Top 30 Autobiography & Memoir Books
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Autobiography & Memoir Books offer you a close-up, first-hand look into genuine lives, brimming with personal insights, significant milestones, and deep reflections. They’re an amazing way to grasp a person’s journey through their own narrative.
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⭐ Book Club Top Pick ⭐
Finding My Way by Malala Yousafzai
This is not the story you think you know. It’s the one I’ve been waiting to tell.
Thrust onto the public stage at fifteen years old after the Taliban’s brutal attack on her life, Malala Yousafzai quickly became an international icon known for bravery and resilience. But away from the cameras and crowds, she spent years struggling to find her place in an unfamiliar world. Now, for the first time ever, Malala takes us beyond the headlines in Finding My Way—a vulnerable, surprising memoir that buzzes with authenticity, sharp humor, and tenderness.
Finding My Way is a story of friendship and first love, of anxiety and self-discovery, of trying to stay true to yourself when everyone wants to tell you who you are. In it, Malala traces her path from high school loner to reckless college student to a young woman at peace with her past. Through candid, often messy moments like nearly failing exams, getting ghosted, and meeting the love of her life, Malala reminds us that real role models aren’t perfect—they’re human.
In this astonishing memoir, Malala reintroduces herself to the world, sharing how she navigated life as someone whose darkest moments threatened to define her narrative—while seeking the freedom to find out who she truly is. Finding My Way is an intimate look at the life of a young woman taking charge of her destiny—and a deeply personal testament to the strength it takes to be unapologetically yourself.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Awake by Jen Hatmaker
At 2:30 a.m. on July 11, 2020, Jen Hatmaker woke up to her husband of twenty-six years whispering in his phone to another woman from their bed. It was the end of life as she knew it. In the months that followed, she went from being a shiny, funny, popular leader to a divorced wreck on antidepressants and antianxiety meds, parenting five kids alone with no clue about the functioning of her own bank accounts. Having led millions of women for over a decade—urging them to embrace authenticity, find radical agency, and create healthy relationship—she felt like a catastrophic failure.
In Awake, Jen shares for the first time what happened when she found herself completely lost at sea—and how she made it to shore. In candid, surprisingly funny vignettes spanning forty years of girlhood, marriage, and parenting, Jen lays bare the disorienting upheaval of midlife—the implosion of a marriage, the unraveling of religious and cultural systems, and the grief that accompanies change you didn’t ask for. And, drawing on all resources—from without and within—Jen dares to question the systems beneath the whole house of cards, and to reckon with the myths, half-truths, and lies that brought her to this point.
More than one woman’s story, Awake is a critical analysis of the story given to all of us: the story of gender limitations, religious subservience, body shame, self-erasure. With refreshing candor, Jen explores a midlife renaissance—grieving what’s lost, cherishing possibility, and entering the second half of life wide awake.
Tags - Memoir Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Nobody's Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now.
In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.
Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.
Nobody’s Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre’s unshakable will—first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Poets Square by Courtney Gustafson
An intimate memoir about the importance of community and care in a world that can feel impossibly broken—and a story about accidentally going viral while tending to a colony of feral cats.
When Courtney Gustafson moved into a rental house in the Poets Square neighborhood of Tucson, Arizona, she didn’t know that the property came with thirty feral cats. Focused only on her own survival—in a new relationship, during a pandemic, with poor mental health and a job that didn’t pay enough—Courtney was reluctant to spend any of her own time or money caring for the wayward animals.
But the cats—their pleading eyes, their ribs showing, the new kittens born in the driveway—didn’t give her a choice.
She had no idea about the grief and hardship of animal rescue, the staggering size of the problem in neighborhoods across the country. And she couldn’t have imagined how that struggle—toward an ethics of care, of individuals trying their best amid spectacularly failing systems—would help pierce a personal darkness she’d wrestled with for much of her life. She also didn’t expect that the TikTok and Instagram accounts she created to share the quirky personalities of the wild but lovable cats, like Monkey, Goldie, Francois, and Sad Boy, would end up saving her home.
Courtney writes toward a vision of connectedness, showing how taking care of the cats reshaped her understanding of empathy, resilience, and the healing power of wholly showing up for something outside yourself. She takes us from the dark alleys where she feeds feral cats to inside the tragically neglected homes where she climbs over piles of trash, and occasionally animals, and then into her own driveway with the cats she loves and must sometimes let go. Compelling and tender, Poets Square is as much about cats as it is about the urgency of care, community, and a little bit of dumb hope.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Cats, Animals, New Books 2025.
Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, is a soaring account, both intimate and inspirational, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as “my shelter and my storm.”
“Heart-smashed” by her mother Mary’s death in September 2022 yet puzzled and “more than a little ashamed” by the intensity of her response, Roy began to write, to make sense of her feelings about the mother she ran from at age eighteen, “not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.” And so begins this astonishing, sometimes disturbing, and surprisingly funny memoir of the author’s journey from her childhood in Kerala, India, where her single mother founded a school, to the writing of her prizewinning novels and essays, through today.
With the scale, sweep, and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity, and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace—a memoir like no other.
Tags - Memoir Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
A Clean Mess by Tiffany Jenkins
A Clean Mess opens with the moment that changed everything. Tiffany is about to go on stage when she receives an odd message from her husband: “Hey Babe, some of the guys here are making some stupid decisions. Not me. But I just wanted to let you know in case you heard it from some of the other wives.” By the end of the night, Tiffany knew her life would never be the same.
This wasn’t the first time she had to start over. After the opioid addiction and jail sentence that she chronicled in her bestselling memoir, High Achiever, Tiffany was ready for a fresh start. A chance to try life again, this time without drugs coursing through her veins. In A Clean Mess, she takes us back to those early days of recovery, and the whirlwind that she entered the moment she was out of prison. In just two years, she went from inmate to married and sober mom of three.
Told with humor and honesty, A Clean Mess is Tiffany Jenkins’s story of how she learned to live and feel for the first time without numbing herself with drugs—and how she discovered inner reserves of strength she didn’t know she had. From her tentative first days of sobriety, to seeing two pink lines on a pregnancy test weeks later, to navigating anxiety, a new marriage, and motherhood at the same time, to surviving betrayal and divorce, Jenkins shows how she got through it all when her crutches and Band-Aids were taken away from her. An inspiring memoir that reads like fiction, A Clean Mess is a book that will buoy anyone seeking a life raft in hard times.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Mental Health, New Books 2025.
Actress of a Certain Age by Jeff Hiller
While struggling to find success as an actor and pay the bills, something accidentally happened to Jeff Hiller: he aged. And while it’s one thing to get older and rest on the laurels of success from the blood, sweat, and tears of your youth, it’s quite another to be old and have no laurels. At forty, stuck in a temp job making spreadsheets, the dream of becoming a star seemed out of reach.
But after twenty-five years of guest roles on TV and performing improv in a grocery store basement, he finally struck gold with a breakout role on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, playing Joel—the kind of best friend everyone wishes they had.
In his book, Jeff dives into the grit and grind of climbing the Hollywood ladder. It’s a raw and often hilarious tale of the struggles, triumphs, and humiliations that shaped him into the wonderfully imperfect person he is today.
With a mix of awkward charm and heartfelt honesty, Jeff shares his journey: growing up very Lutheran in Texas, navigating bullying as a gay kid, working as a social worker for unhoused youth and HIV prevention, and the endless ups and downs of being a struggling actor. For every one of us who have a dream that we’re chasing—and chasing, and chasing—his is a funny, moving, and utterly relatable story.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, LGBT, Humor, New Books 2025.
Not My Type by E. Jean Carroll
A hilarious, hopeful, revelatory behind the scenes account of the trials that riveted the nation
You’ve heard about the tantrums, the seething, the storming out of court, yes. But what about E. Jean’s side of the story? What about the flight suits, the bottle of green Chartreuse, and the bob?
Not My Type puts you in a better seat than the jury box.
You will hear Alina Habba, Esq., “Trump’s most beautiful attorney,” asking E. Jean to “list” the people she has “slept with”―a list which turns out to be so marvelous, it is worth twice the price of this book. You will experience the fear and loathing of E. Jean’s “psychiatric evaluations,” and hear how she tries to cheer up Trump’s gloomy, $750-an-hour shrink by telling him about the strange white tablet Hunter S. Thompson gave her.
You will be in on the choosing of the “clothes for court,” and the creation of “the look”: a look that will help the jury connect the younger E. Jean who is attacked by Trump in Bergdorf’s with the older E. Jean who sits in the courtroom.
It’s all here: two dazzling trials, the full-tilt high stakes, the laugh-out-loud commentary, and the inspiring fact that a woman is never too old to get even.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Politics, True Crime, Humor, New Books 2025.
Vagabond by Tim Curry
There are few stars in Hollywood today that can boast the kind of resume Tony award-nominated actor Tim Curry has built over the past five decades. From his breakout role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Picture Show to his iconic depiction as the sadistic clown Pennywise in It to his critically acclaimed role as the original King Arthur in both the Broadway and West End versions of Spamalot, Curry redefined what it meant to be a “character actor,” portraying heroes and villains alike with complexity, nuance, and a genuine understanding of human darkness.
Now, in his memoir, Curry takes readers behind-the-scenes of his rise to fame from his early beginnings as a military brat to his formative years in boarding school and university, to the moment when he hit the stage for the first time. He goes in-depth about what it was like to work on some of the most emblematic works of the 20th century, constantly switching between a camera and a live audience. He also explores the voicework that defined his later career and provided him with a chance to pivot after surviving a catastrophic stroke in 2012 that nearly took his life.
With the upcoming 50th anniversary of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the 40th anniversary of Clue, there’s never been a better time for Tim to share his story with the world.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Matriarch: A Memoir by Tina Knowles
“You are Celestine,” she said. She squatted to push the hair off my face and pull leaves off my pajama legs. “Like my sister and my grandmother.” And there, under the pecan tree, as she did countless times, that day my mother told me stories of the mothers and daughters that went before me.
Tina Knowles, the mother of iconic singer-songwriters Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Solange Knowles, and bonus daughter Kelly Rowland, is known the world over as a Matriarch with a capital M: a determined, self-possessed, self-aware, and wise woman who raised and inspired some of the great artists of our time. But this story is about so much more than that.
Matriarch begins with a precocious, if unruly, little girl growing up in 1950s Galveston, the youngest of seven. She is in love with her world, with extended family on every other porch and the sounds of Motown and the lapping beach always within earshot. But as the realities of race and the limitations of girlhood set in, she begins to dream of a more grandiose world. Her instincts and impulsive nature drive her far beyond the shores of Texas to discover the life awaiting her on the other side of childhood.
That life’s journey—through grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts—is the remarkable story she shares with readers here. This is a page-turning chronicle of family love and heartbreak, of loss and perseverance, and of the kind of creativity, audacity, and will it takes for a girl from Galveston to change the world. It’s one brilliant woman’s intimate and revealing story, and a multigenerational family saga that carries within it the story of America—and the wisdom that women pass on to one another, mothers to daughters, across generations.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Music, Feminism, Family, African American, New Books 2025.
Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything by Alyson Stoner
Raised on soundstages and studio lots from the age of six, shuffling between auditions for Disney Channel, Cheaper by the Dozen, or Missy Elliott music videos, Alyson Stoner experienced many of the defining moments of childhood inside the bizarre fishbowl of Hollywood. From working eighty hours a week at eight years old, to learning how to distinguish fan mail from kidnapping plots, to TV execs saying they weren’t “anorexic enough” to stop working and get help, Alyson struggled to find stability and sanity in a chaotic world.
In Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything, Alyson shares their powerful story for the first time, detailing a turbulent home life fractured by substance abuse, harrowing accounts from rehab, the messy process of discovering their sexuality in church, rebuilding a life after an early professional peak, and charting a path of self-discovery and advocacy. With striking introspection, Alyson connects the dots across the entertainment industry ecosystem, child development, and media culture, exposing the “toddler to trainwreck pipeline” of child stars and sparking timely conversations about success and society’s enchantment with fame.
Bold, entertaining, warm, and galvanizing all at once, Semi-Well-Adjusted Despite Literally Everything is more than a personal memoir: it’s a beacon for industry reform, a road map for breaking the bonds of generational trauma, and a testament to the freedom and strength that come from finally trusting your own voice and power.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, New Books 2025
107 Days by Kamala Harris
For the first time, and with surprising and revealing insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris tells the story of one of the wildest and most consequential presidential campaigns in American history.
Your Secret Service code name is Pioneer.
You are the first woman in history to be elected vice president of the United States.
On July 21, 2024, your running mate, Joe Biden, announces that he will not be seeking reelection.
The presidential election will occur on November 5, 2024.
You have 107 days.
From the chaos of campaign strategy sessions to the intensity of debate prep under relentless scrutiny and the private moments that rarely make headlines, Kamala Harris offers an unfiltered look at the pressures, triumphs, and heartbreaks of a history-defining race. With behind-the-scenes details and a voice that is both intimate and urgent, this is more than a political memoir—it’s a chronicle of resilience, leadership, and the high stakes of democracy in action.
Written with candor, a unique perspective, and the pace of a page-turning novel, 107 Days takes you inside the race for the presidency as no one has ever done before.
Tags - Memoir Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Alive Day: A Memoir by Karie Fugett
Karie Fugett is living out of her car in a Kmart parking lot when her boyfriend, Cleve, suggests, “Maybe we could get married or somethin’.” Karie says yes out of love but also out of convenience. As a twenty-year-old high school dropout who ran away from her family and recently lost her job, Karie has nowhere else to turn. Just months after they elope, Cleve’s Marine unit is deployed to Iraq. It isn’t long before Karie gets the call: Cleve’s Humvee has been hit by an IED, and he’s suffered severe injuries.
Karie rushes to Walter Reed, where she’s told it’s a miracle that her husband has survived. “Happy Alive Day, man,” a fellow vet says to Cleve, explaining that this will always be the day when he was given a second chance at life. Newlyweds barely out of their teens, Karie and Cleve are thrust into utterly foreign roles. Karie tries to adapt to her job as a caregiver, navigating the labyrinthine system of veterans affairs, hospital bureaucracies, and doctors who do little more than shrug when she raises concerns about Cleve’s dependency on painkillers. It is clear to Karie that Cleve is using opiates to dull a pain that is more than physical. She catches his first overdose, but what if she can’t save him a second time? Will she still be able to save herself?
Fugett’s story depicts an oft-overlooked reality of war: the experience of the many thousands of caregivers and spouses—mostly women, mostly young, mostly poor—whose lives have been shattered by battles fought against enemies abroad and against addiction at home. Tender, vivid, and laced with dark humor, Alive Day is at once an epic and engrossing love story, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and a powerful indictment of the sins of a nation.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, War, Mental Health, Grief, New Books 2025.
The House of My Mother by Shari Franke
From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog—now the subject of a new Hulu docuseries—and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.
Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.
As the family’s YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby’s delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.
Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: “Finally.”
For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family’s devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt’s cultish life coaching program, “ConneXions.” No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother’s cruelty.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, True Crime, Mental Health, Religion, New Books 2025.
Firstborn Girls by Bernice L. McFadden
From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters.
On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near Detroit, only to be resuscitated after her mother pulled her from the flaming wreckage. Firstborn Girls traces her remarkable life from that moment up to the publication of her first novel, Sugar.
Growing up in 1980s Brooklyn, Bernice finds solace in books, summer trips to Barbados, and boarding school to escape her alcoholic father. Discovering the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, she finally sees herself and her loved ones reflected in their stories of “messy, beautiful, joyful Black people.”
Interwoven with Bernice's personal journey is her family's history, beginning with her four-times enslaved great-grandmother Louisa Vicey Wilson in 1822 Hancock County, Georgia. Her descendants survived Reconstruction and Jim Crow, joined the Great Migration, and mourned Dr. King’s assassination during the Civil Rights Movement. These women's wisdom, secrets, and fierce love are passed down like Louisa's handmade quilt.
A memoir of many threads, Firstborn Girls is an extraordinarily moving portrait of a life shaped by family, history, and the drive to be something more.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Trauma, Mental Health, New Books 2025.
Joyride by Susan Orlean
“The story of my life is the story of my stories,” writes Susan Orlean in this extraordinary, era-defining memoir from one of the greatest practitioners of narrative nonfiction of our time. Joyride is a magic carpet ride through Orlean’s life and career, where every day is an opportunity for discovery and every moment holds the potential for wonder. Throughout her storied career, her curiosity draws her to explore the most ordinary and extraordinary of places, from going deep inside the head of a regular ten-year-old boy for a legendary profile (“The American Man Age Ten”) to reporting on a woman who owns twenty-seven tigers, from capturing the routine magic of Saturday night to climbing Mt. Fuji.
Not only does Orlean’s account of a writing life offer a trove of indispensable gleanings for writers, it’s also an essential and practical guide to embracing any creative path. She takes us through her process of dreaming up ideas, managing deadlines, connecting with sources, chasing every possible lead, confronting writer’s block and self-doubt, and crafting the perfect lede—a Susan specialty.
While Orlean has always written her way into other people’s lives in order to understand the human experience, Joyride is her most personal book ever—a searching journey through finding her feet as a journalist, recovering from the excruciating collapse of her first marriage, falling head-over-heels in love again, becoming a mother while mourning the decline of her own mother, sojourning to Hollywood for films based on her work including Adaptation and Blue Crush, and confronting mortality. Joyride is also a time machine to a bygone era of journalism, from Orlean’s bright start in the golden age of alt-weeklies to her career-making days working alongside icons such as Robert Gottlieb, Tina Brown, David Remnick, Anna Wintour, Sonny Mehta, and Jonathan Karp—forces who shaped the media industry as we know it today.
Infused with Orlean’s signature warmth and wit, Joyride is a must-read for anyone who hungers to start, build, and sustain a creative life. Orlean inspires us to seek out daily inspiration and rediscover the marvels that surround us.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks
Many cultural and religious traditions expect those who are grieving to step away from the world. In contemporary life, we are more often met with red tape and to-do lists. This is exactly what happened to Geraldine Brooks when her partner of more than three decades, Tony Horwitz – just sixty years old and, to her knowledge, vigorous and healthy – collapsed and died on a Washington, D. C. sidewalk.
After spending their early years together in conflict zones as foreign correspondents, Geraldine and Tony settled down to raise two boys on Martha’s Vineyard. The life they built was one of meaningful work, good humor, and tenderness, as they spent their days writing and their evenings cooking family dinners or watching the sun set with friends at the beach. But all of this ended abruptly when, on Memorial Day 2019, Geraldine received the phone call we all dread. The demands were immediate and many. Without space to grieve, the sudden loss became a yawning gulf.
Three years later, she booked a flight to a remote island off the coast of Australia with the intention of finally giving herself the time to mourn. In a shack on a pristine, rugged coast she often went days without seeing another person. There, she pondered the various ways in which cultures grieve and what rituals of her own might help to rebuild a life around the void of Tony’s death.
A spare and profoundly moving memoir that joins the classics of the genre, Memorial Days is a portrait of a larger-than-life man and a timeless love between souls that exquisitely captures the joy, agony, and mystery of life.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Grief, Mental Health, New Books 2025.
Sister Wife by Christine Brown Woolley
From TLC’s Sister Wives star Christine Brown Woolley, a groundbreaking and heartfelt memoir about living in a family like no other and finding the strength to leave Mormonism—and the only life she’s known—behind.
Christine Brown Woolley had always dreamed of having a picture-perfect family—beautiful children, an adoring husband, and of course, a sisterhood of wives to share him with. Raised in Utah by practicing polygamists, Christine knew her life was less than normal, but that didn’t stop her from loving the full house of her childhood any less.
Becoming Kody Brown’s third wife in 1994, Christine finally found the big, happy family she had hoped for. When TLC’s hit show Sister Wives premiered in 2010, Christine knew it was her chance to shine a light on the brighter side of polygamy—the helping hands, the lively discussions, and their unmatched devotion to each other. But the cameras also revealed a much darker truth.
Now, in this candid tell-all, Christine shares for the first time the journey that led her away from polygamy and the bold path she is carving to live apart from all she has ever known. Moving, genuine, and insightful, this is a uniquely powerful tour de force of Christine’s journey toward and beyond her time in the spotlight as a sister wife.
Tags - Memoir Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Paper Girl by Beth Macy
Urbana, Ohio, was not a utopia when Beth Macy grew up there in the ’70s and ’80s—certainly not for her family. Her dad was known as the town drunk, which hurt, as did their poverty. But Urbana had a healthy economy and thriving schools, and Macy had middle-class schoolmates whose families became her role models. Though she left for college on a Pell Grant and then a faraway career in journalism, she still clung gratefully to the place that had helped raise her.
But as Macy’s mother’s health declined in 2020, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her town had dramatically hardened. Macy had grown up as the paper girl, delivering the local newspaper, which was the community’s civic glue. Now she found scant local news and precious little civic glue. Yes, much of the work that once supported the middle class had gone away, but that didn’t begin to cover the forces turning Urbana into a poorer and angrier place. Absenteeism soared in the schools and in the workplace as a mental health crisis gripped the small city. Some of her old friends now embraced conspiracies. In nearby Springfield, Macy watched as her ex-boyfriend—once the most liberal person she knew—became a lead voice of opposition against the Haitian immigrants, parroting false talking points throughout the 2024 presidential campaign.
This was not an assignment Beth Macy had ever imagined taking on, but after her mother’s death, she decided to figure out what happened to Urbana in the forty years since she’d left. The result is an astonishing book that, by taking us into the heart of one place, brings into focus our most urgent set of national issues.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Saving Five by Amanda Nguyen
In 2013, the trajectory of Amanda Nguyen’s life was changed forever when she was raped at Harvard University.
Determined not to let her assault derail her goal of joining NASA after graduation, Nguyen opted for her rape kit to be filed under “Jane Doe.” But she was shocked to learn her choice to stay anonymous gave her only six months to press charges before the state destroyed her kit, rendering any future legal action impossible. Nguyen knew then that she had two options: surrender to a law that effectively denied her justice, or fight for a change―not only for herself but for survivors everywhere.
A heart-wrenching memoir of survival and hope, Saving Five boldly braids the story of Nguyen’s activism―which resulted in Congress’s unanimous passage of the Survivors’ Bill of Rights Act in 2016―with a second, beautifully imagined adventure, of Nguyen’s younger selves as they, at the ages of five, fifteen, twenty-two, and thirty, navigate the emotional stages of her path toward healing, not only from her rape but from the violent turmoil of her childhood. The result is a groundbreaking work that seamlessly blends memoir with a moving recounting of her journey toward acceptance and hope, forging a path ahead that is as inspiring as it is instructive.
From one of the most influential activists (and now astronauts) of our time, Saving Five is at once a tribute to resilience, a celebration of healing through action, and a resounding cry to change the world.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Feminism, Mental Health, Social Justice, New Books 2025.
Future Boy by Michael J. Fox
In early 1985, Michael J. Fox was one of the biggest stars on television. His world was about to get even bigger, but only if he could survive the kind of double duty unheard of in Hollywood. Fox’s days were already dedicated to rehearsing and taping the hit sitcom Family Ties, but then the chance of a lifetime came his way. Soon, he committed his nights to a new time-travel adventure film being directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Steven Spielberg―Back to the Future. Sitcom during the day, movie at night―day after day, for months.
Fox’s nightly commute from a soundstage at Paramount to the back lot at Universal Studios, from one dream job to another, would become his own space-time continuum. It was in this time portal that Alex P. Keaton handed the baton to Marty McFly while Michael J. Fox tried to catch a few minutes of sleep. Alex’s bravado, Marty’s flair, and Fox’s comedic virtuosity all swirled together to create something truly special.
In Future Boy, Fox tells the remarkable story of playing two landmark roles at the same time―a slice of entertainment history that’s never been told. Using new interviews with the cast and crew of both projects, the result is a vividly drawn and eye-opening story of creative achievement by a beloved icon.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Amazon, Goodreads, New Books 2025.
Source Code: My Beginnings by Bill Gates
The business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.
Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits.
It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.
Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Business, Technology, History, New Books 2025.
Boat Baby: A Memoir by Vicky Nguyen
In a memoir where heroism meets humor, NBC News anchor and correspondent Vicky Nguyen tells the story of her family’s daring escape from communist Vietnam and her unlikely journey from refugee to reporter with laughter and fierce love.
Starting in 1975, Vietnam’s “boat people”—desperate families seeking freedom—fled the Communist government and violence in their country any way they could, usually by boat across the South China Sea. Vicky Nguyen and her family were among them. Attacked at sea by pirates before reaching a refugee camp in Malaysia, Vicky’s family survived on rations and waited months until they were sponsored to go to America.
But deciding to leave and start a new life in a new country is half the story…figuring out how to be American is the other. Boat Baby is Vicky’s memoir of growing up in America with unconventional Vietnamese parents who didn’t always know how to bridge the cultural gaps. It’s a childhood filled with misadventures and misunderstandings, from almost stabbing the neighborhood racist with a butter knife to getting caught stealing Cosmo in the hope of learning Do You Really Think You Know Everything About Sex?
Vicky’s parents approached life with the attitude, “Why not us?” In the face of prejudice, they taught her to be gritty and resilient, skills Vicky used as she combatted stereotyping throughout her career, fending off the question “Aren’t you Connie Chung?” to become a leading Asian American journalist on television. She delivers a uniquely transparent account of her life, revealing how she negotiated her salary in a competitive industry, the challenges of starting a family, and the struggle to be a dutiful daughter.
Funny, nostalgic, and poignant, Boat Baby is a testament to the messy glue that bonds a family. In the tradition of We Are Dreamers by Simu Liu and Dear Girls by Ali Wong, Vicky Nguyen offers an optimistic story full of heart that illuminates the promise of what America can be.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Family, War, History, New Books 2025.
The River's Daughter by Bridget Crocker
A vivid and propulsive memoir about finding courage and meaning in a life outdoors, by a world-class whitewater rafting guide.
After Bridget Crocker’s parents’ volatile divorce, she moved with her mother from Southern California to Wyoming. Her life was idyllic, growing up in a trailer park on the banks of the Snake River with a stepfather she loved, a new baby brother, and the river as her companion—until her mother suddenly took up a radical new lifestyle, becoming someone Bridget barely recognized. The one constant in her life—the place Bridget felt whole and fully herself—was the river. When she discovered the world of whitewater rafting, she knew she’d found her calling.
On the river, Bridget learned to read the natural world around her and came to know the language of rivers. One of the few female guides on the Snake River, she then traveled to the Zambezi River in Africa, some of the most dangerous whitewater in the world, where she faced death and learned to conquer her fears—both on the water and off. The river taught her how to overcome years of betrayals and abuse, to trust herself, and, finally, how to help heal her family from generational cycles of trauma and poverty.
A beautifully rendered memoir of a woman coming into her own, The River’s Daughter opens us to the possibilities of transformation through nature.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Nature, Adventure, New Books 2025.
The Tell by Amy Griffin
For decades, Amy ran. Through the dirt roads of Amarillo, Texas, where she grew up; to the campus of the University of Virginia, as a student athlete; on the streets of New York, where she built her adult life; through marriage, motherhood, and a thriving career.
To outsiders, it all looked, in many ways, perfect. But Amy was running from something—a secret she was keeping not only from her family and friends, but unconsciously from herself. “You’re here, but you’re not here,” her daughter said to her one night. “Where are you, Mom?”
So began Amy’s quest to solve a mystery trapped in the deep recesses of her own memory—a journey that would take her into the burgeoning field of psychedelic therapy, to the limits of the judicial system, and ultimately, home to the Texas panhandle, where her story began.
In her search for the truth, to understand and begin to recover from buried childhood trauma, Griffin interrogates the pursuit of perfectionism, control, and maintaining appearances that drives so many women, asking, when, in our path from girlhood to womanhood, did we learn to look outside ourselves for validation? What kind of freedom is possible if we accept the whole story and embrace who we really are? With hope, heart, and relentless honesty, she points a way forward for all of us, revealing the power of radical truth-telling to deepen our connections—with others and ourselves.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Mental Health, New Books 2025.
Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny
Alexei Navalny began writing Patriot shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to challenging a world super-power determined to silence him, and his total conviction that change cannot be resisted—and will come.
In vivid, page-turning detail, including never-before-seen correspondence from prison, Navalny recounts, among other things, his political career, the many attempts on his life, and the lives of the people closest to him, and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime.
Written with the passion, wit, candor, and bravery for which he was justly acclaimed, Patriot is Navalny’s final letter to the world: a moving account of his last years spent in the most brutal prison on earth; a reminder of why the principles of individual freedom matter so deeply; and a rousing call to continue the work for which he sacrificed his life.
“This book is a testament not only to Alexei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship—a fight he gave everything for, including his life. Through its pages, readers will come to know the man I loved deeply—a man of profound integrity and unyielding courage. Sharing his story will not only honor his memory but also inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter." —Yulia Navalnaya
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, History, Russia, Politics, Published 2024.
On Call by Anthony Fauci
Anthony Fauci is arguably the most famous – and most revered – doctor in the world today. His role guiding America sanely and calmly through Covid (and through the torrents of Trump) earned him the trust of millions during one of the most terrifying periods in modern American history, but this was only the most recent of the global epidemics in which Dr. Fauci played a major role.
His crucial role in researching HIV and bringing AIDS into sympathetic public view and his leadership in navigating the Ebola, SARS, West Nile, and anthrax crises, make him truly an American hero.
His memoir reaches back to his boyhood in Brooklyn, New York, and carries through decades of caring for critically ill patients, navigating the whirlpools of Washington politics, and behind-the-scenes advising and negotiating with seven presidents on key issues from global AIDS relief to infectious disease preparedness at home.
ON CALL will be an inspiration for readers who admire and are grateful to him and for those who want to emulate him in public service. He is the embodiment of “speaking truth to power,” with dignity and results.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Medical, Health, Politics, Published 2024.
Vanessa Bares All by Vanessa Feltz
She vowed she'd never do it. She lied. Vanessa Feltz has done the unthinkable and written a joltingly honest autobiography.
You think you already know all there is to know about Vanessa? You don't know the half of it. Brace yourself for the achingly funny, deeply moving untold story: the behind the scenes lowdown on the parents who planned her wedding before she could walk, how she became the nation's second-most-famous fat person, life as the British Oprah, feuding with Madonna and Miss Piggy aboard the Big Breakfast bed, an excruciatingly public divorce, gruesome gastric band surgery, a sixteen-year skirmish with an ageing boy-bander and finding herself shockingly single at sixty-one.
She's spent thirty-five years in the public eye: 'Vanessa's Friends Say She's Drinking Custard!' Vanessa seizes her chance to set the record straight in this warm, witty, intensely human story. She spares no one's blushes, including her own. How could someone so clever make such cataclysmic mistakes?
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Humor, Published 2024.
Lovely One by Ketanji Brown Jackson
With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji BrownJackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family’s ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America’s highest court within the span of one generation.
Named “Ketanji Onyika,” meaning “Lovely One,” based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth. She describes her resolve as a young girl to honor this legacy and realize her dreams: from hearing stories of her grandparents and parents breaking barriers in the segregated South, to honing her voice in high school as an oratory champion and student body president, to graduating magna cum laude from Harvard, where she performed in musical theater and improv and participated in pivotal student organizations.
Here, Justice Jackson pulls back the curtain, marrying the public record of her life with what is less known. She reveals what it takes to advance in the legal profession when most people in power don’t look like you, and to reconcile a demanding career with the joys and sacrifices of marriage and motherhood.
Through trials and triumphs, Justice Jackson’s journey will resonate with dreamers everywhere, especially those who nourish outsized ambitions and refuse to be turned aside. This moving, openhearted tale will spread hope for a more just world, for generations to come.
Tags - Autobiography Books, Memoir, Nonfiction, Politics, Law, Published 2024.
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