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Book Club Nonfiction May 2026 |
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Be Ready When the Luck Happens: A Memoir
by Ina Garten
Ina Garten, the author of thirteen best-selling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and the cultural icon whose face has launched a thousand memes, shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table--
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Cave Mountain: A Disappearance and a Reckoning in the Ozarks
by Benjamin Hale
The damnedest mixing of true crime, memoir, and maybe (?) ghost story I've ever read. The original Harper's article gave me the shivers, and this deeper dive is going to have me looking over my shoulder on every hike. Unputdownable. -- Patton OswaltWith the immediacy and extraordinary feeling for people and place of Under the Banner of Heaven and Say Nothing, a compelling true crime story about two young girls who went missing in the same Arkansas woods twenty-three years apart and the strange circumstances connecting them.This story begins in 2001 on top of Cave Mountain in the Arkansas Ozarks. A six-year-old girl named Haley--Benjamin Hale's cousin--got lost on a mountain trail, prompting what was at the time the largest search and rescue mission in the state's history. Her disappearance--and her account, after she was found, of the imaginary friend she met in the woods--would eventually become connected to another story that took place in the same wilderness more than twenty years earlier: a dark and bizarre story of a cult, brainwashing, murder, and the apocalyptic visions of a teenage prophet.Enriched by Benjamin Hale's own family history and the lore of the Arkansas Ozarks, Cave Mountain is a gripping story about nature and survival, religion and skepticism, and good and evil. At its center are two young girls, years apart, both in danger in the verdant wilds of northern Arkansas.
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Raising Hare: A Memoir
by Chloe Dalton
A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman's unlikely friendship with a wild hare.
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My Next Breath: A Memoir
by Jeremy Renner
The gripping and inspiring story of acclaimed actor Jeremy Renner's near-fatal accident, and what he learned about inner strength, endurance and hope as he overcame insurmountable odds to recover, one breath at a time.--Provided by publisher.
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Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers
by Caroline Fraser
... maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem--the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson--Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers.--Provided by publisher.
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Abundance
by Ezra Klein
Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to rethink big, entrenched problems that seem mired in systemic scarcity: from climate change to housing, education to healthcare.--
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Unmasking AI: My Mission to Protect What Is Human in a World of Machines
by Joy Buolamwini
NATIONAL BESTSELLER - The conscience of the AI revolution (Fortune) explains how we've arrived at an era of AI harms and oppression, and what we can do to avoid its pitfalls. AI is not coming, it's here. If we answer the beautiful call inside these pages, we can decide who we are going to be and how we're going to use technology in service of what it means to be fully human.--Brené Brown, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Dare to Lead A LOS ANGELES TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR - Shortlisted for the Inc. Non-Obvious Book Award To most of us, it seems like recent developments in artificial intelligence emerged out of nowhere to pose unprecedented threats to humankind. But to Dr. Joy Buolamwini, who has been at the forefront of AI research, this moment has been a long time in the making. After tinkering with robotics as a high school student in Memphis and then developing mobile apps in Zambia as a Fulbright fellow, Buolamwini followed her lifelong passion for computer science, engineering, and art to MIT in 2015. As a graduate student at the Future Factory, she did groundbreaking research that exposed widespread racial and gender bias in AI services from tech giants across the world. Unmasking AI goes beyond the headlines about existential risks produced by Big Tech. It is the remarkable story of how Buolamwini uncovered what she calls the coded gaze--the evidence of encoded discrimination and exclusion in tech products--and how she galvanized the movement to prevent AI harms by founding the Algorithmic Justice League. Applying an intersectional lens to both the tech industry and the research sector, she shows how racism, sexism, colorism, and ableism can overlap and render broad swaths of humanity excoded and therefore vulnerable in a world rapidly adopting AI tools. Computers, she reminds us, are reflections of both the aspirations and the limitations of the people who create them. Encouraging experts and non-experts alike to join this fight, Buolamwini writes, The rising frontier for civil rights will require algorithmic justice. AI should be for the people and by the people, not just the privileged few.
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No More Tears: The Dark Secrets of Johnson & Johnson
by Gardiner Harris
An explosive, deeply reported exposâe of Johnson & Johnson, one of America's oldest and most trusted pharmaceutical companies--from an award-winning investigative journalist.--Provided by publisher.
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Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice
by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words--until now. In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody's Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity. Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell's grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims--
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Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People
by Imani Perry
A vast, multifaceted and enchanting (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) meditation on the color blue and its fascinating role in Black history and culture, from National Book Award winner Imani Perry, the most important interpreter of Black life in our time (Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.)Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color: blue. In daily life, it is evoked in countless ways. Blue skies and blue water offer hope for that which lies beyond the current conditions. But blue is also the color of deep melancholy and heartache, echoing Louis Armstrong's question, What did I do to be so Black and blue? In this book, celebrated author Imani Perry uses the world's favorite color as a springboard for a riveting emotional, cultural, and spiritual journey through African American history--an examination of race and Blackness that transcends politics or ideology.Perry traces both blue and Blackness from their earliest roots to their many embodiments of contemporary culture, drawing deeply from her own life as well as art and history: The dyed indigo cloths of West Africa that were traded for human life in the 16th century. The mixture of awe and aversion in the old-fashioned characterization of dark-skinned people as Blue Black. The fundamentally American art form of blues music, sitting at the crossroads of pain and pleasure. The blue flowers Perry plants to honor a loved one gone too soon.Poignant, spellbinding, and utterly original, Black in Blues is a brilliant new work of literary nonfiction that could only have come from the mind of one of our greatest writers and thinkers. Attuned to the harrowing and the sublime aspects of the human experience, it is every bit as vivid, rich, and striking as blue itself.This landmark work of cultural history explores: A Deep History of a Color: Follow the thread of blue from the dyed indigo cloths of West Africa, traded for human life, to its complex and poignant role in the story of race in America.The Music and the Mood: Explore the birth of the blues, the quintessential American art form that sits at the crossroads of heartache and joy, giving a sound to the question: What did I do to be so Black and blue?Lyrical Social Commentary: Through a blend of personal memoir, art, and historical analysis, National Book Award winner Imani Perry examines the sublime and harrowing aspects of the Black experience.Folklore and Identity: Uncover the layered meanings behind concepts like Blue Black skin and folk traditions, revealing how a color became intertwined with spirituality and identity.
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Memorial Days: A Memoir
by Geraldine Brooks
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 - A Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2025 - A Time Best Memoir of 2025 - Named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR, People, Air Mail, Bookreporter, and Publishers Weekly Brooks tracks the geography of grief with patience and grace as she comes to terms with the ongoing nature of outliving the ones you love most. ... Her memoir is certainly a testament to her own unique loss, but it's moreover a lifeline to others who will find themselves in this familiar, shattered landscape of grief. --Los Angeles Times A rich account of marriage and mourning. --Washington Post A heartrending and beautiful memoir of sudden loss and a journey towards peace, from the bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author ofHorse Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz - just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy - collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk. After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha's Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf. Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony's death. A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
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Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Save Lives
by Daisy Fancourt
Shortlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-FictionA groundbreaking expos showing how the arts--alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature--are the forgotten fifth pillar of health From cradle to grave, engaging in the arts has remarkable effects on our health and well-being. Music supports the architectural development of children's brains. Artistic hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia. Dance and magic tricks build new neural pathways for people with brain injuries. Arts and music act just like drugs to decrease depression, stress, and pain, reducing our dependence on medication. Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theater decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty. Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body, even helping us to live longer. This isn't sensationalism, it's science: the results of decades of studies gathering data from neuroimaging, molecular biomarkers, wearable sensors, cognitive assessments, and electronic health records. From professor Daisy Fancourt, an award-winning scientist and science communicator and director of the World Health Organization's Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, this book will fundamentally change the way you value and engage with the arts in your daily life and give you the tools to optimize how, when, and what arts you engage in to achieve your health goals. The arts are not a luxury in our lives. They are essential.
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Pierce County Library System
3005 112th St. E, Tacoma, Washington 98446
253-548-3300mypcls.org |
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