What it is: journalist Erica C. Barnett's memoir of her hard-fought battles with alcohol addiction.

Read it for: the author's clear-eyed and self-deprecating journey toward redemption: "Rock bottom is a lie." 

For fans of: candid recovery memoirs like Cat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life.  

What it's about: New Yorker cartoonist Jason Adam Katzenstein's obsessive compulsive disorder, which began in childhood after his parents' divorce.

Art alert: A self-described "anxious cartoonist," Katzenstein conveys his compulsions via frenetic black-and-white caricatures, which include his brain as a broken record and himself as Sisyphus.  

Starring: Robert LeRoy Parker, the son of British Mormons whose hardscrabble upbringing as the oldest of 13 children inspired him to take up a life of crime as the leader of the "Wild Bunch" gang.

Why you might like it: This lively revisionist biography deconstructs the myths surrounding the infamous outlaw and offers a portrait of a figure more complicated than his pop culture portrayals would suggest.

Reviewers say: "[a] likely definitive account" (Kirkus Reviews).

Welcome to... Haines, the small but politically active town in southern Alaska where author Heather Lende was elected to assembly in 2016.

Is it for you? This homespun tale of small-town politics and colorful personalities will charm fans of TV's Parks and Recreation.

Author alert: Lende has written several memoirs of her life in Haines, including If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name and Take Good Care of the Garden and the Dogs.   

What it's about: When she was 19 years old, Natasha Trethewey's former stepfather murdered her mother. 

How she coped: Years later, Trethewey returned to the scene of the crime, where she found the long-buried answers to questions lingering from childhood.

Try this next: Readers stirred by this lyrical and unflinching portrait of family violence will want to check out Blood by Allison Moorer. 

Who it's about: William Monroe Trotter, the Harvard-educated activist and publisher who founded the Black newspaper Boston Guardian in 1901.

Read it for: an incisive and well-researched portrait of an unyielding figure whose radical political views courted controversy -- and presaged contemporary civil rights battles.
 
Reviewers say: "Essential reading for our times" (Booklist).

What it's about: investigative journalist Seymour M. Hersh's five-decade career spent chasing high-profile stories around the globe.

Topics include: the 1968 My Lai massacre in Vietnam (for which Hersh's reporting won a Pulitzer Prize); the Watergate scandal; American military abuses post-9/11.

Try this next: For another candid and compelling memoir by an octogenarian Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, check out Working by Robert A. Caro. 

Starring: Mary McGrory, whose reportage on the Watergate scandal earned her a spot on Richard Nixon's "enemies list" -- and a Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1975.

What sets it apart: This richly detailed page-turner is the first biography of the charismatic "grand dame of Washington reporters."

Don't miss: the humble epitaph McGrory requested for her tombstone.  

What it is: a powerful, briskly paced memoir chronicling Iranian American journalist Jason Rezaian's 18-month imprisonment in Tehran.

What happened: Arrested on trumped-up espionage charges, Rezaian's release was used as a bargaining chip in Iran's nuclear deal negotiations with the Obama administration.

What's inside: frank discussions concerning U.S.-Iran relations and Rezaian's complicated relationship with his family's homeland.

What it's about: the tumultuous first year of the Trump administration as seen through the eyes of White House correspondent April Ryan, a frequent target of the president and his acolytes.

Read it for: an impassioned chronicle of what it's like to be one of the few Black reporters working for the White House press corps.

Reviewers say: "will be an inspiration to those who have to fight similar battles" (Publishers Weekly).