Cultural & Regional

Award-winning comedian Zarna Garg turns her astonishing life story into a hilarious memoir, spilling all the chai on her wild ride from escaping an arranged marriage and homelessness in India to carving her own path in America and launching a dazzling second act in midlife.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells - taken without her knowledge - became one of the most important tools in medicine....

Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Taraji P. Henson reads her inspiring and funny book about family, friends, the hustle required to make it from DC to Hollywood....

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe....

A searing and ultimately hopeful account of Calvin Duncan and his thirty-year path through Angola after a wrongful murder conviction, his coming-of-age as a legal mind while imprisoned, and his continued advocacy for those on the inside

James Baldwin galvanized the nation in the early days of the civil-rights movement with his eloquent manifesto....

From the governor of Maryland, the true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison.

The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England, The Salt Path is ultimately a portrayal of home - how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways....

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships - and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom....

A thrilling, intellectual detective story that looks deep into the past to uncover who first settled the islands of the remote Pacific, where they came from, how they got there, and how we know....

A remarkable new talent in narrative nonfiction delivers the epic true story of a group of courageous grandmothers who fought to find their grandchildren who were stolen.

The Color of Water touches listeners of all colors as a vivid portrait of growing up, a haunting meditation on race and identity, and a lyrical valentine to a mother from her son....

Helene Hadsell was "the woman who won every contest prize she desired". In Contesting: The Name It & Claim It Game, she shares her winning secrets in the vibrant, warm, and folksy manner that was uniquely her....

Before she turned 20, Cupcake Brown survived the death of a parent, childhood abuse, rape, drug addiction, and much more....

Raised in the ghetto, abandoned as a child, addicted to drugs and women all his life but still able to produce four consecutive number one hip-hop albums in a row...this is the life and times of the darkest and most dangerously introspective hip-hop artist ever....

An exuberant, hilarious, and profound memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that working for the post office saved his life, taught him who he was, gave him purpose, and educated him deeply about a country he loves but had lost touch with.

With echoes of Educated and The Glass Castle, How to Say Babylon is a “lushly observed and keenly reflective chronicle” (The Washington Post), brilliantly recounting the author’s struggle to break free of her rigid religious upbringing and navigate the world on her own terms.

The definitive, dramatic biography of the most important African American of the 19th century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era....

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? is the story of what happens after the unthinkable, and the journey we all must make in finding the courage to stop the cycles of the past from laying claim to our future....

Rain of Gold is a true-life saga of love, family and destiny that pulses with bold vitality, sweeping from the war-ravaged Mexican mountains of Pancho Villa's revolution to the days of Prohibition in California....

From New York Times best-selling author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor comes this riveting chronicle of a critical yet overlooked chapter in American history: the inspiring rise and calculated fall of the Black elite, from Emancipation through Reconstruction to the Jim Crow Era....

Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles Davis was one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. Here, Miles speaks out about his extraordinary life....

Tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America's Black Panther Party.

Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work....

The Secret Daughter is the tale of Nikki Carlson, an adoptee whose search for her roots sets her on an unbelievable thrill ride and emotional odyssey that forever changes her. Adopted as a toddler into a big game-hunting Minnesota family and raised on the flat prairies of the Midwest, Nikki’s life is wholly unremarkable. Haunted by the mysteries of her origins, once Nikki comes of age, she begins to search for her biological roots. What she uncovers is more surreal and twisted than anything she could have imagined.

Who Will Tell My Story? presents an ordinary existence interrupted by unfathomably seismic and unjust events. On the ground during the first months of the assault on Gaza following the events of 7 October, the author of this diary - first published in The Guardian - maps out the physical and psychological terrain of a life under siege.

Steve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown. Suddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood is the rarest of nonfiction that reads like a novel and puts your heart in your throat. It is the product of years of extensive archival research and meticulous, original reporting. It marks the arrival of a blazing new talent in narrative journalism. In this audiobook, a regime tries to terrorize a country, but love prevails. The grandmothers’ stunning stories reveal new truths about memory, identity, and family.

Calvin Duncan was nineteen when he was incarcerated for a 1981 New Orleans murder he didn’t commit. The victim of a wildly incompetent public defense system and a badly compromised witness, Duncan was left to rot in the waking nightmare of confinement. Armed with little education, he took matters into his own hands. At twenty-one, he filed his first motion from prison: “Motion for a Law Book,” which launched his highly successful, self-taught, legal career. Trapped within this wholly corrupted system, Calvin became a legal advocate for himself and his fellow prisoners as an Inmate Counsel.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is at a crossroads. Traditional African/Black American cultures present the crossroads as a place of simultaneous difficulty and possibility. In contemporary times, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the phrase “intersectionality” to explain the unique position of Black women in America. In many ways, they are at a third crossroads: attempting to fit into notions of femininity and respectability primarily assigned to White women, while inventing improvisational strategies to combat oppression.

Susan Smith Nash's Shells and Shadows is a luminous collection of interconnected vignettes that trace the intellectual and emotional development of Genevieve "Genni" Dyer from childhood through adulthood. Set primarily in Norman, Oklahoma, with significant interludes in Nevada, Vermont, and Azerbaijan, the narrative explores how place, memory, and philosophical inquiry shape identity formation. The manuscript opens with eight-year-old Genni as a Bluebird in 1966 Norman, participating in Camp Fire activities that serve as early lessons in community and belonging. Nash skillfully weaves ...

Book Summary – The Ghost Remembers The Ghost Remembers is a deeply personal, spiritual memoir written from beyond the veil, narrated by a reflective ghost named Gordon who sits on a porch through Arizona’s monsoon season. In this hauntingly honest book, Gordon relives and reexamines the chapters of a life shaped by war, work, love, absence, and silent regret. Each chapter peels back the layers of memory, revealing the bittersweet truth of fatherhood, broken relationships, missed chances, and the quiet endurance of a man who bore more than he ever said aloud. Through poetic reflections, ...

Just after turning forty, Steve Grove left Silicon Valley as a Google executive to move to his home state of Minnesota with his wife and fellow tech exec, Mary Grove, and their one-year-old twins. Gone from the Midwest for two decades, Grove returned home with fresh eyes. Yearning to put down new roots, he traded his career at Google for a position in state government with Governor Tim Walz. Far from working at a fast-paced tech company, Grove’s shift to leading a large government bureaucracy brought a sequence of struggles and triumphs vividly portrayed with both humor and affection.

A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua—by the author of Annie John.

In Walking the Tideline, Caroline Kurtz solo hikes the rugged, beautiful Oregon Coast—an expedition of isolation, adventure, joy, and grief inside the emotional wilderness of finding one's identity after the death of a loved one.

Bonn 1920: Der gelernte Bonbonkocher Hans Riegel liebt die bunte Welt der Süßwaren und träumt davon, eines Tages sein eigenes Unternehmen zu führen. Die junge Gertrud Vianden glaubt an seinen Traum und unterstützt ihn von Anfang an. Nach der Hochzeit beginnen Hans und Gertrud, in der heimischen Küche zu experimentieren und erste Süßigkeiten herzustellen, die Gertrud mit dem Fahrrad ausliefert. Das Geschäft ist hart, die Konkurrenz groß, und das junge Paar wird von vielen belächelt. Wie wollen Hans und Gertrud mit ein paar Bonbons eine Familie ernähren?

Having spent ten summers on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation near Glacier National Park, part of her doctoral fieldwork for a PhD in Native American Art History, forty-two-year-old Lynne Spriggs thinks of Montana as her healing place. When she moves to “Big Sky Country” from the East Coast in a quest to reset her life, she has high hopes for what awaits her. Great Falls, a farming and military town in central Montana, is not what Lynne imagined when she decided to leave city life behind.

Salmon Swimming Upstream and Homebound by Stephen E. Johnson is a heartfelt nostalgic memoir that captures the essence of growing up in rural America during 1966. Through vivid storytelling, Johnson reflects on his childhood adventures, family traditions, and the rhythms of farm life in the Pacific Northwest. The book is divided into seasons, mirroring the passage of time and the cycles of farm life, with each chapter offering a glimpse into the joys, challenges, and transformative moments of youth.

On 1st February 1963, Eileen and her family migrated from England to Australia. Leaving behind a close knit family and many treasured memories. They sailed on a ship to a land of blue skies, sunshine and vast horizons. In `Day Dream Believers’ we follow Eileen and her families journey from the migrant town of Elizabeth West to the top end of Australia. Eileen comes from an Irish, Catholic background. Their family life in Elizabeth West in Adelaide is described in loving detail.