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Biography and Memoir March 2026 |
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Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts
by Margaret Atwood
In Book of Lives, Canadian author Margaret Atwood brings readers a long-awaited, “marvelously witty” (Kirkus Reviews) memoir. Writing as much about her craft as her life story, Atwood reveals how both have influenced one another, for instance explaining how the dystopian setting for The Handmaid’s Tale was in part inspired by a stint in 1980s Berlin. For another memoir that ruminates on the writing life, try Novelist as a Vocation by Haruki Murakami.
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The Novel Life of Jane Austen: A Graphic Biography
by Janine Barchas
Combining deep scholarship and serious whimsy, The Novel Life of Jane Austen presents this literary icon as the starring character in her own graphic novel. Told in three parts (Budding Writer, 1796-1797); Struggling Artist, 1801-1809; Published Author, 1811-1817), the gritty circumstances of Austen's own genteel poverty and the small daily injustices so often borne by creative women at this time are told against the backdrop of Georgian England and reflect, down to the smallest detail, many of the plots and characters woven into Austen's greatest works. All the settings and scenarios presented here are based upon the historical record, including the clothing, architecture, decor, and Regency locations. Sprinkled throughout, the Easter eggs and clever references to popular film adaptations of Austen's novels will satisfy the casual and avid Austen fan alike--
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Simply More: A Book for Anyone Who Has Been Told They're Too Much
by Cynthia Erivo
Theater, music, and film star Cynthia Erivo reflects on how far she has come while encouraging her readers to consider their own unrealized potential. Confident from an early age that she had a lot to offer the world, Erivo nevertheless had her share of detractors and setbacks, and she inspires readers to persist in their dreams, seek balance, and keep moving forward. For another stirring memoir of succeeding through struggle, try Leslie F*cking Jones by Leslie Jones.
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The Last Kings of Hollywood: Coppola, Lucas, Spielberg--And the Battle for the Soul of American Cinema
by Paul Fischer
The untold, intimate story of how three young visionaries--Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg--revolutionized American cinema, creating the most iconic films in history while risking everything, redefining friendship, and shaping Hollywood as we know it. In the summer of 1967, as the old Hollywood studio system was dying, an intense, uncompromising young film school graduate named George Lucas walked onto the Warner Bros backlot for his first day working as an assistant to another up-and-coming, largely-unknown filmmaker, a boisterous father of two called Francis Ford Coppola. At the exact same time, across town on the Universal Studios lot, a film-obsessed twenty-year-old from a peripatetic Jewish family, Steven Spielberg, longed to break free from his apprenticeship for the struggling studio and become a film director in his own right. Within a year, the three men would become friends. Spielberg, prioritizing security, got his seven-year contract directing television. Lucas and Coppola, hungry for independence, left Hollywood for San Francisco to found an alternative studio, American Zoetrope, and make films without answering to corporate capitalism. Based on extensive research and hundreds of original interviews with the inner circle of these Hollywood icons, The Last Kings of Hollywood tells the thrilling, dramatic inside story of how, over the next fifteen years, the three filmmakers rivalled and supported each other, fell out and reconciled, and struggled to reinvent popular American cinema. Along the way, Coppola directed The Godfather, then the highest-grossing film of all-time, until Spielberg surpassed it with Jaws -- whose record Lucas broke with Star Wars, which Spielberg surpassed again with E.T. By the early 1980s, they were the richest, best-known filmmakers in the world, each with an empire of their own. The Last Kings of Hollywood is an unprecedented chronicle of their rise, their dreams and demons, their triumphs and their failures -- intimate, extraordinary, and supremely entertaining.
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The Family Snitch: A Daughter's Memoir of Truth and Lies
by Francesca Fontana
A Wall Street Journal reporter confronts the most difficult source she's ever encountered, her own father, in this unsparing interrogation of the ways we deceive ourselves and others A stunning debut, perfect for fans of searing family memoirs that lift the veil of childhood, as in books by Nicole Chung and Ashley C. Ford Francesca's parents represented opposing world-views. Her mother always slid her way out of questions about the past, saying only My life started when you were born. Her dad, an absent bodybuilder, loved telling stories about his seemingly larger-than-life past. He said he would tell her anything she wanted to know. But more often than not, it was a total lie. When Francesca was 9, he went to prison, and her mother, the grounding center of Francesca's world, moved her half a continent away... The first in her family to attend college, The Family Snitch started as a youthful experiment in journalistic investigation, as Francesca began to uncover her father's secret criminal past. But in her increasingly dogged pursuit of the truth at any cost, was she just selling everybody out? In her thought-provoking exploration, Francesca also interrogates her own relationship to the truth, finding that she trusts almost no one and refuses to believe anything that can't be backed by hard evidence. She turns to experts on memory and psychology, in search of someone to help explain the secrets kept between parents and children, and the inheritances they leave us in the fallout of their choices. She pulls on the threads that lead her back through the forms that came before this one: theater and film, Greek tragedy and myth. The result is a page-turning memoir that is also an artful work of literature with enduring appeal.
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Family of Spies: A World War II Story of Nazi Espionage, Betrayal, and the Secret History Behind Pearl Harbor
by Christine Kuehn
A propulsive, never-before-told story of one family's shocking involvement as Nazi and Japanese spies during WWII and the pivotal role they played in the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It began with a letter from a screenwriter, asking about a story. Your family. World War II. Nazi spies. Christine Kuehn was shocked and confused. When she asked her seventy-year-old father, Eberhard, what this could possibly be about, he stalled, deflected, demurred, and then wept. He knew this day would come. The Kuehns, a prominent Berlin family, saw the rise of the Nazis as a way out of the hard times that had befallen them. When the daughter of the family, Eberhard's sister, Ruth, met Nazi leader Joseph Goebbels at a party, the two hit it off, and they had an affair. But Ruth had a secret--she was half Jewish--and Goebbels found out. Rather than having Ruth killed, Goebbels instead sent the entire Kuehn family to Hawaii, to work as spies half a world away. There, Ruth and her parents established an intricate spy operation from their home, just a few miles down the road from Pearl Harbor, shielding Eberhard from the truth. They passed secrets to the Japanese, leading to the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. After Eberhard's father was arrested and tried for his involvement in planning the assault, Eberhard learned the harsh truth about his family and faced a decision that would change the path of the Kuehn family forever. Jumping back and forth between Christine discovering her family's secret and the untold past of the spies in Germany, Japan, and Hawaii, Family of Spies is fast-paced history at its finest and will rewrite the narrative of December 7, 1941.
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| Black Dahlia: Murder, Monsters, and Madness in Midcentury Hollywood by William J. MannBiographer William J. Mann's (Bogie & Bacall) well-researched true crime account offers fresh insights on the 1947 murder of actress Elizabeth Short, who posthumously came to be known by the moniker "Black Dahlia." Further reading: Sisters in Death: The Black Dahlia, the Prairie Heiress, and Their Hunter by Eli Frankel.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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