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Biography and Memoir October 2026
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Our Knives Will Save Us: Dispatches from a White Mountain Apache Chef
by Nephi Craig
Named a “Book Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer” by The New York Times, Our Knives Will Save Us by Indigenous chef Nephi Craig is a powerful personal and cultural reckoning that explores how food can heal intergenerational wounds. From overcoming addiction to building a celebrated culinary career, Craig uncovers the colonial histories behind Indigenous ingredients while reconnecting with his Apache and Navajo roots. Ultimately, his journey leads him back to his community, where he embraces food as a tool for cultural preservation, Indigenous food sovereignty, and collective healing.
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| Nobody Broke Your Heart: An Intimate Biography of Elliott Smith by Jamie FisherDebut author Jamie Fisher’s scrupulously researched life story of indie-pop star Elliott Smith handles its subject with due care. Rather than linger over his 2003 death (presumed a suicide), Fisher interviewed those close to Smith to construct a nuanced portrait of the songwriter, a much-loved but sensitive and addiction-prone person who was hopelessly unprepared for the sudden success that overtook him. Fans will love this “bighearted biography that Smith and his acolytes deserve” (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| Finding Renée Richards: The Groundbreaking Story of Tennis's Trans Pioneer by Julie KliegmanJournalist Julie Kliegman weaves the controversy surrounding trans women athletes into their biography of Renée Richards, a transgender ophthalmologist and amateur tennis player who made waves in 1977 when she successfully sued for the right to compete in the U.S. Women’s Open. Richards, today happily retired at age 90 and interviewed by the author, drops a surprising bombshell at the book’s conclusion. Try this next: Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates by Katie Barnes. |
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The Make-Believe: A Memoir of Magic and Madness
by Hannah Murray
From Skins and Game of Thrones star Hannah Murray comes a gripping, darkly funny memoir about fame, mental illness, and the search for meaning that led her into a shadowy wellness organization. In The Make-Believe, Murray recounts how a pursuit of healing and spiritual enlightenment spiraled into a loss of reality, hospitalization, and a bipolar disorder diagnosis. With honesty and hard-won insight, she explores the dangers of surrendering personal agency, the pressures of Hollywood, and the difficult journey toward self-trust, offering a powerful story of resilience, empathy, and reclaiming one’s life.
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| Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir by Kiyoshi TanimotoJapanese Methodist minister Kiyoshi Tanimoto happened to be across town from his Hiroshima apartment on an errand at 8:15 am on August 6th, 1945. In this detailed memoir, he records firsthand the horror he witnessed, from narrowly escaping the atomic blast to his journey home to his family. Though Tanimoto first told his story to journalist John Hersey for a piece in the New Yorker, his original manuscript was only recently rediscovered. For a similar read, try The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb by Garrett M. Graff. |
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| The Wound Is Where the Light Enters: A Memoir of Resilience by Chris YoungFor a teenaged Chris Young, selling drugs was the only available escape from his poverty-stricken and violent domestic life. Upon being handed a mandatory life sentence after multiple felony arrests, Young startled everyone at his hearing by advocating for himself armed with nothing but his extensive reading of the books in the prison library, a speech that eventually secured his early release. Young’s story of overcoming tremendous odds is a “resonant, inspirational tale of redemption” (Booklist) that underscores the racism and injustice corrupting the penal system. |
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| The People's Historian: The Outsized Life of Howard Zinn by Dave ZirinRevisionist historian and liberal activist Howard Zinn’s sense of justice began developing early. Journalist Dave Zirin’s inspiring biography shows how Zinn’s experiences as a teenaged labor organizer and a young WWII airman were instrumental in forming his perspective as a history scholar, anti-war agitator, and author of The People’s History of the United States -- the book that made Zinn famous and earned him many enemies for its radical retelling. Try this next: Francis Fukuyama’s In the Realm of the Last Man. |
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A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe
by Mark Dawidziak
It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death, and what happened to him during the three missing days before he was found, delirious and “in great distress” on the streets of Baltimore, wearing ill-fitting clothes that were not his own? In a compelling dual-timeline narrative alternating between Poe’s increasingly desperate last months and his brief but impactful life, Mark Dawidziak sheds new light on the enigmatic master of macabre.
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| Partially Devoured: How Night of the Living Dead Saved My Life and Changed the World by Daniel KrausCelebrated author and screenwriter Daniel Kraus comes clean about the immense influence that George A. Romero’s 1968 zombie classic Night of the Living Dead had on him as a film fan and writer. Kraus doesn’t just discuss the film -- he vivisects it, guiding the reader practically frame-by-frame, in an engrossing thesis that casts the redefining of horror cinema as a metaphor for the grisly death of modern culture, “oozing with grief…while simultaneously bursting with life” (Booklist). It’s a can’t-miss feature for horror fans. |
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| It Came from the Closet: Queer Reflections on Horror by Joe Vallese, editorPut together by NYU writing professor Joe Vallese, It Came from the Closet is an essay anthology featuring 26 queer or trans writers reflecting on the excitement, revulsion, and sense of belonging they found in horror cinema and literature. The feelings of comfort and validation the contributors describe were often not to be found in a society that ironically viewed them as “monsters.” This thought-provoking collection, while touching on disturbing themes, is shot through with humor, wit, and original ideas. |
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