Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2022 by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library, Minneapolis Star Tribune Part memoir, part sweeping journalistic saga: As Casey Parks follows the mystery of a stranger's past, she is forced to reckon with her own...

This "hilarious and honest" bestselling memoir from a rising comedy star tackles issues of gender, sexuality, feminism, and the Catholic childhood that prepared her for a career as an outspoken lesbian comedian (Abby Wambach). Cameron Esposito wanted to be a priest and ended up a stand-up comic...

What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, 30 authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary.

From Blackadder to Call the Midwife, from the Cadbury's Caramel Rabbit to Harry Potter, Miriam Margolyes is the outspoken great aunt (after two sherries) we all wish we had -- this is (at last) her extraordinary life story and it's well worth the wait. 'There is no one on earth quite so...

This remarkable memoir is the classic account of the transgender journey. It is all the more extraordinary because it is the life story of a figure who, it seemed, seamlessly and publicly charted a course through the English establishment - James Morris, outstanding journalist, historian and travel writer, famed for a peerless writing style. But all the while he was concealing a very different inner world: from the age of four he felt that, despite his body, he was really a girl.

Over the course of his distinguished entertainment career, Alan Bennett has received multiple awards and honours, including two BAFTAs, four Laurence Olivier Awards, two Tony Awards, an Academy Award nomination for his film The Madness of King George, and a British Book Award for Author of the Year in 2006. In this four-part collection of his remarkable Untold Stories, the acclaimed writer considers his childhood, career, and the current state of the world with his customary blend of wit and poignancy.

Greg Marshall's early years were pretty bizarre. Rewind the VHS tapes and you'll see a lopsided teenager limping across a high school stage, or in a wheelchair after leg surgeries, pondering why he's crushing on half of the Utah Jazz. Add to this home video footage a mom clacking away at her newspaper column between chemos, a dad with ALS, and a cast of foulmouthed siblings. Fast forward the tape and you'll find Marshall happily settled into his life as a gay man only to discover he's been living in another closet his whole life.

Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.

Explore the trailblazing lives of 30 trans people who radically change everything you’ve been told about transgender history Highlighting influential individuals from 1850-1950 who are all but unknown today, Eli Erlick shares 30 remarkable stories from romance to rebellion and mystery to...

In 1959, the year Terry Galloway turned nine, the voices of everyone she loved began to disappear. No one yet knew that an experimental antibiotic given to her mother had wreaked havoc on her fetal nervous system, eventually causing her to go deaf. As a self-proclaimed "child freak," she acted out her fury with her boxy hearing aids and Coke-bottle glasses by faking her own drowning at a camp for crippled children

Autism acceptance activist and TikTok influencer Paige Layle shares her deeply personal journey to diagnosis and living life autistically. “For far too long, I was told I was just like everyone else. But knew it couldn’t be true. Living just seemed so much harder for me. This wasn’t okay...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A warm, funny, irresistible memoir that follows an improbable and life-changing college friendship over the course of forty years—from the best-selling author of The End of Your Life Book Club “A rare view of male friendship.”—NPR...

This long-awaited memoir from one of Britain's best-loved celebrities - a writer, broadcaster, activist, comic on stage, screen and radio for nearly forty years, presenter of QI and Great British Bake Off star - is an autobiography with a difference: as only Sandi Toksvig can tell it. 'Between...

Narrated by the author with two afterwords: one written and read by Deirdre Finney Boylan, and one written and read by Richard Russo The provocative bestseller She’s Not There is the winning, utterly surprising story of a person changing genders. By turns hilarious and deeply moving, Jennifer...

Love. Justice. A Landmark Court Battle. The Fair Way is the gripping true story of Birgit Koebke and Kendall French—two women who refused to be sidelined by discrimination. When their country club denied Kendall the same rights given to other spouses, they didn’t walk away quietly. They fought back. What began as a simple plea for fairness became a decade-long legal struggle that would reach the California Supreme Court and change civil rights law forever. More than a memoir, The Fair Way is a story of love, resilience, and the power of standing up—no matter the odds.

Graham Norton has been entertaining audiences and having fun with some of the world's biggest stars for nearly twenty years. He is loved across the nation for his delight in the peculiar and for his ability to find humour and a common ground in all that life brings. The Life and Loves of a He...

"It is in the shelter of each other that the people live." Drawing on this Irish saying, Ó Tuama relates ideas of shelter and welcome to our journeys of life, using poetry, story, biblical reflection, and prose to open up gentle ways of living well in a troubled world.

From Melissa Febos, the national bestselling author of Girlhood, comes an examination of the solitude, freedoms, and feminist heroes she discovered during a year of celibacy and a wise and transformative look at relationships and self-knowledge. “Only Melissa Febos could convince us of the...

A 2025 AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION STONEWALL HONOR BOOK In this “searing testament to the strength in claiming one’s destiny” (The Washington Post), a young woman desperately attempts to protect her children and family while also embracing her queer identity in a controlling Hasidic...

Barry Diller, one of America’s most successful businessmen, reveals himself here—his successes, failures, and struggles—with surprising candor and intimacy in a memoir rich in Hollywood lore and filled with business acumen. Writing in his singular voice, Barry Diller delivers an astute...