The arresting photo on the jacket of Edna O’Brien’s lyrical memoir, Country Girl, captures the writer sometime in her heyday, cigarette poised between her lips, looking confident and inquisitive, but also a little bewildered. These same qualities have always defined O’Brien’s writing itself—she is a magical storyteller and prose stylist who writes emphatically from both the head and the heart, yet has never been afraid to express the tentativeness of life.

Country Girl, its title a nod to her first and still widely read debut novel The Country Girls, is a book that O’Brien’s fans will warmly embrace. The assumption has always been that swaths of autobiographical detail have fueled much of this Irish-born writer’s fiction, and this impressionistic chronicle of her life lays to rest any doubts. Here are the true details of a childhood in the west of Ireland as young Edna pushes against the provincial and parochial constraints of village and parish. Later, she quickly acknowledges the mistake of an early marriage, but remains too long in this claustrophobic union with an impatient martinet who discourages her talents, then seethes when her literary star begins to eclipse his own. On the upside, that marriage—O’Brien’s only trip to the altar—produced her two beloved sons, Carlo and Sasha.

After her first novel appeared in 1960, bringing quick fame and some measure of wealth, O’Brien was ensconced in Chelsea and duly immersed in London’s Swinging Sixties, partying with Paul McCartney and Richard Burton (a fellow Celt and “bard brother”), and forging enduring friendships with Harold Pinter and other seminal writers and artists of the age. She became a patient of renegade psychiatrist R.D. Laing, who gave her LSD. During extended teaching trips to New York, she became a close friend of Jackie Onassis. She was wined and dined at the White House.

It was a remarkable transformation from shy country girl from County Clare to world-renowned literary celebrity, and what strikes one most in O’Brien’s story is that her life has been a study in sharp contrasts. The little girl whose once grand but impecunious family often had the bailiff at the door could never imagine those future dinners at Jackie O’s Fifth Avenue digs. Having lived in London nearly all her adult life, her connection to Ireland remains indelible, even though her native land all but banned her early books. Reading between the lines of this candid, if intentionally elliptical memoir, it becomes patently clear that much of O’Brien’s literary output has been an effort to integrate her motherland (and, indeed, her complicated relationship with her strong-willed mother) into the larger canvas that has become her life. Now in her 80s, Edna O’Brien reveals herself in this memoir as a woman of youthful passions and yearnings, still a writer of exquisite prose that probes the clandestine corners of what she herself has called a fanatic heart.

Moviegoers know Sally Kellerman best for her breakthrough performance as Hot Lips Houlihan in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H. The classic 1969 film led to an Oscar nomination and a spate of major roles. With her crooked smile, slouchy sexiness and über-cool delivery, the tall, slender, disheveled blonde has a timeless quality to this day.

A presence on TV, especially via voiceover work, the 70-something Kellerman today focuses on her lifelong passion: singing. In the 1950s she was actually contracted with the jazz label Verve Records. But at 18 and just out of Hollywood High, she never followed through. “I was flat-out scared,” she recalls in her candid and colorful memoir Read My Lips: Stories of a Hollywood Life. Turning to acting, she found encouragement under the tutelage of legendary coach Jeff Corey. Classmates included Jack Nicholson, Roger Corman and Dick Chamberlain.

There’s plenty of star power here. Madly infatuated with the super-sexy Marlon Brando, Kellerman partied at his house, smoked pot with the Malibu crowd (Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, etc.), and found a “fairy godmother”-mentor in that queen of the Golden Age film, Jennifer Jones. A product of the Southern California dreamscape, she waited tables while studying acting. She serves up yummy details about Chez Paulette, a coffeehouse located on the Sunset Strip, where customers included Steve McQueen and Brando. Recounting a time devoid of paparazzi and cell phone cameras, she notes, “The actors we admired were larger than life and yet within reach.” Her rise up the ladder included bit parts in B-movies (starting with 1957’s Reform School Girls). An episode of the spooky series “The Outer Limits”proved a game-changer. She’s never stopped working.

Always unorthodox, she adopted her sister’s daughter (the result of a custody battle) and was in her 40s when she married producer Jonathan Krane, 12 years her junior. She was in her early 50s when the couple adopted twins. Kellerman fesses up to marital challenges, noting that at least it hasn’t been boring. Nothing about her is.

Upfront about her adventures with drugs, sex, even a headline-making scandal, her Read My Lips vividly details a durable career that took shape during Hollywood’s pivotal ‘60s and ‘70s.

Hollywood writer Pat Broeske once dined with Sally Kellerman and her producer-husband. Kellerman was aloof—until Broeske’s husband said he’d brought along the actress’ first album. He left with an autograph, and a kiss.

Glamour has called them “the Saints of Somalia, equal parts Mother Teresa and Rambo.” It’s a fitting description of Dr. Hawa Abdi and her two doctor daughters. Their must-be-heard story, told by Dr. Abdi with Sarah J. Robbins in Keeping Hope Alive, is one ofincredible humanitarian effort coupled with fierce courage, even as they face violent extremists. But it is also Dr. Abdi’s private story—her trials and tribulations as a Somali woman, as a mother, as a wife—as one small person with a big dream for peace.

In spite of the atrocities she has witnessed, Dr. Abdi writes with a lyrical gentleness about her homeland. Her grandmother, she tells us, came from “the region called Lafole, where the sandy roads of Mogadishu meet the soft brown earth of the Shabelle River basin.” Lucky to be raised by parents who had a then-rare “marriage of love,” she was able to become an educated woman, a lawyer and the first female gynecologist in Somalia. When civil war broke out in 1990, she also became a hero and a legend: the unwavering protector of tens of thousands.

As “victims and survivors flooded the main road that led out of Mogadishu,” many came to her farm and clinic. “I took them in, and I gave them whatever I had—cool water, a place to sleep, a portion of our farm’s harvest.” As the unrest continued, her 1,300 acres became a camp for up to 90,000 displaced people. With help and recognition from the United States and other countries, her clinic grew into a hospital; the children are now being educated, and there is hope, but the dangers persist.

In 2010, insurgents kidnapped Dr. Abdi, invading and destroying much of the hospital and her personal possessions. “These young men are our own sons as well—an entire generation that has grown up without law and order,” she writes. Public outcry helped secure her release, but she worries for the future when so many are born into a world of hate, growing up knowing only division, violence and poverty. “A Somali proverb,” she writes, “says that you don’t deliver a child, you deliver a society.”

A Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Dr. Hawa Abdi has sent an urgent message to the world in Keeping Hope Alive. Read it; heed it; pass it on.

Confessions of a Sociopath opens on a disturbing scene. Author M.E. Thomas (a pseudonym) finds a baby opossum in her swimming pool. Fetching the skimmer, she uses it to hold the animal underwater; when it escapes, she leaves it to drown, returning later to toss the body over her neighbor’s fence. Does this sound like you or anyone you know? If it did, would you admit it?

Confessions of a Sociopath mingles elements of memoir with some scientific analysis and material from the author’s blog, SociopathWorld. Her own psychological evaluation defines her as “egocentric” and “sensation-seeking,” focused on “interpersonal dominance, verbal aggression, and excessive self-esteem.” Living in constant pursuit of her own advantage in any situation, with no regard for the emotions of others, Thomas has essentially lied, cheated and stolen her way to a good life, working less than half-time as a law professor and “ruining people” for sport, from fellow faculty members to romantic interests. A devout Mormon, she teaches Sunday school and claims to adhere to moral guidelines (she isn’t physically violent, for example), but finds wiggle room in even the most straightforward rules and exploits them to her benefit.

The book is fascinating for its glimpse behind the curtain, but it’s not without its flaws. The combination of a pseudonymous author who has blurred many identifying details with a sociopath’s lack of emotional connection leaves the experiences recounted here somewhat lifeless. Thomas also contradicts herself, boasting at length about her ability to ruin people, then giving a tame example and speculating that it was harmless to those involved. Most surprisingly, she initially calls her childhood “unremarkable,” then goes on to describe an upbringing shot through with abuse, neglect and melodrama verging on the operatic. It may not be the direct cause of her condition, but unremarkable? No way.

It’s a sociopath’s prerogative to be evasive, so we may never reach a full understanding of how the condition takes root or if it can be, if not cured, at least constructively channeled. Confessions of a Sociopath offers no easy explanations, but it’s an unsettling look at something that is far more common than most of us realize.

What happens when a raging liberal feminist Latina starts dating a conservative, traditional New Mexican rancher? You get The Feminist and the Cowboy, a turbulent memoir by best-selling writer Alisa Valdes that is by turns thought-provoking and exhausting.

Divorced with a young son, Valdes meets “the cowboy”—that’s what she calls him throughout the book—via an online dating service. She’s skeptical, having been raised by ultra-hippies who think those who watch Fox News are dumb, evil or both.

“The list of things they hated was quite long and occupied most of our family dinnertime conversation,” Valdes writes. “It included the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon, Capitalist Pigs, Phyllis Schlafly, Fascist Pigs, John Wayne, Conservative Pigs, Imperialist Pigs, Colonialist Pigs, The Rich, Racists, Religion, Sexist Pigs, Lawrence Welk, and Displays of Patriotism Anywhere but Communist Countries and Indian Reservations.”

But the cowboy is incredibly handsome and persistent, convincing Valdes to let him travel from the rural ranch into Albuquerque for a date. What follows is a stormy relationship marked by yelling matches, tantrums, steamy sex, repeated breakups and anguished text message exchanges. When Valdes finds out the cowboy is still dating another woman, she comes completely unglued. It culminates with an ultimatum: The cowboy insists that Valdes drop the drama and let him make the rules for their relationship.

She agrees.

“By forcing me to back down, the cowboy—and I realized this with a sense of astonishment—was actually forcing me to trust someone other than myself,” Valdes writes. “Seen in this light, the cowboy’s desire for ‘control’ was actually quite loving.”

Their relationship is so toxic that it’s hard to separate it from Valdes’ very smart analysis of how her ultra-feminist upbringing hamstrung her ability to trust a man or, really, anyone. By filtering her thoughts through the cowboy lens, she seems to be defending a relationship that is based largely on turmoil and one whopper of a power struggle.

Valdes has certainly earned her place as a noted writer: Nominated for a Pulitzer as a staff writer for the Boston Globe, she has more than a million books in print, including The Dirty Girls Social Club. It’s why her decision to bare all in this less-than-flattering portrait is all the more fascinating. Throughout the book, Valdes comes across as bitter, immature and self-destructive. And yet, she also shows that she is smart, very funny and brutally honest about both her strengths and shortcomings. Ultimately, her candor is somehow the best and worst thing about this very revealing memoir.

One brother served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff and is now mayor of Chicago. Another is a bioethicist and White House health advisor. The third is a Hollywood power agent.

How do three such accomplished men come from one family? That’s the question at the center of Brothers Emanuel, a lovely memoir from the eldest brother, Ezekiel (the bioethicist). Certainly their parents had their hands full with three rough-and-tumble boys (indeed, there did seem to be an inordinate number of episodes in which one or more of the boys had a near brush with injury after bouncing off a bed).

But Benjamin and Marsha Emanuel also had high expectations for their sons. Benjamin, an Israeli immigrant, was a respected Chicago pediatrician who met Marsha, a radiology technician, at a Chicago hospital. They moved to Tel Aviv, where Benjamin offered medical care to five far-flung kibbutzes, before settling back in Chicago to raise their boys. Deeply involved in the civil rights movement, they regularly hosted community meetings in their living room, where the boys would listen from behind the sofa.

“Undoubtedly this experience of eavesdropping on activists helped instill in us both a moral sensibility and the desire to do something about a problem whenever we could,” Emanuel writes. “It is not hard to see Rahm’s devotion to improving Chicago Public Schools and my work on universal health-care coverage as outgrowths of witnessing these meetings in our house.”

The Emanuels also set up a “children’s study” where the brothers could do their homework and learn the art of strategy through cutthroat games of chess with dad. “Winning became so important that we each deliberately sought out the particular hobbies, sports and career interests that fit our abilities and in which we could excel,” Emanuel explains. “Life was about competition, and if you couldn’t finish at the top in one pursuit, you found the game where your talent allowed you to win.”

But adversity helped shape them, too. Emanuel recalls a summer when he and a friend biked over to the local country club to apply for a summer caddy job, only to be turned down because he was Jewish.

Brothers Emanuel is a clear-eyed, candid memoir that is unique and yet quintessentially American. It’s the story of young boys who were given a fair shot, took a few hits along the way, and made something of themselves.