Cameron Crowe’s memoir follows his teenage years as a young music journalist in the 1970s, traveling with and interviewing major rock artists and gaining rare backstage access. It’s a coming-of-age account about finding his voice, the relationships and creative encounters that shaped his career, and the family influences that steered him into journalism and filmmaking. The book offers vivid snapshots of the era and Crowe’s early life without revealing specific plot details.

Set in late 15th-century England during the Tudor rise, this novel follows Lambert Simnel, a boy raised as a peasant who is revealed to be of royal blood and groomed as a figurehead in a dynastic struggle. Sent for education and turned into a pawn across courts from Oxford to Burgundy and Ireland, he forms a crucial alliance with Joan, a politically savvy and determined young woman. The story explores identity, court intrigue, and the high stakes of claims to the throne, without revealing its outcome.

Rocky’s life in Western Massachusetts—shared with her husband Nick, their daughter Willa (home from college), son Jamie in New York, and Rocky’s widowed father Mort—feels ordinary until she becomes preoccupied with a nearby accident and a potential medical concern. As her anxieties grow, the family navigates love, change, and the uncertainty of who people really are, with moments of humor and quiet tenderness.

Cannon opens a book amid the wreckage of a restaurant on a sweltering Montreal night, having acted out of character and left a trail of regret. The story follows her relationship with Trish—her long-time friend and fellow second-generation Chinese queer woman—whose weekly ritual of cooking and watching Australian horror films anchors them as they navigate the uncertain transition into adulthood.

Photographic Memory is a graphic biography in which cartoonist Bill Griffith traces the life and work of his great-grandfather, William Henry Jackson, an early photographer of the American West. Drawing on family letters and archival sources, Griffith explores Jackson’s expeditions, the impact of his images on how Americans viewed the West and the national parks, and the relationship between photography and storytelling, all told in a personal illustrated style.

The Waterbearers follows Sasha Bonét’s exploration of Black motherhood across three generations—her grandmother in Louisiana, her mother in Texas, and her own experience raising a daughter in New York. Blending family memoir with historical and literary portraits of Black women, the book examines how love, labor, and trauma are inherited and considers ways to honor ancestral strength while breaking cycles of violence in parenting.

A sharp, empathetic family saga that traces multiple generations of a Taiwanese immigrant family and their American-born descendants as they navigate migration, memory, and the daily erasures of assimilation. Through intimate domestic scenes, wry humor, and piercing social observation, it examines how language, food, storytelling, and casual xenophobia shape identity and belonging, asking what it means to be repeatedly asked "where are you really from" and how families carry—and remake—their histories in a new country.

In a quiet Austin branch library, four librarians—Hazel, Jonathan, Astrid, and Sophie—each carry their own secrets and reasons for staying. When a sudden murder shatters the safety of their workplace, they must learn to trust one another and protect the library and themselves.

A blend of memoir and reportage, Blessings and Disasters follows Alexis Okeowo’s return to her hometown of Montgomery, Alabama, weaving her family’s story with the state’s history—from the forced removal of the Creek Nation and slavery to modern industrial change and contemporary political and educational fights. Through intimate portraiture and reporting, Okeowo examines how Alabamians reckon with a past of injustice while still loving their home, revealing the complexities behind the state’s place in American history.

Strangers and Intimates traces how private life emerged as a hard‑won cultural achievement and examines the forces now putting it at risk — from state and corporate surveillance to confessional, ‘tell‑all’ culture and the politicization of intimate spaces. Using historical episodes (from early modern debates about the sanctity of the home to 19th‑century letter‑opening scandals) and contemporary examples like reality TV and social credit systems, the book argues that privacy is a precious resource that needs active protection.

Jeannie Vanasco chronicles the increasingly fraught relationship with her mother after the latter begins using the silent treatment while living in Vanasco’s renovated apartment. Tracing their shared past and the pattern of silences—from weeks to months—the memoir examines how punishment, loneliness, and unspoken resentments shape their bond and Vanasco’s attempts to understand and reconnect, all while facing the fear that her mother may never speak to her again.

Jada Williams, a former Hollywood wardrobe designer now working for minimum wage at a mall, finds herself targeted by the Debt Police after losing her job. Refusing to be crushed by crushing student debt, she teams up with two fellow mall coworkers to pull off a bold plan to erase their loans and strike back at a predatory system. The story is a darkly comic, character-driven heist about debt, survival, and revenge.

Precious Rubbish is an experimental graphic memoir that uses the visual language of mid‑century children’s comics to revisit a difficult childhood marked by emotional instability, rural poverty, and abuse within a Pentecostal context. Presented as short comics, gag panels and interactive elements (paper dolls, mock ads, puzzles), the book combines deadpan humor with spare, unsettling imagery and asks readers to help fill in gaps of memory and meaning.

The Martians reconstructs the late 19th–early 20th-century frenzy over life on Mars, centered on astronomer Percival Lowell’s claims that telescopic images revealed canals and signs of civilization. Drawing on clippings, letters, and photographs, it follows the scientific debates, public excitement (including reported radio signals), and the cultural ripple effects that helped launch science fiction and a lasting fascination with life beyond Earth.

Troublemaker is a biography of Jessica “Decca” Mitford, who left British high society to become an antifascist and civil‑rights activist. The book traces her work in the Spanish Civil War and the United States — including investigative reporting, political organizing, and her lively correspondence — and conveys how her irreverent, committed approach shaped her public life and influence.

The Intermediaries recounts the overlooked history of the Institute for Sexual Science in interwar Germany, led by Magnus Hirschfeld, which pioneered early gender-affirming care and advocacy for homosexual and transgender people. Focusing on patients such as Dora Richter and the institute’s physicians, the book traces how medical experimentation, emerging queer activism, and political backlash intersected as nationalism and Nazi ideology rose. It is a concise, human-centered account of early transgender healthcare and the people who fought for recognition and dignity.

A collection of essays and long-form journalism by John Edgar Wideman, spanning nearly five decades. The pieces use personal reflection and cultural criticism to examine American identity, politics, and social change—addressing figures such as Zora Neale Hurston, Malcolm X, Spike Lee, Emmett Till, and Michael Jordan—while tracing shifts from the post–Civil Rights era into the contemporary moment.

1929 examines the run‑up to the 1929 stock market crash and its immediate fallout, showing how unchecked optimism, speculation, and fraud turned a booming market into sudden collapse and widespread economic ruin. Through portraits of financiers, regulators, and everyday people, it explores the human motives, political conflicts, and ignored warning signs behind the crash, and highlights recurring patterns in financial crises without revealing plot details.

In Covid’s Wake examines political and institutional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, arguing that many governments abandoned preexisting plans and relied on sweeping emergency measures. The authors analyze how those choices affected inequality, schooling, and public debate—how science and dissent were politicized—and argue for preserving liberal toleration, openness to uncertainty, and honest public deliberation in future crises.

Paul Elie examines how artists and filmmakers in the 1980s brought religious themes into popular culture, turning music, film, and visual art into sites of spiritual debate. Through portraits of figures such as Leonard Cohen, Andy Warhol, Prince, Toni Morrison, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Sinéad O'Connor, Wim Wenders, and Martin Scorsese, the book shows how their work engaged faith, doubt, and public controversy and helped shape the postsecular moment.

Anthony Fennell, an Irish journalist and playwright, is sent to report on the undersea fiber‑optic cables that carry the world’s information. His investigation brings him to the west coast of Africa and aboard a cable‑repair ship led by John Conway, a skilled engineer and freediver, intersecting with Zanele, a South African actress. As they set out to repair deep breaks, the novel quietly examines the hidden labor behind global infrastructure and the ways people try to mend personal and collective ruptures.

The Hollow Half is a memoir in which Sarah Aziza’s hospitalization for an eating disorder becomes the catalyst for tracing three generations of her Palestinian family—from Gaza to the Midwest and New York. Through memories, dreams, and recovered stories she explores how personal trauma and anorexia intersect with generational displacement, silence, and resilience. The book weaves language and family history as she resists assimilation and patriarchy and seeks a form of healing grounded in survival and love.

Mary Roach investigates the science and people behind replacing and repairing human body parts — from prosthetics and donor organs to stem-cell–grown tissues and 3D‑printed parts. Through on‑site reporting and interviews with researchers, surgeons, and patients, she explores the technical challenges and ethical questions of reconstructing the human body in an engaging, often humorous way.

Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark is a vivid, concise investigation of Muriel Spark’s formative years and the mysteries behind her fiction. Tracing episodes of divorce, poverty, espionage, scandal and a dramatic religious conversion in the 1940s–50s, Wilson shows how these experiences were transformed into the wry, puzzle-like novels for which Spark is known.

After a storm, Cora and her nine-year-old daughter go to register the birth of her son. When Cora makes a last-minute choice about the baby’s name instead of following her husband’s wish, three alternate versions of their lives unfold over thirty-five years. The novel follows these parallel possibilities to explore family bonds, domestic abuse, and a woman’s search for autonomy and healing.