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New Nonfiction September 2026 |
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Of Mud and Lotuses: Dreaming the Lives of Buddhist Women
by Paula Arai
A unique blend of personal reflection, historical fiction, and interview-based nonfiction that vividly imagines the lives of Buddhist women over 2,500 years. Of Mud and Lotuses illuminates the hardships, resilience, and creative ways in which Buddhist women have adapted the Dharma to daily life--often in ways that history has ignored. With lyrical storytelling and a perspective informed by decades as a Japanese American scholar of women in Buddhism, Paula Arai conjures the kitchens, temples, and intimate moments of Buddhist women's lives across India, Sri Lanka, China, Japan, and the contemporary U.S. A mother and daughter circle a stupa amidst a scent of jasmine. The Buddha exchanges letters with Mahaprajapati, his aunt and adoptive mother. An ancient Indian queen proclaims the womb as the very cradle of Buddha-nature. A woman in fifth-century Sri Lanka expresses the Dharma by cooking for the local bhikkhus even as she cares for her ill sister-in-law. A widow finds solace in the communal rituals of a Japanese nunnery. In these historical-fiction short stories, motherhood is sacred and everyday, caregiving is both burden and liberation, and the womb of the Buddha pulses at the heart of spiritual awakening. Complementing these fictional pieces are Arai's personal and scholarly reflections on Buddhist women's history, as well as several nonfiction narratives of contemporary American Buddhist women whose struggles and triumphs reveal a striking continuity with the ancestors who preceded them.
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Unsayable: A Life in Writing
by Michael Cunningham
An intimate memoir portraying a life spent trying to describe the indescribable, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours and Day Go ahead. Try using language to slit the skin of mortality to see what's on the other side. At the age of three, Michael Cunningham began obsessively collecting the names of things: oak, Chevrolet, finch, tulip, Tupperware. . . . Each word rendered the world ever so slightly more understandable, more describable, kicking off a lifelong love affair with language--one that would, eventually, maybe inevitably, lead him to become a writer. In Unsayable, Cunningham's memories spill forth, and with them reflections on the craft of writing. He is fifteen, in a swimming pool at night, gazing at the first boy he ever fell in love with, who is lost in contemplative silence. He is a new college graduate, setting off for nowhere in a Dodge Dart, hoping to pull meaning (and a novel) from the expanse of America. He is on Cape Cod, regaling an elderly couple with invented tales of sexual escapades. He is in an art gallery, unwittingly having the first in a lifetime of conversations with the man he would marry. A thread ties each beautifully wrought moment to the next: what is unspoken, what won't yield to language, what is embellished beyond recognition, what is still left to say. Luminous, perceptive, and powerful, Unsayable is an ode to literature, a meditation on craft, and an intimate account of a life spent trying to put into words that which resists depiction. This, it turns out, is the lifeblood of the fiction writer: the impossibility of capturing the human experience, and the relentless desire to try.
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Confessions of the Green River Killer: A True Story of Manipulation, Madness, and a Search for Justice
by Maria Dilorenzo
A startling profile of one of the most prolific serial killers and the disturbing experience of the journalist who earned his trust for the sake of justice. When crime journalist Maria DiLorenzo mailed a letter to Gary Ridgway, she never expected him to reply. He refused to speak to reporters and would send only religious materials back to anyone who contacted him in prison--if he replied at all. But instead of silence or a boilerplate letter, Maria's phone rang-and it was the Green River Killer calling. Over the next several years, Ridgway would call Maria hundreds of times, using all of his free time in prison to speak with her. Her goal: to pry the details of his dozens of unidentified and unsolved murders from him. His motivation in speaking to her: unknowable. Through these hundreds of hours of phone calls, Ridgway revealed new details about his life, his crimes, and his motives - and manipulated Maria much like he tormented his victims. An insightful and deeply personal profile of a dangerous mind, Confessions of the Green River Killer is the closest depiction of Gary Ridgway ever seen and a disturbing glimpse into what it's like to truly know a killer. Readers of I'll Be Gone in the Dark and The Stranger Beside Me will be enraptured to experience Gary Ridgway through the eyes and ears of a woman he came to deeply trust--and deeply covet.
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A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival: A Memoir
by Virginia Eubanks
What do you do when someone you love, maybe the person you love most in the world, is in trouble--even drowning? Do you jump in to save them? Will you be able to bring both of you back to shore? One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been brutally beaten, just steps from their house. Virginia jumped into the water. She dived into the responsibilities of being a primary caregiver. In the weeks, months, and years that followed, she and her partner struggled to stay afloat in the sea of tasks required to keep them both safe and alive despite wave upon wave of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and, for J, a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, Virginia herself developed what is known as collateral PTSD, a condition common among caregivers but rarely discussed. Virginia looked for help. She turned to reliable sources for survival tips: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn't until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found advice that actually helped. Inspired by its lessons, she signed up for instruction in wilderness first aid, kayak self-rescue, Winter Survival 101, map and compass use, bushwhacking, lifeguarding. She went out in search of other people's stories and of experts, interviewing everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. She gathered skills and knowledge that made her feel strong, competent, more prepared for the challenges ahead. As disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is the story--heart-wrenching and all too relatable--of how one woman tried to save her beloved and learned that she would also have to save herself. It is a moving, hopeful love story about two peoplecaught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built fromcataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the ways in which we tend our loved ones and ourselves, and it reminds us: no one survives the wilderness alone.
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Imma See for Myself: A Stubborn Girl's Guide to Trusting God (the First Time Around)
by Ariel Fitz-Patrick
Popular content creator and gospel musician Ariel Fitz-Patrick (who you may recognize with a blanket over her head playing her own sassy Guardian Angel) is refreshingly vulnerable (Publishers Weekly) as she shares candid stories of trusting God through life's hardest seasons, offering humor, wisdom, and big-sister-style encouragement for anyone wanting to deepen their own faith. Is that you, God? Telling me not to do that thing that you know will turn out badly for me? Telling me to listen to your Word instead of my own foolish ideas? Yeah, imma have to see for myself ... --Every Christian Ever. We've all been there. We've all had moments where we heard God telling us to do that thing (or not do that thing) that's been bouncing around in our heads for a while. Sometimes He tells us to stop complaining and start praying. Or He tells us to stop hanging out with that person who's been a really bad influence. Or He warns us not to say those words to that person who cut us off in traffic, even though they absolutely deserved it Ariel Fitz-Patrick, gospel musician and TikTok star, has been exactly where you are. She's been in a lot of situations where God asked her to trust Him even when she wanted to go her own way. There were lots of smaller moments when she was called on to trust God, like when her Caribbean father had strict rules she had to choose whether to follow or when friends pressured her to drink underage. She's also faced much harder moments, like when her family faced homelessness and deep betrayal from people in her own church, as well as times when Ariel wrestled with her own faith questions and uncertainty about what matters most. All of these moments, big or small, were opportunities from God to rely on Him. Everything around you will tell you that you can't know for sure unless you see for yourself, but our faithful God knows what's best for you every time. In Imma See for Myself, Ariel shows how God brought her from heavy-burdened to blossoming--all because she was willing to trust Him even when she couldn't see the whole path. She shares how you can grow in faith even in the most painful moments through both humorous and hard stories from her life, comedy skits, and wise advice from a girl who's gone and seen for herself. Take it from her--go and SEEK Him for yourself.
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Scavenging Beauty: A Memoir in Walks
by Angelica Glass
In this beguiling memoir of discovery and transformation, a woman walks every street in Santa Cruz County, California, and finds unexpected healing Angelica Glass spent decades as a social worker helping families struggling with poverty, addiction, abuse and neglect. Needing relief from work-related stress, she turned to walking as an outlet. What began as a way to incorporate more exercise into her busy life transformed into something extraordinary: a years-long odyssey in which Glass drew upon physical exercise, a close observation of the natural world, and long periods of introspection to reconcile with her own past. Between moments of awe as she explored her community and documented what she saw with her camera, she grappled with the turmoil of her early years in a complicated, challenging family, the aging process, long-held insecurities, and grief. Whether wandering through residential neighborhoods, over redwood-strewn mountain passes, or along the seashore, Glass found solace and developed a growing sense of peace. By looking to the natural world to suture old wounds -- by scavenging beauty on her terms -- she came to understand what it means to feel whole.
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All That's Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir
by Emilee Hackney
Devastating and hopeful in turn, All That's Unseen exquisitely captures a complex and contradictory world. --Jeannette Walls, New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle In her luminous debut, Emilee Hackney offers both a love letter to and a reckoning of the place that made her--a story of losing her faith, finding her way back to her Appalachian home, and discovering what endures Born and raised deep in the hollers of the Appalachian Mountains, Emilee Hackney knew little beyond the ridgelines and coalfields of southwest Virginia. As an eighth-generation Appalachian, her childhood was steeped in the stories of her grandparents--tales of the coal mines' brutal grip and the way the land, both beautiful and unforgiving, never quite let anyone go. At fourteen, Emilee meets Sam, a senior at her high school, who offers her a glimpse at a promising future together. But as they begin attending services at Deliverance Christian Church as a couple, Emilee is thrust into the radical realm of Pentecostalism. In a culture where marriage at nineteen isn't uncommon, Emilee is engaged to Sam. Eager to make her relationship work, she embraces the extremist doctrines of the religion, submitting herself fully to God, to Sam, and to a life of repentance. But what she doesn't yet know is the man she plans to marry is not who he claims to be. Years later, Emilee finds herself isolated from friends, family, and her own sense of truth. Wracked with shame and self-doubt, she reaches a breaking point. On the verge of spiraling out of control, in a stunning act of defiance and hope, she applies to Harvard; against all odds, she is accepted. From the magisterial mountains of Tazewell to the storied halls of Cambridge, Emilee begins the arduous process of reinventing herself and her relationships with her home, faith, and values against the backdrop of the divisive 2016 election. All That's Unseen is Emilee Hackney's fiercely honest memoir about spiritual entrapment, hard-won liberation, and the courage to reclaim her voice after she had been taught to stay silent.
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Stranded in the Future
by Robyn Hitchcock
Hitchcock's second memoir explores the formation of his seminal 1970s band the Soft Boys, and the obsessions that fueled his early creative output.
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The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything
by Kathryn Jezer-Morton
An eye-opening look at how social media shapes the stories we tell and the lives we lead Over the past two decades, platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok have revolutionized how we document and share our lives. We once archived our experiences in photo albums, and now we capture our most significant moments in reels and photo dumps. Whether we prefer to admit it or not, social media is where our history lives now. In The Story of Your Life, journalist and New York magazine columnist Kathryn Jezer-Morton examines how these algorithm-driven platforms not only change the way we share information but also shape the content itself. What stories do we choose to tell, and how do these choices reflect and shape our evolving identities? Through rigorous research and intimate interviews with everyday people, Jezer-Morton explores how the platforms on which we have told our life stories for the past twenty years have determined what those stories have come to look and sound like. Today our attention spans are short, and our stories reflect that, with spectacle and exaggeration playing ever-larger roles in our accounts of everyday life. By examining how we share, talk, and post about our milestones, vacations, homes, relationships, hardships, politics, and more, Jezer-Morton shows just how pervasive and influential our social media platforms have become in how we view ourselves and what we consider to be a life well lived. Smart, funny, and sharply observant, The Story of Your Life delivers an original and revealing look at our lives online and off and offers us a fresh perspective on the ways social media shapes the very arcs of our lives.
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I'm a Lot: Surviving Myself and All the People I've Been
by Alison Leiby
In this witty, absurd, and surprisingly moving memoir-in-essays, comedian Alison Leiby unpacks the multitudes women are told to be--and the joy of refusing to pick just one. Have you ever frozen when someone asks, So, tell me about yourself? If so, take a page from I'm a Lot. Alison Leiby proudly embraces the identities we're often encouraged to hide: Housewives stan. Discount shopaholic. Former jock. Happily single. Childless by choice and proud cat mom. Through these different roles and identities, Leiby reveals her hard-earned wisdom about what it's like to be a woman who does it all (except for the things that make her say uh, no thank you). When she was nineteen years old, a complication from back surgery left Leiby on her deathbed. After a surprising recovery, you might assume Leiby was ready to seize life by the you-know-whats. But instead of letting this one miraculous experience define her, Leiby's brush with death made her realize there is nothing more beautiful in this life than just getting to be yourself. And while women are still expected to conform to many patriarchal labels, Leiby ignores the pressure to be palatable and instead champions all the joyful, weird, and complicated selves she brings to the world. In fourteen personal essays full of deadpan jokes, tender moments of candid introspection, and insightful social commentary, Leiby encourages us to ditch the manufactured Instagram persona and embrace the fact that sometimes the puzzle pieces don't always fit to create a perfect picture, but that doesn't mean we are incomplete.
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Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
by Micki McElya
A sweeping, definitive work of history exploring the road to the September 1968 protests of the Miss American Pageant--one led by women's liberationists and the other organized by the emergent Miss Black America Pageant--and the birth of a new politics of beauty. A revolution was brewing. In the dying days of the summer of 1968, during one unprecedented Pageant weekend, Atlantic City played host not only to the fifty young contestants and thousands of eager visitors who had arrived in town for the Miss America crowning, but also to the first Miss Black America Pageant, mounted to protest its lily-white sister competition, as well as raucous actions from women's liberationists. For just a few hours, the boardwalk became a site of vigorously contested ideas--ideas that would redefine the women's movement and reverberate across American culture. Now, Pulitzer Prize finalist Micki McElya unfolds the full scope of this history, detailing the shocking injustices and passionate debates that led to the demonstrations, as well as the broader social and political landscape that gave rise to some of the most iconic women on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Here, we find complex portraits of Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Florynce Kennedy, Phyllis Schlafly, and Anita Bryant as well as glimpses of Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Lewis, Vanessa Williams, and Donald Trump years before they became the public figures we know them as today. Immersive, galvanizing, and endlessly edifying, Liberation Summer is also a kaleidoscopic panorama of the year that saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the Tet Offensive and the escalation of the Vietnam War, violence at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, and the election of Richard Nixon. Within this ever-shifting terrain, lesser-known characters like reporter Charlotte Curtis, radical feminist organizers Robin Morgan and Carol Hanisch, Miss America 1968 Debra Barnes, and the first Miss Black America Saundra Williams fought to not only define their conception of ideal womanhood, but to live it. Engagingly told and meticulously researched, Liberation Summer proves how the battle for beauty's meaning has always been inextricably political--and how its enduring impact continues to shape our politics today.
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The Cure at Walden Pond: A Guide to Recovering Our Humanity
by Thomas Moore
The journey to Walden Pond is an essential American pilgrimage, and The Cure at Walden Pond embodies Thoreau’s essence, guiding us through Thoreau’s precepts so we can find more harmony in our communities and in ourselves. Immersing ourselves in the music of the natural world The Cure at Walden Pond is a resonate read that will move and inspire any one in search of a new way of being.
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The Others: Ufos, Ai, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny
by D. W. Pasulka
UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human DestinyAcclaimed author and religious studies scholar D. W. Pasulka uncovers a hidden history of alleged contact between human and nonhuman intelligences--some framed as angels, others as UFOs/UAP--interwoven with the rise of artificial intelligence and the dream of immortality. Pasulka examines the science of life extension and the beliefs of people who have experiences of UFOs. She unveils a hidden architecture of belief and influence--one in which human consciousness is being reimagined and extended. Pasulka begins the book with a fascinating and unexpected historical origin story. In the early twentieth century, a censured Catholic visionary predicted that humanity would soon encounter a new form of intelligence--one that would appear alien but was something far stranger. By the mid-twentieth century, other Catholic mystics and science fiction visionaries, like Arthur C. Clarke, echoed similar prophecies, naming the twenty-first century as the critical threshold . . . and we are now at that unparalleled point in human history. It's time for The Others. Drawing on first-person interviews, suppressed histories, and access to insiders in science and tech, The Others explores a startling new terrain: where the sacred meets the synthetic, and where the next phase of human evolution may already be underway.
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Triage
by Claudia Rankine
A groundbreaking new direction for Claudia Rankine, the best-selling author of Citizen and Just Us.
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This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
by Joshua Luke Smith
'This is the main event' is the kind of phrase I'd like to tattoo on my arm--and my spirit . . . a thoughtful, artful, soulful meditation on life and faith and time and what really matters. -Shauna Niequist, New York Times bestselling authorA simple mantra to change everything: discover how to encounter God in your everyday, and practice extraordinary presence in an ordinary life.What if the life we long for isn't elsewhere but rather right here, waiting to be discovered?Joshua Luke Smith believes the greatest lie facing our generation is that the life we long for lies beyond the life that we have. We so easily learn to disdain the inconveniences and interruptions that infuse our everyday. But the real transformation happens when we look at our life as it is and dare to announce: This is the main event. With devotional depth and prophetic wisdom, and interspersed with the author's original poetry and blessings, This Is the Main Event is your invitation to awaken to the sacred in your ordinary life. The pathway is through three spiritual practices, as Joshua commends, each proclaiming a transformative truth: LAMENTATION: you are allowed to name your painCONSECRATION: you are called to let grace change youADORATION: you are invited to live in the wonder of God's daily presenceIt's easy to see the bills, packed lunches, traffic jams, dentist appointments as mundanity, but then again, God comes to you in the shape of your actual life. Joshua Luke Smith writes from the raw materials of his own ordinary life--toddler tuck-ins, recovery meetings, flat tires a mile from home--to speak to yours. As you'll soon discover, every moment becomes meaningful when you recognize the God who meets you in it--a holy encounter accessed in the everyday.
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The Green Soul: Returning to Our Sacred Belonging in Nature
by Lucinda M. Vardey
This capstone work of bestselling spiritual writer Lucinda M. Vardey reveals itself as an unforgettable field guide to the wisdom of the wild, and our place in its superabundance. Nature invites all to receive the grand inheritance of the great outdoors, yet modern life estranges us from many of its greatest gifts: sanctuary, superabundance, peace, and belonging. It's time to end our exile from true flourishing, and take our place in the wisdom of the wild.Modern mystic and pilgrimage guide Lucinda M. Vardey calls what we hunger for the Green Soul--the active participation of one's being with the larger, living being of all creation. The greening of the soul promises: the joys of enchantmentpurpose and participation in the world's deepest alivenessauthentic embodimentand a collective consciousness upon which the healing of our world depends.Lucinda's field notes emerge from her own environment: a 500-year-old farmhouse in an ancient valley in Tuscany, neighboring fields of wildflowers, a mountain stream, and an ancient stone barn now dedicated as a chapel for climate care. Saint Francis of Assisi once walked in this very place, calling the earth Mother and praising all its creation.But you don't have to live on sacred lands to experience the full gifts of the Green Soul. Drawing upon ecological research, awe-evoking narratives of sacred encounter in nature, and spiritual teachers of the ages, Lucinda reveals the modern problem of our exile from spiritual belonging with the earth, as well as a field map for renewing this sacred contact.Consider this your invitation to walk among the wildflowers, rewilding your spirituality and renewing your life.
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Morton Grove Public Library
6140 Lincoln Ave
Morton Grove, Illinois 60053
(847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org |
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