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Biography and Memoir May 2026 |
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| Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane by Andy BetaJazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane has always labored in the long shadow of her more famous husband, John. But music journalist Andy Beta’s new biography gives Alice her due. Her unique solo recordings meld elements of jazz, gospel, and eastern and western classical musics into a dreamlike, meditative tapestry that speaks to the composer’s strong spiritual foundation. For fans of: Billie Holiday: the Musician and the Myth by John Szwed. |
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| This Is Not About Running by Mary CainWhen she was a teenager, Mary Cain’s talent as a middle-distance runner secured her a coveted position in Nike’s Oregon Project youth training program, headed by running legend Alberto Salazar. But when Cain’s performance started to slip, it became clear that she had been harming and starving herself as a result of Salazar’s cruel treatment and other abuse allowed by the program. Cain tells all in her “powerful and haunting” (Publisher’s Weekly) debut. Read-alike: Abused: Surviving Sexual Assault and a Toxic Gymnastics Culture by Rachel Haines. |
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| Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett's Bookshop by Jeannine A. CookJeannine A. Cook’s Philadelphia bookstore -- named in honor of Harriet Tubman -- opened barely a month before the COVID-19 lockdown. Yet Cook remained determined. She punctuates her memoir with letters that she wrote to Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, Josephine Baker, and others -- determined Black women of the past whose spirits were beacons of hope and resistance that would see her through the tough times ahead. Six years later, Harriet’s Bookshop is thriving! Try Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef for a similarly inspiring tale. |
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| Kutchinsky's Egg: A Family's Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss by Serena KutchinskySerena Kutchinsky grew up in an affluent Jewish British family famous for its high-end jewelry firm, House of Kutchinsky. When her father Paul took over the business in the 1980s, he hatched an ambitious and risky plan to create and sell the world’s largest jewel-encrusted egg, which went so spectacularly wrong that it bankrupted the century-old firm. For the Kutchinskys, the seized, missing egg became a reviled symbol of hubris and failure. Decades later, Serena’s search for the cursed object would lead her into a web of family secrets in this “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) generational saga. |
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| Small Town Girls: A Writer's Memoir by Jayne Anne PhillipsNovelist Jayne Anne Phillips’ Small Town Girls is not strictly a memoir. Yet this collection of previously published essays includes many fragments from the author’s memories of growing up in her troubled, enchanted homeland of West Virginia. Whether pondering the Hatfield-McCoy feud or revisiting sense memories of her hometown’s beauty shop, Phillips’ incisive and lyrical observations give life to a time gone by. For more autobiographical snippets set in the Mountain State, try Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan. |
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| Western Star: The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry by David StreitfeldNovelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry is perhaps best remembered for his western novel Lonesome Dove and his screenplay adaptation of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, as well as for making his home state of Texas a minor character in most of his writing. Before his death in 2021, McMurtry entrusted his friend and Pulitzer-winning journalist David Streitfeld with writing this biography, a “revealing portrait” (Kirkus Reviews) of a complicated man who remained an enigma to all but his closest associates. |
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A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to...
by Adam Morgan
American editor Margaret C. Anderson was a champion of early modernists including Djuna Barnes and James Joyce, giving their experimental works voice in her upstart literary journal The Little Review. Critic Adam Morgan documents her fierce advocacy of the arts, romances with various high-profile women, and independence from the 20th-century status quo. Readers will savor this “enlightening depiction of a[n]…influential figure of both modernism and queer history” (Publishers Weekly).
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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