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Biography and Memoir May 2026 |
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| Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane by Andy BetaJazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane has always labored in the long shadow of her more famous husband, John. But music journalist Andy Beta’s new biography gives Alice her due. Her unique solo recordings meld elements of jazz, gospel, and eastern and western classical musics into a dreamlike, meditative tapestry that speaks to the composer’s strong spiritual foundation. For fans of: Billie Holiday: the Musician and the Myth by John Szwed. |
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| This Is Not About Running by Mary CainWhen she was a teenager, Mary Cain’s talent as a middle-distance runner secured her a coveted position in Nike’s Oregon Project youth training program, headed by running legend Alberto Salazar. But when Cain’s performance started to slip, it became clear that she had been harming and starving herself as a result of Salazar’s cruel treatment and other abuse allowed by the program. Cain tells all in her “powerful and haunting” (Publisher’s Weekly) debut. Read-alike: Abused: Surviving Sexual Assault and a Toxic Gymnastics Culture by Rachel Haines. |
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| Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett's Bookshop by Jeannine A. CookJeannine A. Cook’s Philadelphia bookstore -- named in honor of Harriet Tubman -- opened barely a month before the COVID-19 lockdown. Yet Cook remained determined. She punctuates her memoir with letters that she wrote to Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, Josephine Baker, and others -- determined Black women of the past whose spirits were beacons of hope and resistance that would see her through the tough times ahead. Six years later, Harriet’s Bookshop is thriving! Try Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef for a similarly inspiring tale. |
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| Kutchinsky's Egg: A Family's Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss by Serena KutchinskySerena Kutchinsky grew up in an affluent Jewish British family famous for its high-end jewelry firm, House of Kutchinsky. When her father Paul took over the business in the 1980s, he hatched an ambitious and risky plan to create and sell the world’s largest jewel-encrusted egg, which went so spectacularly wrong that it bankrupted the century-old firm. For the Kutchinskys, the seized, missing egg became a reviled symbol of hubris and failure. Decades later, Serena’s search for the cursed object would lead her into a web of family secrets in this “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) generational saga. |
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A Force for Good: Gisela Warburg Wyzanski
by Anita Robboy
A Force For Good is the biography of the remarkable life of Gisela Warburg Wyzanski. Unlike many wealthy German Jews, Gisela chose to remain in Germany to combat the horrors wrought by the Nazis. She worked tirelessly to rescue European children, place them in foster homes, and help them emigrate to Palestine.
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| Heartland: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird by Keith O'BrienLarry Bird was just a poor kid from a broken home in French Lick who thought his college basketball career was over when he quit the University of Indiana after an overwhelming first semester. In an unlikely turn, Bird was re-recruited by Bob King of Indiana State (a school with zero hoops cred), leading to a trip to the Final Four in 1979 and a storied NBA career. Biographer Keith O’Brien (Charlie Hustle) spins a “smart, well-paced” (Kirkus Reviews) tale of Bird beginning to take flight. |
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Paule Marshall: A Writer's Life
by Mary Helen Washington
An elegant biography of a prescient author whose novels portray Black women's experiences across the African diaspora Growing up in World War II-era Brooklyn among West Indian immigrants, Paule Marshall (1929-2019) was fiercely driven to become a writer, making art from the world she knew, the life she lived, and the world she imagined. Though her novels and stories are understood by scholars as the beginning of contemporary Black feminist literature--bridging Harlem Renaissance writers like Zora Neale Hurston to such writers as Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou--Marshall's legacy is often overlooked. In this elegant literary biography, distinguished scholar of African American literature Mary Helen Washington draws on exclusive access to the writer's papers, including her newly discovered unpublished memoir, and scores of interviews with family and friends to give us the first account of Marshall's life as an artist and of the depth and brilliance of her work. Beginning with her 1959 debut, Brown Girl, Brownstones, a coming-of-age story set among Barbadian immigrants and African Americans in Brooklyn, and moving through her later works set in the Caribbean, Africa, and the United States, Marshall's novels chart the diasporic life that Marshall herself lived, defined by Black women's experiences, an unapologetic and sometimes queer sexuality, and the history of the African diaspora. Despite the lush and finely observed inner lives of her heroines, however, Marshall was famous for tightly guarding her own privacy, and it is this enigma--Marshall's deeply expressive writing versus her guarded public exterior--that Washington draws out. Here is the first look at a prescient, brilliantly talented writer, a complex and fascinating woman, whose fiction single-handedly stages a reverse middle passage that extends from the United States and the Caribbean to Africa.
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| Small Town Girls: A Writer's Memoir by Jayne Anne PhillipsNovelist Jayne Anne Phillips’ Small Town Girls is not strictly a memoir. Yet this collection of previously published essays includes many fragments from the author’s memories of growing up in her troubled, enchanted homeland of West Virginia. Whether pondering the Hatfield-McCoy feud or revisiting sense memories of her hometown’s beauty shop, Phillips’ incisive and lyrical observations give life to a time gone by. For more autobiographical snippets set in the Mountain State, try Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan. |
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Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner's Daughter
by Beth Howard
An Appalachian organizer's excavation of the past, her own and her people's, to spark a collective fight for a future where we all have what we need and deserve In Song for a Hard-Hit People, Beth Howard shares her story of growing up in Appalachian Kentucky--the economic struggles, trauma, and ever-present sexism along with the loving care of her close-knit rural community. These complex people shaped Howard's sense of justice and solidarity, and taught her about the inextricable bonds working-class people share, despite our differences. But her childhood also left her with emotional wounds that threatened to destroy the life she built for herself. While healing her wounds is deeply personal, there's no separating it from the people and place that made her. Appalachia is often framed as a place to escape from, where people are hateful, lazy, and bring tragedy upon themselves. But in her quest to understand her home and her people, Howard uncovers the powerful history of white Appalachians fighting alongside Black and Brown people, pushing back against billionaires who gain power by using racism to divide them. Appalachia, she realizes, has not only been hit hard; it is the place to wage a freedom struggle. Too many of us are denied the basic necessities of life: somewhere decent to live, good food to eat, health care that doesn't break the bank, jobs that don't kill us. As Howard reminds us, we haven't got a chance--unless we organize. In the midst of divisive rhetoric, violent repression, and grifters writing elegies, may this story be a song.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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