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).

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.