At 14, Brooke Shields was the youngest model ever to appear on the cover of Vogue. She grew up in public, and now, at 59, she’s aging in public. In Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old, Shields pens a manifesto against the myths that accompany aging as a woman, and claims the power that comes with experience and perspective.
Not long before Markus Zusak completed his book tour for his chart-topping novel, The Book Thief, he and his wife decided to adopt a dog languishing at the local pound. Then another. And finally, after the first pair eventually died, a third. All three were so-called “difficult dogs”: “Gangsters, gunmen. Soldiers,” he writes. “ADHD on legs.” In this debut memoir, Zusak tells the story of his writing and family life through these beasts, who were indefatigable perpetrators of lawlessness and intimidation—but still worthy of love.
Imani Perry showed her ability to weave historical research with sharp, sparkling analysis in 2022’s National Book Award-winning South to America. In Black in Blues: How a Color Tells the Story of My People, she explores how the color blue has been intertwined with Black life: in the dyeing of indigo, the religious traditions of various African cultures, the literature of Zora Neale Hurston, the revolutionary politics of Black freedom fighters and much more.
Novelist, biographer, playwright, essayist and queer icon Edmund White (The Humble Lover, A Saint From Texas) has spent his long career writing about love and sex in a way that shatters taboos and elevates the value of pleasure. His dishy new memoir, The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir, explores these themes during different seasons of his life.
Pop culture maven, TV writer and podcaster Ira Madison III serves his cultural critiques with a side of spit take-inducing humor. His debut essay collection is like a brunch date with your sharpest, most hilarious friend—the one who never holds back their opinions. Here, Madison riffs on everything from the bewildering appeal of Tom Cruise to his identification with Daria to boy bands of yesteryear (err . . . the early aughts). Pure Innocent Fun promises to be a worthy romp.
Pulitzer-winning novelist (for March) Geraldine Brooks pens a memoir about grieving the sudden death of her husband, fellow Pulitzer winner Tony Horwitz, in 2019. Besieged by the demands of a partner’s death, Brooks put off grieving for three years. Memorial Days is about the time after, when she retreated to a remote island off the coast of Australia, her home country, to finally attend to the demands of grief.
For five decades, Lorne Michaels has pulled the strings behind the curtain of the late night show he created, Saturday Night Live. Famously private, yet storied and mythologized by countless SNL cast members and writers through the years, Michaels is revealed in full in Susan Morrison’s deeply reported story of his life and career.
Scaachi Koul made waves with her buzzy, hilarious debut memoir, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, in 2017. She’ll treat readers again with its follow-up, Sucker Punch, a memoir-in-essays about what happens when great expectations are dashed but you gotta keep on truckin’.
The Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act was unanimously approved in the House and Senate in 2016, establishing more rights for survivors of sexual assault and rape. This historic, bipartisan effort was the result of one woman’s quest for justice after she was raped as a student at Harvard. In Saving Five: A Memoir of Hope, Amanda Nguyen tells the story of her path to healing from the perspectives of different versions of herself at different ages.
Apart from his literary accomplishments (The Fault in Our Stars, Turtles All the Way Down), John Green is a notable philanthropist, having created a string of nonprofit charity projects and a foundation alongside his brother, Hank. Green is an advocate for health care equality and, most notably, has been using his platform to address policies and regulations regarding tuberculosis, a preventable and curable disease that is nonetheless a leading cause of death in Africa, especially among children. Everything Is Tuberculosis asks readers to join the fight to save them.
As a mother, businesswoman, global advocate for women and girls, and bestselling author of The Moment of Lift, Melinda French Gates shares intimate stories of the most pivotal moments of her life while presenting a new approach for readers when in times of change in The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward. Here, she describes her time stepping down from the Gates Foundation and founding Pivotal Ventures, where she focuses on creating lasting change for women through philanthropy, impactful investments and partnerships.
Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton may have launched him into mainstream fame with the success of Lin Manuel Miranda’s musical adaptation, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer (for George Washington) is not resting on his laurels. Mark Twain is sure to illuminate the eponymous author’s life and times with delightfully excessive research and a brisk narrative pace. Fans of Twain and Chernow best set aside their TBR piles to indulge in this 1,200-page whopper from one of the eminent historians of our time.
For two decades, author, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit (Hope in the Dark, Men Explain Things to Me, The Faraway Nearby, among many) has been an incisive interpreter of the modern age, with a particular talent for laying bare current social and political crises while providing actionable advice to effect positive change. With No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, Solnit homes in on climate change, prison abolition and more to explore how to harness the lessons of the past to forge ahead with courage and intention.
Anna Malaika Tubbs’ acclaimed 2021 debut, The Three Mothers, explored the lives and influence of Alberta King, Berdis Baldwin and Louise Little—the mothers of Martin Luther King Jr., James Baldwin and Malcolm X, respectively. Erased: What American Patriarchy Has Hidden from Us follows up by confronting the reasons so little was known about these women. Why are Black women so often lost to history? Erased sounds perfect for fans of Isabel Wilkerson (Caste) and Richard Rothstein (The Color of Law), and we can’t wait to read it.
Stars of groundbreaking early 2000s lesbian drama series The L Word, Kate Moennig and Leisha Hailey reflect on the legacy of the series in their co-authored memoir, So Gay for You: Friendship, Found Family, and the Show That Started It All. Sharing behind-the-scenes stories and on-set anecdotes, Moennig and Hailey reflect on the show’s impact on politics, culture and the queer community. And most of all, they tell the story of the bonds among castmates and their big, gay friendship in this intimate celebrity memoir.
The Hawaiian word kuleana means responsibility and stewardship carried through the generations, and it’s the theme of Sara Kehaulani Goo’s Kuleana: A Story of Family, Land, and Legacy in Old Hawai’i. A veteran journalist (Axios, NPR, the Washington Post), Goo was drawn to investigate her family’s ancestral land in Maui when their property tax rose by 500%, a sum that seemed intended to displace them. Kuleana’s understanding of her own cultural identity deepens as she unfurls her family’s story alongside that of Hawai’i’s.
A great editor works so seamlessly in the range of the author’s voice as to be invisible to readers. It makes sense that when considering Toni Morrison—Nobel Prize winner, stone-cold genius and among the greatest writers of all time—readers might not be thinking about her impact as an editor, even though it was tremendous. Working at top publishing houses, Morrison edited authors like Toni Cade Bambara, Leon Forrest and Lucille Clifton, and profoundly influenced American letters. Before her death, she requested that Howard University dean Dana A. Williams tell this story. Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship will grant her wish.
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers’ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois was longlisted for the National Book Award, and made our 2021 list of best fiction, for good reason: “Her masterful treatment of the characters and their relationships, paired with the thorough and engaging way the narrative is laid out, makes for a book that is easy to invest and get lost in,” our reviewer wrote. Jeffers’ first work of nonfiction will explore “the emotional and historical tensions in Black women’s public lives and her own private life.”
In her too-short life, Octavia E. Butler redefined science fiction with books like Kindred, Parable of the Sower and Bloodchild. Named for Butler’s 1995 essay, in which she writes starkly about her beginnings as a writer, Susana M. Morris’ Positive Obsession seems akin to Alexis Pauline Gumbs’ 2024 biography of Audre Lorde, Survival Is a Promise. By grounding Butler’s work in the sociological and historical contexts of her time—such as Black Power, women’s rights and LGBTQ+ rights—Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler promises to show how the author was driven to push boundaries, imagine new futures and expand the genre of science fiction.
U.S. national security, foreign policy and politics reporter Julia Ioffe makes her literary debut with Motherland, a book that seeks to show how Russia’s history is inextricably linked to its women. Ioffe, whose family escaped the Soviet Union and migrated to New York City when she was 7, puts her formidable journalism skills to use as she braids family memoir with history, illuminating how the country’s treatment of women paved the way to the rise of today’s authoritarian government.
Book publication dates are subject to change.
With an artful eye and bold style, Rawaan Alkhatib elevates the humble date in her brilliantly designed, deliciously concocted cookbook, Hot Date!
The elegantly illustrated A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects shows that Black Americans have always been the bearers—not merely the recipients—of innovation.
In Calling In, veteran feminist activist Loretta J. Ross powerfully argues that we must give up cancel culture to reclaim our shared humanity.
Jennifer Finney Boylan’s latest memoir-in-essays, Cleavage, is a sometimes funny, sometimes elegiac meditation on gender, parenthood and coming to terms with herself.
Charles Piller’s Doctored investigates explosive claims that a fraudulent study has derailed Alzheimer’s research for nearly two decades.
In his dizzyingly fun debut essay collection, Ira Madison III riffs on his 1990s Milwaukee childhood and the pop culture that shaped him.
Sweet but never saccharine, Sarah Perry’s collection of essays about candy, Sweet Nothings, is a book worth savoring.
Whether you’re dating, in the throes of passion or in it for the long haul, these fresh takes on love and sex are sure to enlighten.
Lindsay Jill Roth’s grounded Romances and Practicalities isn’t your average dating book—her practical advice proves that communication is sexy.
As readable as a novel, Bernadette Atuahene’s Plundered unspools the intricate story of how a nearly-bankrupt Detroit unconstitutionally overtaxed homes in poor Black neighborhoods.
Pleasure reigns supreme in Edmund White’s brilliant, envelope-pushing, sex-positive memoir, The Loves of My Life.
Neko Case’s memoir, The Harder I Fight, The More I Love You, is an ode to the persistent ability to love, and how it transforms our lives.
Black in Blues grapples with the history of Black suffering, Black art and, ultimately, Black joy and resistance, all through the color blue.
