Attention all would-be princesses: There’s a new memoir that’ll soon have you humming Disney tunes and polishing your tiaras to a high shine. Someday My Prince Will Come: True Adventures of a Wannabe Princess by Jerramy Fine is the real-life story of a Colorado commoner who single-mindedly pursues what she believes is her true destiny to meet and marry a prince.

Fine, the daughter of hippie, tipi-dwelling parents, has been inexplicably longing for England since she was six and discovered the Windsor dynasty especially the existence of Peter Phillips, the Queen’s eldest grandson in a library book. She’s always felt out of place with tie-dye and tofu and, as a toddler, was paranormally bedeviled by echoes of a regally tinged past life, which, says Fine, explains why I often confused my mother with my chambermaid. A bleak situation indeed: What’s a girl to do in the absence of a personal dresser and a fairy godmother? Nothing less than devour copies of Royalty magazine, write fervent love letters to Buckingham Palace and get the heck out of Dodge for an East Coast college, a semester abroad interning in the House of Commons and, eventually, graduate work at the London School of Economics.

Fine soon lives the London life, complete with cashmere, pearls and aristocratic friends, but Peter Phillips remains remarkably elusive (although she does meet Princess Anne, Fergie and Earl Spencer), dating English guys proves wonky and her flat-mates run the gamut from female stalkers to tyrannical misogynists. Though Fine’s methods for finding her true love, destiny and realized reincarnation are not exactly spot on, her obvious intelligence and wry, self-deprecating storytelling style make this tale of a gutsy girl with New Age roots worth a read especially to understand the power of persistence (and trance channeling). What could have been a sob story with tired chick-lit overtones is elevated by Fine’s humor and charm and an epiphany that leads to a worthy ending. There’s fodder for a sequel here or, if the author chooses to stretch her imagination and writing skills, a wacky work of paranormal fictive amour. Closet Anglophile Alison Hood owns both cashmere and pearls, but, alas, no tiara (yet).

These days, it seems that everyone wants to write a memoir, but let’s face it not everyone should. Kelly Corrigan is the exception, and her memoir, The Middle Place, arrives on the scene with an emphatic Hello, world! In 2004, both Corrigan and her father were diagnosed with cancer, and The Middle Place is an account of what follows. Much more than a recovery memoir or coming-of-age story, it is about being a parent and a child at the same time, a portrait of what it feels like to stand with one foot in each world as Corrigan describes it, that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. Corrigan’s beloved father, George, is a larger-than-life character who literally greets each day by throwing open the windows and exclaiming Hello, world! He’s Irish-Catholic, a lacrosse fanatic and coach, and the quintessential salesman. Corrigan’s relationship with her father not only shapes who she is, but serves as a touchstone as she makes her way through their respective battles with late-stage cancer.

In the first chapter, Corrigan describes the moment she first discovers the lump in her breast, and then the journey she embarks upon as her worst fears are realized. Descriptions of her treatment are contrasted with pitch-perfect vignettes of domestic life as the mother of two young daughters and wife of an adoring (and adorable) husband. She alternates these with stories from her Catholic upbringing in Philadelphia, seamlessly weaving together past and present.

Whether recounting a particularly funny episode from childhood involving her brother’s boa constrictor or the time when she had a friend pre-emptively shave her head during chemo, Corrigan infuses her prose with vivacity and humor. She explores that process called growing up, and how it can happen in a defining moment, like a lightning strike, but also how it is illuminated in less dramatic ones, like flickers of heat lightning in a summer sky. And if you happen to be George, otherwise known as Kelly Corrigan’s father, you embrace it all, not gingerly, but with a bear hug.

Known for her feminism and political activism, writer Marge Piercy has long had another great passion: cats. They saunter in and out of the pages of her engrossing memoir Sleeping with Cats, a book that candidly details the forces that shaped Piercy’s development as a leading poet, novelist and essayist. If you aren’t familiar with her work, there is much to discover, including 15 novels, 15 volumes of poetry and a book on the craft of writing, penned with her husband Ira Wood. Though she makes her home on rural Cape Cod, Piercy is a child of the city. Born and raised in Detroit, she had a Jewish mother and Protestant father. Both had difficulty relating to their scholarly, often rebellious daughter. Yet these hard-working blue collar parents imbued her with a love of poetry. Though Piercy’s father was unhappy at home, he did something many other fathers didn’t: he stayed. The ensuing family stability helped foster Piercy’s writing, and the family cats triggered a lifelong love and respect for felines. "My life has a spine of cats," says Piercy. And so, they become central characters in this memoir.

In fact, the author attributes her civil rights militancy to a cruel act wrought upon her beloved pet Fluffy. A boyfriend poisoned the cat in retaliation over the sale of her family’s house to an African-American doctor. "I understood hatred as I never had," Piercy relates. That same year, a close friend died of a heroin overdose, and the author’s beloved grandmother passed away. The 15-year-old Piercy, who belonged to a girl gang and was sexually active, did an about-face, becoming involved in school activities, studying Shakespeare, and reading and rereading Faulkner. As a college student during the 1960s, she became an activist via the radical Students for a Democratic Society. Her metamorphosis as a feminist and a writer also encompassed myriad relationships with women as well as men and two failed marriages. Through it all, cats provided cheer and challenges. "The love of a cat is unconditional but always subject to negotiation," Piercy says. "You are never entirely in charge."

Biographer Pat H. Broeske has four cats, including Skeeter Joe from Memphis, the mascot for her 1997 Elvis book, Down at the End of Lonely Street.

Jan de Hartog, one of those rare talents who wrote well in two languages, was best known in his native Netherlands for Holland’s Glory, a nautical tale that was hugely popular among the Dutch as they endured Nazi occupation in World War II. But in the United States, where he eventually relocated, he is remembered most fondly for his historical novels about the Quakers, particularly The Peaceable Kingdom.

When de Hartog died in 2002 at 88, he left behind an exquisite short memoir about his mother’s death, now published as A View of the Ocean. It offers insight into his own decision in midlife to join the Society of Friends, but its more important theme is universal: how we can come to terms with losing our parents, learning more about both them and ourselves in the process.

De Hartog was lucky in his parents. His father was a famous Protestant minister and university professor who spoke out against the Nazis; his mother was a woman of gentle mien and steel spine who did heroic work among her fellow prisoners in a Japanese detainment camp in Dutch Indonesia during the war. Both were devoted Christians who truly lived their beliefs. But de Hartog’s experiences in the war pushed him toward cynicism and doubt.

His widowed mother Lucretia’s difficult death from stomach cancer at 79 helped him find his way back to their faith. A View of the Ocean does not spare us the pain and near-madness she suffered, nor his own emotional extremes. De Hartog’s description of his mother’s last days is wrenching, but it is also uplifting in the best sense. As he nursed his mother, de Hartog had a kind of spiritual epiphany, all the more striking for being incomprehensible to him as it happened. He only came to understand its significance following her death, as he got to know her Quaker friends. Her death, in all its agony, brought him to what Quaker founder George Fox called an infinite ocean of light and love. Even if you don’t share de Hartog’s beliefs, you’ll be moved by his honest and beautiful testimony. Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

Distinguished critic, editor and writer Anatole Broyard spent 18 years penning literary criticism for the New York Times, while cultivating a reputation as a highly sophisticated, elegant artisan and scholar. But he was also living a lie that dated back to the ’20s, when his family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn from New Orleans. Broyard’s parents were light-skinned blacks, something he concealed from even his closest friends as well as his children until his death from prostate cancer in 1990 (even his death certificate identified him as white).

His daughter Bliss Broyard’s stunning new book One Drop: My Father’s Hidden Life A True Story of Race and Family Secrets illuminates the Broyard story, though it’s as much a chronicle of her struggle as her father’s. Both she and her brother Todd grew up as whites, facing none of the problems associated with skin color routinely addressed by individuals of other races on a daily basis. Broyard researched her family’s history in hopes of better understanding not only her father’s reasons for the deception, but its long-term impact.

The results are alternately fascinating, sad and revealing. Crossing the nation from New York to Los Angeles to New Orleans, Broyard discovered many of the things her father loved (dancing, Afro-Cuban sounds, jazz) were cultural retentions from his youth that he didn’t want to abandon. But he incorporated these passions, plus his interest in famous writers and personalities like Kafka and Philip Roth, into a personality that never discussed or acknowledged the subject of race or origin.

Broyard’s book is also an ongoing dialogue on race: its murky nature, and the fact that so much of what people call themselves is determined by environment, parental influence and societal attitudes. For many years Bliss Broyard never knew or considered what it meant to be black in America, and she’s still grappling with it after completing this book. But she understands that her father made a choice he deemed would give him maximum freedom and social mobility. She’s still dealing with the fallout from discovering, then examining, his decision. Ron Wynn writes for Nashville City Paper and other publications.

In the late 1970s, millions of little girls cut their hair into a short, bouncy wedge, signed up for ice skating lessons and tried to emulate their idol’s signature move, the Hamill camel. Dorothy Hamill’s 1976 Olympic gold medal and subsequent international touring reinvigorated ice skating in the United States, and brought a level of athleticism to the sport that has become the norm. Despite being the darling of the ice skating world for decades, however, Hamill’s life wasn’t the picture-perfect image seen on television.

Hamill narrates A Skating Life, her new memoir, with clinical dispassion. The story of her formative years is one of nomadic travel from rink to rink and coach to coach in pursuit of better training; the only constant was her emotionally distant mother, who drove her to higher achievement. But her mother was absent for the pinnacle of Hamill’s career, her gold medal performance at the Innsbruck games, something that puzzled and hurt Hamill for years.

Unprepared to live on her own after she turned professional, Hamill found herself lost amid the complexities of managing her superstar career. Public adoration of her remained high, however, and it was the act of skating, meeting fans and the freedom of the ice that provided stability, even through her turbulent relationship with first husband Dean Paul Martin (son of Dean Martin), who was killed in a plane crash, and her second marriage to a man who stole her money and habitually cheated on her. After the failure of her second marriage, Hamill reconciled with her estranged parents, who we learn expected continual monetary payback for their sacrifices when she was an amateur. This reconciliation, plus a recognition of the family’s depressive medical history, brought focus back to Hamill’s life. The bright spot for Hamill is her daughter Alexandra, who became the skater’s reason for pushing forward through the trials.

Hamill is still active in the skating community, and her story will give inspiration to anyone striving toward a seemingly impossible dream or dealing with obstacles, whether physical, emotional or mental. Kelly Koepke was one of those little girls sporting Hamill’s signature haircut.