Biography and Memoir
November 2019
Recent Releases
Blood : A Memoir
by Allison Moorer

An award-winning musician shares the story of how her parents’ murder-suicide forever changed both her and her sister’s lives and explores the meaning of inheritance, destiny, shame and trauma and how it shaped her art. 40,000 first printing.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

How it began: At age 14, Adrienne Brodeur became privy to a life-changing secret: her mother was having an affair with a family friend.

What happened next: For decades, Brodeur served as her mother's confidant, often providing alibis for the clandestine lovebirds. Her complicity would have devastating consequences for her own relationships -- including a romance with her mother's lover's son. 

Read it for: a dramatic and page-turning tale of deception. 
Life Undercover: Coming of Age in the CIA
by Amaryllis Fox

What it is: a suspenseful account of Amaryllis Fox's decade spent working counterterrorism operations for the CIA while also starting a family with her husband, a fellow agent.

Don't miss: Fox's wedding day, during which she muses on the strange and lonely nature of intelligence life: "I walk down the aisle, past work friends whose real names I'll never know."   

Media buzz: Academy Award winner Brie Larson is set to play Fox in a forthcoming Apple streaming series.
From scratch : a memoir of love, Sicily, and finding home
by Tembi Locke

An actress and TEDx speaker describes how her professional chef husband's Sicilian family didn't initially approve of him marrying a black American woman and the three summers she spent with them after he succumbed to cancer. 50,000 first printing.
Edison
by Edmund Morris

What it is: an illuminating and inventive portrait of Thomas Edison that renowned biographer Edmund Morris spent seven years researching, perusing millions of Edison's archival papers stored in a bombproof lab.

What sets it apart: Edison unfolds in reverse chronological order, lending a uniquely mythic air to the richly detailed, you-are-there proceedings. 

About the author: The late Edmund Morris won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for 1979's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.
Culinary Memoirs
Love, loss, and what we ate
by Padma Lakshmi

The host of the Emmy Award-winning Top Chef presents a memoir about her immigrant childhood and complicated life in front of the camera, tracing her formative experiences in her grandmother's South India kitchen and her relationships with people who influenced her culinary skills and career. 150,000 first printing.
Hungry : eating, road-tripping, and risking it all with the greatest chef in the world
by Jeff Gordinier

A food critic and a Danish chef set off on a globe-trotting culinary adventure to find the world's best flavors, traveling from the jungles of the Yucatán peninsula for the secrets of molé to the arctic circle for sea urchins.
Buttermilk graffiti : a chef's journey to discover Americas new melting-pot cuisine
by Edward Lee

A chef, restaurateur and author describes the two years he spent traveling the United States learning about the different cultures, traditions, memories and innovations that keep adding to, reshaping and helping to evolve what makes up American cuisine.
A covert affair : Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS
by Jennet Conant

Chronicles the iconic chef's lesser-known contributions as a member of the OSS during World War II and her efforts at the side of her husband to support an agent accused of being a spy, drawing on recently declassified documents to reveal how their wartime experiences shaped their characters, relationships and ambitions. 150,000 first printing.
Coming to My Senses: The Making of a Counterculture Cook
by Alice Waters

What it is: a charming memoir from activist, chef, and restaurateur Alice Waters, who opened the famed Berkeley, California locavore hotspot Chez Panisse in 1971.

Featuring: cameo appearances from Julia Child and James Beard. 

Is it for you? Though Waters saves the recipes for her other books (including The Art of Simple Food), the evocative descriptions of her culinary coming-of-age are a treat all their own.  
Contact your librarian for more great books!
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