Biography and Memoir
October 2025

Recent Releases
Backstage: Stories of a Writing Life
by Donna Leon

Celebrated mystery author and creator of the Guido Brunetti series Donna Leon gives her readers a peek into the workings of a prolific creative mind. In brief but gorgeously crafted essays, Leon relates memorable scenes from her life and talks about some of her inspirations, including Venice, the books of Ruth Rendell, and Baroque music. Readers looking for other authors’ musings about life and art should try A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing by Hilary Mantel.
Children Like Us : A Métis Woman's Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home by Brittany Penner
Children Like Us: A Métis Woman's Memoir of Family, Identity and Walking Herself Home
by Brittany Penner

On the day of her birth in 1989, near the end of the 60s Scoop, Brittany was relinquished into the care of the government and adopted by a white Mennonite family in a small prairie town. Her name and where she came from are hidden from her; all she is told is that she is Métis. Her childhood is shaped by church, family, service and silence. As Brittany moves into adulthood, she will uncover answers - but they will be more tangled than she could have imagined.
Mother Mary Comes to Me
by Arundhati Roy

Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy shares vivid memories of growing up poor in India and her complicated relationship with her single mother, Mary. It is a raw account of living with a headstrong, volatile, and sometimes abusive parent, but one who also ignited the author’s dedication to Indian women’s rights, and whose death in 2022 left Arundhati overcome with grief. For fans of: I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy.
A Truce That Is Not Peace by Miriam Toews
A Truce That Is Not Peace
by Miriam Toews

An astonishing masterwork of memoir from one of our most renowned and acclaimed writers, telling pieces of her own story in nonfiction for the first time. “Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempted answer from Toews - all of them unsatisfactory to the organizer - surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide.
Rock Star : My Life on and Off the Ice by Jennifer Jones
Rock Star: My Life on and Off the Ice
by Jennifer Jones

No stone is left unturned in this no-holds-barred memoir by one of Canada’s greatest curlers. From the first slides as a toddler at her hometown Winnipeg curling club to the top step of the Olympic podium, Jennifer Jones has risen to become one of curling’s greatest players. Along the way, she has altered how the game is played and has kicked open doors to allow women to have equality in what was, traditionally, a male-dominated field. Her record of achievement is unmatched, but it never came easily.
All the way to the river : love, loss, and liberation by Elizabeth Gilbert
All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation
by Elizabeth Gilbert

A raw and unflinching memoir of love, addiction, heartbreak, and transformation from the author of Eat Pray Love traces her journey from deep friendship to destructive passion and the hard-won freedom from patterns that once felt impossible to escape.
Holocaust Hero: The Life and Times of Rudolf Vrba
by Alan Twigg

Compiled over a five-year period by a journalist who knew Vrba, Holocaust Hero provides previously unrevealed information about Vrba based on research at the FDR Presidential Library in New York and interviews with those who knew him, including Robin Vrba, his wife of 31 years, who speaks candidly about her husband for the first time.
Contact your librarian for more great books!