|
|
Biography and Memoir November 2025 |
|
|
|
|
|
In 2001, John J. Lennon killed a man on a Brooklyn Street. Now he’s a journalist, working from behind bars, trying to make sense of it all.
The Tragedy of True Crime is a first-person journalistic account of the lives of four men who have killed, written by a man who has killed. Lennon entered the New York prison system with a sentence of 28 years to life but after he stepped into a writing workshop at Attica Correctional Facility, his whole life changed. Reporting from the cell block and the prison yard, Lennon challenges our obsession with true crime by telling the full life stories of men now serving time for the lives they took.
These men have completely different backgrounds ― Robert Chambers, a preppy Manhattanite turned true crime celebrity; Milton E. Jones, a seventeen-year-old coaxed from burglary into something far darker; and Michael Shane Hale, a gay man caught in a crime of passion ― and all are searching to find meaning and redemption behind bars. Lennon’s reporting is intertwined with his own story, from a young man seduced by the infamous gangster culture of New York City to a celebrated prison journalist. The same desire echoes throughout the lives of these four men: to become more than murderers.
A first-of-its-kind book of immersive prison journalism, The Tragedy of True Crime poses fundamental questions about the stories we tell and who gets to tell them. What essential truth do we lose when we don’t consider all that comes before an act of unthinkable violence? And what happens to the convicted after the cell gate locks? |
|
|
|
When you’ve been told over and over that you belong at the bottom, how do you come out on top? Dance Moms star and triple threat Nia Sioux shows the way via her story of resilience, triumph, and defining success for herself. Young dancer Nia Sioux was only nine years old when she stepped into stardom as one of the original cast members of Lifetime’s reality TV show Dance Moms. Nia learned new choreography week after week and competed against dancers from across the country as well as at her own studio. Perhaps her greatest obstacle was suffering through her dance teacher’s ranking of the girls against each other in her infamous pyramid, where Nia spent the majority of her time on the bottom—all in front of an audience of millions. But there was much that viewers didn’t see. How her experiences in the studio went far beyond what made it into the show. How she was ostracized for not fitting into an aesthetic that wasn’t designed for girls like her. How her friendships and her mental health crumbled under the strain of the show. How she lost control of her story and her voice. But don’t be fooled—this is a story about resilience. Nia is not looking for pity, sympathy, or validation as she reflects on her experiences. Instead, she is choosing to use her story as a celebration of triumph. Nia finally gets to tell her story in her own way and in her own words. In this captivating memoir, Nia reclaims both the spotlight and her narrative. In addition to going behind the scenes of the seven seasons of Dance Moms, she shows how she fought against the negative perceptions that dominated her tween and teen years and emerged as a confident young woman secure in her talents and her direction. Anyone who has ever felt misunderstood, overlooked, or stuck at the bottom of the pyramid will be inspired by Nia’s story of overcoming. “Despite barriers and constant naysayers, assumptions and criticisms, only you know who you are inside and out,” Nia says. “And you have the power to create your own narrative, your own level of success.” |
|
| Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America by Beth MacyUrbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the ’70s and ’80s—certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that had helped raise her.
But as Macy’s mother’s health declined in 2020, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community’s civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn’t begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. In nearby Springfield, Macy watched as her ex-boyfriend—once the most liberal person she knew—became a lead voice of opposition against the Haitian immigrants, parroting false talking points throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.
This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues.Paper Girl is a gift of courage, empathy, and insight. Beth Macy has turned to face the darkness in her family and community, people she loves wholeheartedly, even the ones she sometimes struggles to like. And in facing the truth—in person, with respect—she has found sparks of human dignity that she has used to light a signal fire of warning but also of hope. |
|
| “The story of my life is the story of my stories,” writes Susan Orlean in this extraordinary, era-defining memoir from one of the greatest practitioners of narrative nonfiction of our time. Joyride is a magic carpet ride through Orlean’s life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, her curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular ten-year-old boy for a legendary profile (“The American Man Age Ten”) to reporting on a woman who owns twenty-seven tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji.
Not only does Orlean’s account of a writing life offer a trove of indispensable gleanings for writers, it’s also an essential and practical guide to embracing any creative path. She takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer’s block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede—a Susan specialty.
While Orlean has always written her way into other people’s lives in order to understand the human experience, Joyride is her most personal book ever—a searching journey through finding her feet as a journalist, recovering from the excruciating collapse of her first marriage, falling head-over-heels in love again, becoming a mother while mourning the decline of her own mother, sojourning to Hollywood for films based on her work including Adaptation and Blue Crush, and confronting mortality. Joyride is also a time machine to a bygone era of journalism, from Orlean’s bright start in the golden age of alt-weeklies to her career-making days working alongside icons such as Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, Anna Wintour, Sonny Mehta, and Jonathan Karp—forces who shaped the media industry as we know it today.
Infused with Orlean’s signature warmth and wit, Joyride is a must-read for anyone who hungers to start, build, and sustain a creative life. Orlean inspires us to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us. |
|
|
|
Ozzy & Me: Life Lessons, Wild Stories, and Unexpected Epiphanies from Forty Years of Friendship with the Prince of Darkness by Stephen ReaStephen Rea was born in Northern Ireland in 1969, the same year “The Troubles” began. Violence was everywhere. His grandmother was nearly killed when gunmen opened fire on the wrong house, leaving young Stephen to pick at the bullet holes in the walls. He found refuge from this turmoil in heavy metal—especially the music of Ozzy Osbourne. As a pre-internet teenager, he hunted down dozens of live concert bootlegs—corresponding by mail with collectors around the world—and devoured every music magazine he could find.
In late 1984, when Stephen was fifteen, he read about a huge festival in Rio de Janeiro that January called “Rock In Rio” whose bill included AC/DC, Queen, and Osbourne. As a lark, he mentioned it to his dad, and was stunned when he said they should go. He was even more shocked when his mother, looking for information about how to get tickets, began a correspondence with Osbourne’s secretary, who scored the family VIP passes and introduced them to Osbourne in Brazil. Thus began a friendship with Ozzy, his wife Sharon and the rest of the Osbourne family that has continued for decades.
While traveling on tour in the mid-nineties, Ozzy gifted Stephen a pair of fancy leather notebooks and told him to keep a record of their adventures and conversations. The result is Ozzy & Me: a beautiful behind-the-scenes memoir that proves the life-affirming, soul-nourishing power of music—and disproves the notion that you should never meet your heroes.
|
|
|
|
From one of America's most venerable politicians, the powerful, untold story of the pioneering Black congressmen from South Carolina who were elected in the aftermath of the Civil War, revealing why it took nearly a century before the ninth, James Clyburn, was elected.
Today, South Carolina congressman James E. Clyburn is renowned as a Democratic kingmaker and our nation's most august Black political leader. But behind him stand eight other remarkable men: the first Black politicians to go to Congress from his home state, and who blazed a path for his own ascent. Since his own arrival in Congress in the early nineties, Congressman Clyburn has been guided by the wisdom and example of these men, and also instructed by their struggles—especially with the demon of American racism. South Carolina's first eight Black congressmen all rose to office following the Civil War and emancipation, but then the dark veil of Jim Crow fell across the South. It would take nearly a century before the ninth Black representative, Clyburn himself, was elected.
In The First Eight, Congressman Clyburn shares these men's stories, and their message of liberty, with the nation they served. Among them are Joseph Rainey, the first Black politician to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in our nation's history, who was born enslaved in 1832; Robert Smalls, iconic for his heroism during the Civil War, when he fled the Confederacy, stole a ship, and fought for the Union Army; and Richard Cain, who ran a widely read newspaper for Black South Carolinians and is associated with the Emanuel AME Church, one of the oldest and most distinguished Black churches in America, and where neo-Nazi Dylan Roof killed nine Black congregants in a mass shooting in 2015. Through the trials, tribulations, triumphs, and challenges that all nine men faced, Congressman Clyburn reveals a whole new way of understanding the period between the Civil War and the present.
A unique blend of history and memoir, The First Eight is both a monument to the legacies of these eight trailblazing Americans, and also a clear-eyed appraisal of how far we've come, and how far we have left to go, in our nation's ongoing struggle for true democracy. |
|
|
|
Patchwork: A Graphic Biography of Jane Austen by Kate Evans
In her later years, Jane Austen made a patchwork quilt. She folded thousands of tiny scraps of fabric over diamond-shaped slips of paper and painstakingly stitched them together. Kate Evans employs these slivers of cloth to illustrate Jane Austen’s life story. Evans teases apart the threads that connect Austen’s beloved novels, the events of her life, and the fabric of society in Regency England.
Patchwork is a major new work of graphic biography. Kate Evans has an unparalleled ability to marry drama, comedy, and historically immersive detail, bringing Austen’s story to life with fluid, dynamic artwork, at times embroidered onto cloth itself. The author’s love for Austen shines throughout. Her incredible eye for historical detail – panes of glass, bits of lace, hedgelaying styles, the cut of a coat or the architecture of a Hampshire cottage – creates a captivating vision of Jane Austen’s world.
|
|
|
|
C-L-I-N-T. That single short, sharp syllable has stood as an emblem of American manhood and morality and sheer bloody-minded will, on-screen and off-screen, for more than sixty years. Whether he’s facing down bad guys on a Western street (Old West or new, no matter), staring through the lens of a camera, or accepting one of his movies' thirteen Oscars (including two for Best Picture), he is as blunt, curt, and solid as his name, a star of the old-school stripe and one of the most accomplished directors of his time, a man of rock and iron and brute force: Clint. To read the story of Clint Eastwood is to understand nearly a century of American culture. No Hollywood figure has so completely and complexly stood inside the changing climates of post–World War II America. At age ninety-five, he has lived a tumultuous century and embodied much of his time and many of its contradictions. We picture Clint squinting through cigarillo smoke in A Fistful of Dollars or The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; imposing rough justice at the point of a .44 Magnum in Dirty Harry; sowing vengeance in The Outlaw Josey Wales or Pale Rider or Unforgiven; grudgingly training a woman boxer in Million Dollar Baby; and standing up for his neighbors despite his racism in Gran Torino. Or we feel him present, powerfully, behind the camera, creating complex tales of violence, morality, and humanity, such as Mystic River, Letters from Iwo Jima, and American Sniper. But his roles and his films, however well cast and convincing, are two-dimensional in comparison to his whole life. As Shawn Levy reveals in this masterful biography—the most complete portrait yet of Eastwood—the reality is richer, knottier, and more absorbing. Clint: The Man and the Movies is a saga of cunning, determination, and conquest, a story about a man ascending to the Hollywood pantheon while keeping one foot firmly planted outside its door. |
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
|
|
|