband had in her parents’ household after a decade of living on their own.
Running Press
I Love My Computer Because My Friends Live in It: Stories from an Online Life by Jess Kimball Leslie (Apr. 4, trade paper, $14.99, ISBN 978-0-7624-6171-4). Growing up in the early days of the Internet, Leslie turns this memoir into a passionate defense of technology and its positive effect on our lives. She claims that all of us have a more twisted, meaningful, emotional relationship with the online world than we realize or let on. 30,000-copy announced first printing.
Simon & Schuster
Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening by Manal al-Sharif (June 13, hardcover, $26, ISBN 978-1-4767-9302-3) offers an intimate memoir of an accidental activist, a story of a young, devout Muslim woman from a modest family in Saudi Arabia who became the unexpected leader of a courageous movement to support women’s right to drive.
S&S/Gallery
Juliet’s Answer: One Man’s Search for Love and the Elusive Cure for Heartbreak by Glenn Dixon (Feb. 7, trade paper, $16, ISBN 978-1-5011-4185-0). Spurned by love, Dixon moves to Verona, Italy, where he volunteers to answer the thousands of letters sent from lovelorn people all over the world to the hometown of Shakespeare’s Juliet; a tale of modern-day love steeped in the romantic traditions of eras past.
Sarabande
Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays by Fenton Johnson (May 16, trade paper, $15.95, ISBN 978-1-941411-43-8) explores sexuality, religion, geography, and the AIDS crisis, as Johnson wanders from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta, investigating questions large and small.
Scribner
Blue on Blue: An Insider’s Story of Good Cops Catching Bad Cops by Charles Campisi with Gordon Dillow (Feb. 7, hardcover, $28, ISBN 978-1-5011-2719-9). The head of the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau from 1996 through 2014 tells the story of joining the world’s largest police force, then spending almost half of his career putting bad cops behind bars.
She Writes
Filling Her Shoes: A Memoir of an Inherited Family by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder (May 9, trade paper, $16.95, ISBN 978-1-63152-198-0). A stepmother navigates living in the shadow of a young mother taken too soon as she creates love and joy in a new family, which becomes the richest kind of inheritance.
Skyhorse
Finding Oprah’s Roots: Finding Your Own by Henry Louis Gates (May 2, trade paper, $14.99, ISBN 978-1-5107-2069-5). Prominent African-American scholar Gates traced Oprah’s roots and shares the lessons of her ancestors—the legacy one generation bequeaths another, how who we are is influenced by the paths our ancestors have taken, and the impact that even the most humble among us can have on future generations. 30,000-copy announced first printing.
Sourcebooks
A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide by Stephanie Saldaña (Feb. 1, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-1-4926-3905-3). The author and her new husband, Frederic move with their sons to a neighborhood where the fractious sides of Palestinian and Israeli Jerusalem collide, and Frederic embarks on a spiritual journey that forces the family to redefine their lives, their love, and the place they call home.
How to Make a French Family: A Memoir of Love, Food, and Faux Pas by Samantha Vérant (Apr. 1, trade paper, $15.99, ISBN 978-1-4926-3849-0). At the age of 40, the American Vérant, marries a Frenchman, moves to southwestern France, and deals with the culture shock of making her instant French family into a happy one.
Square One
A Gift of Love: The Life of Saint John Paul II by the St. John Paul II National Shrine (July 1, hardcover, $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7570-0434-6). A largely pictorial book of the St. John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C.,, takes readers on a walk though the exhibit with photographs, reflections, and illuminating words from St. John Paul II. 15,000-copy announced first printing.
St. Martin’s/Dunne
Jack and Norman: A State-Raised Convict and the Legacy of Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song” by Jerome Loving (Feb. 21, hardcover, $25.99, ISBN 978-1-250-10699-5). The tragic behind-the-scenes story of Norman Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize–winning classic, The Executioner’s Song, and his relationship with Jack Henry Abbott, who the author helped get out of prison and publish his book, In the Belly of the Beast, after which Abbott murdered a waiter and fled to Mexico before being recaptured and imprisoned.
Univ. of Georgia
Alpine Apprentice by Sarah Gorham (Mar., trade paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-0-8203-5072-1). Part travelogue, part memoir, the poet, essayist and editor-in-chief of Sarabande Books tells of her life-changing coming-of-age at a small boarding school in Switzerland.
