Memoirs

It was a great love story, one for the ages. The speed of our beginning and the speed of our ending felt like matching bookends. They both came out of nowhere. He wanted it, he wanted me. And then he didn’t. In March 2020,...

It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert...

The wildly funny, occasionally heartbreaking internationally bestselling memoir about growing up, growing older, and learning to navigate friendships, jobs, loss, and love along the ride When it comes to the trials and triumphs of becoming an adult, journalist and former Sunday Times columnist Dolly...

A luminous meditation on grief, memory, and the fragile threads of life. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion chronicles the year that followed the sudden death of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, and the near loss of their only daughter, Quintana....

An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson. Maybe it was a grandparent, a teacher, or a colleague—someone older, patient, and wise who saw you for who you were when you were young and searching. Someone who helped you view the world...

In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain.For the last...

In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene,...

Baek Sehee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her-what to call it?-depression? She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgmental of others. She hides her feelings well at work,...

A reflective and poetic essay in which Patti Smith blends memory, spirituality, and the creative process into a meditation on artistic devotion. Drawing on her deep admiration for writers such as Arthur Rimbaud, she explores the power of literature and its ability to transform...

The book continues Baek Sehee’s candid journey through the quiet, persistent weight of dysthymia—chronic, low-level depression. A sequel to the bestselling I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki, this follow-up delves deeper into Baek’s emotional landscape as she navigates life, therapy,...

A timeless reflection on nature, solitude, and self-reliance—now beautifully restored in its original illustrated form. First published in 1854, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden remains a profound meditation on simple living, spiritual discovery, and the rhythms of the natural world. In this special edition—originally released...

Tara Westover grew up in the remote mountains of Idaho, the daughter of survivalists who shunned mainstream society. She was 17 the first time she entered a classroom. With no formal education and no one to protect her from a violent older brother, her...

In 2010, more than 750,000 people queued at Marina Abramović’s landmark MoMA retrospective, waiting for the chance to sit silently across from her in The Artist Is Present—an unprecedented durational performance that unfolded over 700 hours. This historic event, celebrating nearly five decades of...

A Flat Place by Noreen Masud is a beautifully written blend of memoir, nature writing, and literary reflection that explores the emotional and psychological significance of flat landscapes. Often dismissed as dull or featureless, these terrains become sites of deep meaning as Masud, shaped...

A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit is a beautifully written exploration of how uncertainty and disorientation can lead to growth and discovery. Combining memoir, philosophy, and cultural history, Solnit reflects on moments of loss and transformation in her own life while...

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad tweeted: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will...

In M Train, Patti Smith invites readers into her daily ritual at a quiet Greenwich Village café, where black coffee fuels reflections that drift between memory, dream, and reality. From this intimate starting point, her journey unfolds across a vivid landscape—visiting Casa Azul, the...

The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy. A quarter century after the plane crash that killed John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and her sister Lauren, the tragedy still resonates. Yet Carolyn herself remains an enigma—her brief life in the spotlight often overshadowed...

A collection of notes, lists, and stories written over several years, originally meant as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that life isn’t always as dark as it seems. Drawing on history, science, global perspectives, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance,...

The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism. Unable to speak aloud, Naoki used an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct his thoughts, letter by letter. The result is a book that answers the questions so many have wanted to ask but never knew...

My Life with Asperger's. From an early age, John Robison struggled to connect with the world around him. As a teenager, his unusual behaviors earned him a reputation as a social misfit. It wasn’t until he was forty that Robison received a life-changing diagnosis:...

My Father Bleeds History. A landmark work of graphic literature, Maus transforms the history of the Holocaust into something intimate, immediate, and profoundly human. Using striking allegory—Jews portrayed as mice, Nazis as cats, Art Spiegelman chronicles his father’s survival through the unimaginable brutality of...

For several months, Joan Didion recorded conversations with her psychiatrist in meticulous detail. The initial sessions focused on alcoholism, adoption, depression, anxiety, guilt, and the heartbreaking complexities of her relationship with her daughter, Quintana. The subjects evolved to include her work, which she was...

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunström, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual...

An essential new translation of Franz Kafka’s complete, uncensored diaries—a revelation of the idiosyncrasies and rough edges of one of the twentieth century’s most important, influential, and visionary writers Dating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafka’s Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including...

With her elegant, intellectual, French-speaking grandmother; her radical-chic father; and her staunchly anti-socialist, Thatcherite mother to guide her through these disorienting times, Lea had a political education of the most colorful sort—here recounted with outstanding literary talent. Now one of the world’s most dynamic...

Fatima Ali won the hearts of viewers as the season fifteen "Fan Favorite" of Bravo's Top Chef. After the taping wrapped and before the shows aired, Fati was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer, which eventually became terminal. Not one to ever...

Simone de Beauvoir delivers a stark and unflinching account of her mother’s final days. Written with clarity, tenderness, and unsparing honesty, this memoir traces the physical and emotional unraveling of a once-vibrant woman, as witnessed by a daughter grappling with love, guilt, and helplessness....

When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between the works...

In The Hidden Ways, Alistair Moffat traverses the lost paths of Scotland - its Roman roads tramped by armies, its byways and pilgrim routes, drove roads and railways, turnpikes and sea roads - in a bid to understand how our history has left its...

A landmark memoir of mental illness, identity, and recovery, now published in a special 30th anniversary edition with a new introduction by the author. In Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen recounts her experiences as a young woman in the psychiatric ward of McLean Hospital, a...

I'm Glad My Mom Died is Jennette McCurdy's bestselling memoir, offering a candid, heartbreaking, and darkly humorous account of her life as a child actor and the complex relationship she shared with her mother. Pushed into the entertainment industry at a young age, McCurdy...

In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with...

The Art of Personal Narrative. All narrative writing transforms the raw material of life into a story that shapes experience and reveals meaning. In fiction, narrators may be unreliable—but in nonfiction, readers must believe the narrator is telling the truth. "The Situation and the...

This elegant clothbound edition features Kazuo Ishiguro’s Nobel Lecture in Literature, delivered at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm on December 7, 2017. Awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Literature for the emotional depth and precision of his fiction, Ishiguro reflects in this lecture on...

From one of America’s most powerful writers comes a work of profound honesty about grief, memory, and the passage of time. In Blue Nights, Joan Didion reflects on the death of her daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, exploring the fears, doubts, and questions that accompany...

In less than a decade, Jean-Michel Basquiat rose from tagging walls in New York City to commanding the spotlight of the global art world. Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art traces his electrifying journey through the turbulent, glamorized 1980s—a time of artistic revolution, celebrity...

In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto...

The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present—even projections into the future—photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from 6...

In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The...

Speak, Memory was first published by Vladimir Nabokov in 1951 as Conclusive Evidence and then assiduously revised and republished in 1966. Nabokov's memoir is a moving account of a loving, civilized family, of adolescent awakenings, flight from Bolshevik terror, education in England, and émigré...

Mary Karr synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in...

An extraordinary journey into the inner world of artist and musician Nick Cave. Formed from over forty hours of candid conversations with journalist Sean O’Hagan, this book is less a traditional biography and more a profound meditation on a life lived through creativity, loss...

John Lister-Kaye has spent a lifetime exploring, protecting and celebrating the British landscape and its wildlife. Lister-Kaye’s joyous childhood holidays - spent scrambling through hedges and ditches after birds and small beasts, keeping pigeons in the loft and tracking foxes around the edge of...

There are still wild places out there on our crowded planet.Through a series of personal journeys, Dan Richards explores the appeal of far-flung outposts in mountains, tundra, forests, oceans, and deserts. Following a route from the Cairngorms of Scotland to the fire-watch lookouts of...

Shame Has to Change Sides. In 2024, Gisèle Pelicot became a global symbol of courage after choosing to forgo anonymity in her legal battle against her husband and dozens of co-accused men. Her decision placed her at the center of one of the most...

Encounters with Art and Our Selves. Drawing on criticism, memoir, and cultural reflection, How It Feels to Be Alive explores the profound role art plays in shaping how we see ourselves and the world around us. Inspired by Barbara Kruger’s idea of art as...

Of Grandeur, of Romance, of Progress. In this sharp, darkly funny essay collection, Cazzie David takes on the existential chaos of leaving her twenties behind. As thirty looms, she reflects on the delusions that defined her youth—relationships, social media, body image—and the reality check...

In A Girl’s Story, Annie Ernaux returns to a defining moment in her past. Fifty years earlier, during the summer of 1958, the eighteen-year-old Ernaux found herself overwhelmed by another person’s will and desire. She surrendered to a man who soon abandoned her, leaving...

In 1963, twenty-three-year-old Annie Ernaux discovers she is pregnant. Unmarried and alone, she is overwhelmed by shame and fear. In a society where such a pregnancy would mark both her and her family with social disgrace, she knows she cannot keep the child. Written...