Lifestyle
10 biographies and memoirs for the nonfiction reader in your life
There’s one in every family — that uncle or sister-in-law who only reads nonfiction. As you seek out the perfect read for your loved ones this year, we can help you find beautifully told true stories. There are more than 50 biographies and memoirs featured in Books We Love, NPR’s annual year-end reading guide. Check them all out here, or browse a sampling, below.
Consent: A Memoir by Jill Ciment
After the death of her husband of nearly 50 years, Jill Ciment reconsiders their relationship, which began when she was 17 and he was her much older, married drawing instructor. She first wrote about their early years together in Half a Life, when she was in her 40s and he was in his 70s. In Consent, she scrutinizes and amplifies that account in light of the #MeToo movement and changing social attitudes. Did she have the agency to consent? Was he a letch? Was she a vixen? How could she have known as a teenager that he was the love of her life? — Heller McAlpin, book critic
A Fatal Inheritance: How a Family Misfortune Revealed a Deadly Medical Mystery by Lawrence Ingrassia
In 1968, when journalist Lawrence Ingrassia was 15, his mother died of breast cancer at age 42. “It was tragic, but what was there to say?” he writes. Ingrassia couldn’t know then that in the decades to come, his three siblings would each die from a different kind of cancer and that a nephew would too. In A Fatal Inheritance, Ingrassia movingly intertwines his family’s oncological experiences with the winding story of how researchers worked to uncover the roles that heritable genetic mutations play in cancer risk. — Kristin Martin, book critic
Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me by Glory Edim
Tenderly written, Glory Edim’s Gather Me is a beautiful memoir that serves as a powerful testament to resilience. It pays tribute to the art of community building from someone whose career and identity are deeply rooted in literature. Edim, founder of Well-Read Black Girl, thoughtfully navigates her emotionally complex life, highlighting the books and authors that have shaped her journey. The chapter about Nikki Giovanni’s work – Edim’s spiritual exploration through it and the solace it brought her – is particularly poignant. Overall, it is an emotional narrative about family bonds and a meaningful gift to her community. — Keishel Williams, book critic
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder by Salman Rushdie
For much of his adult life, Salman Rushdie has lived beneath a shadow – he’s as famous for his novels as he is for being the target of a fatwa. But in 2022, that threat went from theoretical to very real when Rushdie was stabbed repeatedly at a literary conference. That attack resulted in multiple long-term health issues, including blindness in his right eye. You might expect Rushdie’s memoir detailing the attack and its aftermath to be somewhat grim. And it is. But it’s also in turn warm, vulnerable, acerbic and, surprisingly, very funny. — Leah Donnella, senior editor, Code Switch
Life After Power: Seven Presidents and Their Search for Purpose Beyond the White House by Jared Cohen
The American presidency is viewed as the most powerful position in the world. What happens when the job ends? History is often surprising. Not everyone found the role to be the most fulfilling one they ever had. Jared Cohen looks at some fascinating case studies that back that up. John Quincy Adams and William Howard Taft found greater joy in other branches of government: Congress and the Supreme Court. George Bush enjoys his private life and art studio. Life after power can be much more rewarding. — Edith Chapin, senior vice president and editor in chief
Little, Brown and Company
The Mango Tree: A Memoir of Fruit, Florida, and Felony by Annabelle Tometich
This family memoir begins with a courtroom scene like no other. After a night in jail, Annabelle Tometich’s mom is charged with firing at a man who, she says, was stealing mangoes from the tree in her front yard. Tometich then hits rewind, taking readers back through her Fort Myers, Fla., childhood – with her Filipino American mom and white dad, a couple whose personality differences do not make them stronger together. The writing is both jewel-like and effortless, and Tometich’s memories – some mundane, some extraordinary – are mesmerizing. — Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition
Little, Brown and Company
My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-Wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me by Caleb Carr
This unusual and beautiful “meow-moir” by The Alienist author and military historian Caleb Carr – the last book he wrote before dying of cancer at age 68 this year – explores the author’s lifelong affinity for cats and his particular relationship with one enormous, fluffy Siberian named Masha. Masha and the writer enjoyed 17 years of adventures together, mostly in and around their rugged rural home in upstate New York. The book chronicles their mutual zest for life and their struggles through illness and financial woes. Even though this is a book for cat lovers, it’s really for everyone: It explores, with somber pathos and wry humor, how we form attachments in life and how they keep us going through it all. — Chloe Veltman, correspondent, Culture Desk
Past Tense: Facing Family Secrets and Finding Myself in Therapy by Sacha Mardou
British cartoonist Sacha Mardou began posting her highly readable comics – about her experiences going to therapy when her daughter was young – on social media. Past Tense chronicles this story – the many steps that led Mardou to an earnest bridging of the past, her family’s history, into the present. Somewhere between Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half and Stephanie Foo’s What My Bones Know, Mardou’s brightly tinted, clear-eyed comics reveal how active self-reflection – combined with art, storytelling and professional supports – can powerfully reshape a person’s sense of self and community. — Tahneer Oksman, writer, professor and cultural critic
Patriot: A Memoir by Alexei Navalny
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic Russian penal colony in February. But even in death, he continues his fight against President Vladimir Putin. This posthumous memoir has two sections: The first half is a traditional narrative, beginning with a true crime story when Navalny is poisoned with a nerve agent on a flight from Siberia in 2020. Halfway through, the book pivots to become his prison diary. Through even the darkest episodes, Navalny’s sunniness and humor shine through – whether he’s describing an episode of Rick and Morty that he left unfinished when he collapsed on that flight, or taking joy in the indulgence of bread and butter that he only ate on Sunday mornings behind bars. — Ari Shapiro, host, All Things Considered
In straightforward and affecting prose, Deborah Jackson Taffa writes about being brought up by a Quechan (Yuma) and Laguna Pueblo father and a Catholic Latina mother, both on and off the Yuma reservation. Although her parents were united in their approach to maintaining a family, their attitudes toward the world diverged in other ways, and Taffa received mixed messages about her Indigeneity, her proximity to whiteness and how she was meant to carry herself. As a teenager, she began to experience anger at the injustices her people were subjected to and, at the same time, began to learn that all change is sacred. — Ilana Masadbook, critic and author of All My Mother’s Lovers
This is just a fraction of the 350+ titles we included in Books We Love this year. Click here to check out this year’s titles, or browse nearly 4,000 books from the last 12 years.
The Ides of January are already upon us. Which means that by now, most of the sweetly misguided pollyannas who made New Year’s resolutions have already given up on that nonsense. Don’t beat yourself up about it! Travel and exercise would only have hogged your precious reading time anyway.
And boy, is there a lot of good stuff to read already. This week alone, a reader with an active imagination may pay visits to Norway and Chile, China and Pakistan. Later this month brings new releases from big names on either side of the Atlantic Ocean.
(By the way, this year the Book Ahead is transitioning from weekly posts to monthly, for a broader lens on the publishing calendar.)
The School of Night, by Karl Ove Knausgaard, translated by Martin Aitken (Jan. 13)
Knausgaard is an alchemist. The prolific Norwegian consistently crafts page-turners out of the daily drudgery you’d usually find sedative rather than thrilling. The same inexplicable magic permeates his latest series, which began with The Morning Star and here gets its fourth installment. Only, unlike projects such as his autofictional My Struggle, Knausgaard here weaves his interlinked plots with actual magic – or supernatural horror, at least, as a vaguely apocalyptic event loosens the tenacious grip of his characters’ daily cares. The School of Night features Kristian Hadeland, an eerie figure in previous books, whose faustian bargain promises to illuminate this mystery’s darkest corners.
This Is Where the Serpent Lives, by Daniyal Mueenuddin (Jan. 13)
The setting in Mueenuddin’s debut novel — a modern Pakistan rife with corruption, feudalism and resilience — thrums with such vitality, it can feel like a character in its own right. But the home of this sweeping saga of class, violence and romance can also be seen as a “distorting mirror,” says Mueenuddin, whose short stories have earned him nods for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award. “Without a doubt,” he told NPR’s Weekend Edition, “I’ll have failed miserably if readers don’t see in this a great deal of themselves and of their communities.”
Pedro the Vast, by Simón López Trujillo, translated by Robin Myers (Jan. 13)
It won’t take long to finish this hallucinatory vision of ecological disaster. Getting over Trujillo’s disquieting novella, however, is another matter. The eponymous Pedro is a eucalyptus farmer who has worked the dangerous, degrading job all his life, so it’s to be expected when he’s among the workers who pick up a bad cough from a deadly fungus lurking in the grove. Less expected is the fact that, unlike his colleagues, Pedro does not die but wakes up changed, in ways both startling and difficult to comprehend. This is the Chilean author’s first book to be translated into English.
Fly, Wild Swans: My Mother, Myself and China, by Jung Chang (Jan. 13)
Chang began this story more than 34 years ago, with Wild Swans, a memoir that viewed 20th century Chinese history through the prism of three generations of women — and remains banned in China still. Now, Jung picks up the story where she left off, in the late 1970s when Chang’s departure set her family’s story on heartbreakingly separate paths — her own, unfolding in the West, and that of the family she left behind in China. Jung applies a characteristically wide lens, with half an eye on how the past half-century of geopolitical tumult has upturned her own intimate relationships.
Crux, by Gabriel Tallent (Jan. 20)
It’s been the better part of a decade since Tallent published his debut novel, My Absolute Darling, a portrait of a barbed father-daughter relationship that NPR’s reviewer described as “devastating and powerful.“ In his follow-up, Tallent returns to that adolescent minefield we euphemistically call “coming of age,” this time focusing on a complicated bond between a pair of friends living in the rugged Mojave Desert. It’s an unlikely friendship, as sustaining as it is strained by their unforgiving circumstances, as the pair teeter precariously on the cusp of adulthood.
Departure(s), by Julian Barnes (Jan. 20)
The winner of the 2011 Booker Prize (and finalist for several more) returns with a slim book that’s a bit tough to label. You’ll find it on the fiction shelf, sure, but also, it’s narrated by an aging British writer named Julian who is coping with a blood cancer diagnosis. The lines aren’t easy to find or pin down in this hybrid reflection on love, memory and mortality, which is as playful in its form as its themes are weighty.
Half His Age, by Jennette McCurdy (Jan. 20)
“If I could have shown myself where I am now, I would not have believed it when I was little,” McCurdy told WBUR in 2023. The former child star certainly has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years — from noted Nickelodeon alum to a writer whose best-selling memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, made a pretty compelling case why kid actors “should not be allowed to go anywhere near Hollywood.” Now she’s stepping into fiction, with a debut novel that features a provocative, at times puzzling, courtship and the same black humor that shot through her previous work.
Vigil, by George Saunders (Jan. 27)
One of America’s most inventive stylists returns with his first novel since the Booker Prize-winning Lincoln in the Bardo. It’s hard not to hear some echoes of A Christmas Carol in this one, which also finds a mean old magnate in need of some supernatural bedside attitude therapy. But don’t expect a smooth show from narrator Jill “Doll” Blaine, the comforting spirit assigned to dying oil baron K.J. Boone. For one thing, the unrepentant fossil fuel monger can expect more than just three visitors in this darkly funny portrait of a life ill-lived.
‘Members Only: Palm Beach’
Hilary Musser’s $42M Waterfront Flex Hits the Market!!!
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Updated
Hilary Musser built a waterfront dream mansion … and now she’s ready to flip it for millions … TMZ has learned.
The “Members Only: Palm Beach” star has officially listed a jaw dropping waterfront mansion she custom built herself in West Palm Beach and the asking price is a cool $42 MILLION.
The estate has been featured on the Netflix series, where viewers have watched Hilary renovate and develop the mansion over an extended period of time and now, the project is finally complete and officially ready for its next high-profile homeowner.
The ultra-luxury estate quietly hit the market at the end of December, and it’s already turning heads for all the right (and outrageous) reasons.
The brand new, fully furnished home packs 7 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, and spans more than 11,200 square feet of interior space, with roughly 13,370 square feet of total luxury living. Every room opens up to sweeping Intracoastal Waterway views, staring straight at Palm Beach Island’s mega mansions.
The place features a second story pool and spa with 180 degree water views, an outdoor cocktail bar, and multiple outdoor kitchens built for nonstop entertaining. Inside, there’s a private movie theater, wine room, full spa, and not one but TWO full kitchens decked out.
Boat people, listen up … the property comes with a 100 foot deep water dock capable of handling large yachts, making it a true waterfront flex.
Location wise, it’s prime real estate … just minutes from Palm Beach Island and Palm Beach International Airport, perfect for anyone bouncing between private jets and boats.
Bottom line here … Hilary didn’t just build a house … she built a statement, and now someone with $42 million can call it home.
Jodie Foster, shown here in 2025, plays an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris in Vie Privée (A Private Life).
Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
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Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images
Jodie Foster has been acting since she was 3, starting out in commercials, then appearing in TV shows and films. She still has scars from the time a lion mauled her on the set of a Disney film when she was 9.
“He picked me up by the hip and shook me,” she says. “I had no idea what was happening. … I remember thinking, ‘Oh this must be an earthquake.’”
Luckily, the lion responded promptly when a trainer said, “Drop it.” It was a scary moment, Foster says, but “the good news is I’m fine … and I’m not afraid of lions.”
“I think there’s a part of me that has been made resilient by what I’ve done for a living and has been able to control my emotions in order to do that in a role,” she says. “When you’re older, those survival skills get in the way, and you have to learn how to ditch them [when] they’re not serving you anymore.”
In 1976, at age 12, Foster starred opposite Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel in Martin Scorsese’s film Taxi Driver. Foster’s portrayal of a teenage sex worker in the film sparked controversy because of her age, but also led to her first Academy Award nomination. She remains grateful for the experience on the film, which turns 50 this year.
“What luck to have been part of that, our golden age of cinema in the ’70s, some of the greatest movies that America ever made, the greatest filmmakers, auteur films,” she says. “I couldn’t be happier that [my mom] chose these roles for me.”
In the new film Vie Privée (A Private Life), she plays an American Freudian psychoanalyst in Paris. With the exception of a few lines, she speaks French throughout the film.
Interview highlights
On learning to speak French as a child
My mom, when I was about 9 years old, she had never traveled anywhere in her life and right before then, she took a trip to France and fell in love with it and said, “OK, you’re going to learn French. You are going to go to an immersion school, and someday maybe you’ll be a French actor.” And so they dropped me in where [there] was a school, Le Lycée Francais de Los Angeles, that does everything in French, so it was science and math and history, everything in French. And I cried for about six months and then I spoke fluently and got over it.
On being the family breadwinner at a young age
My mom was very aware that that was unusual, and that would put pressure on me. So she kind of sold it differently. She would say, “Well, you do one job, but then your sister does another job. And we all participate, we’re all doing a job, and this is all part of the family.” And I think that was her way of … making my brothers and sisters not feel like somehow they were beholden to me or to my brother who also was an actor. And not having pressure on me, but also helping her ego a bit, because I think that was hard for her to feel that she was being taken care of by a child. …
There’s two things that can happen as a child actor: One is you develop resilience, and you come up with a plan and a way to survive intact, and there are real advantages to that in life. And I really feel grateful for the advantages that that’s given me, the benefits that that has given me. Or the other is you totally fall apart and you can’t take it.
On her early immersion into art and film
My mom saw that I was interested in art and cinema and took me to every foreign film she could find, mostly because she wanted me to hear other languages. But we went to very dark, interesting German films that lasted eight hours long. And we saw all the French New Wave movies, and we had long conversations about movies and what they meant. I think that she respected me.
I did have a skill that was beyond my years and I had a strong sense of self … [and the] ability to understand emotions and character that was beyond my years. [Acting] gave me an outlet that I would not have had if I’d gone on a path to be what I was meant to be, which is really just to be an intellectual. … It was a sink or swim. I had to develop an emotional side. I had to cut off my brain sometimes to play characters in order to be good, and I wanted to be good. If I was gonna do something, I wanted it to be excellent. So in order to do that, I had to learn emotions and I had to learn, not only how to access them, but also how to control them so that I could give them intention.
Jodie Foster attends the Cannes Film Festival in 1976 to promote Taxi Driver.
Raph Gatti/AFP for Getty Images
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Raph Gatti/AFP for Getty Images
On sexual abuse in Hollywood
I’ve really had to examine that, like, how did I get saved? There were microaggressions, of course. Anybody who’s in the workplace has had misogynist microaggressions. That’s just a part of being a woman, right? But what kept me from having those bad experiences, those terrible experiences? And what I came to believe … is that I had a certain amount of power by the time I was, like, 12. So by the time I had my first Oscar nomination, I was part of a different category of people that had power and I was too dangerous to touch. I could’ve ruined people’s careers or I could’ve called “Uncle,” so I wasn’t on the block.
It also might be just my personality, that I am a head-first person and I approach the world in a head-first way. … It’s very difficult to emotionally manipulate me because I don’t operate with my emotions on the surface. Predators use whatever they can in order to manipulate and get people to do what they want them to do. And that’s much easier when the person is younger, when the person is weaker, when a person has no power. That’s precisely what predatory behavior is about: using power in order to diminish people, in order to dominate them.
On her decision to safeguard her personal life
I did not want to participate in celebrity culture. I wanted to make movies that I loved. I wanted to give everything of myself on-screen, and I wanted to survive intact by having a life and not handing that life over to the media and to people that wished me ill. …
What’s important to consider is that I grew up in a different time, where people couldn’t be who they were and we didn’t have the kinds of freedoms that we have now. And I look at my sons’ generation, and bless them, that they have a kind of justice that we just didn’t [have] access to. And I did the best I could and I had a big plan in mind of making films that could make people better. And that’s all I wanted to do was make movies. I didn’t want to be a public figure or a pioneer or any of those things. And I benefited from all of the pioneers that came before me that did that hard work of having tomatoes thrown at them and being unsafe. And they did that work and I have thanked them. I thank them.
We don’t all have to have the same role. And I think my role was making movies that mattered and creating female characters that were human characters and creating a huge body of work and then being able to look back at the pattern of that body of work and go like, “Oh wow, Jodie played a doctor. She played a mother. She played as a scientist. She played an astronaut. She killed all the bad guys. She did all of those things — and had a lesbian wife and had two kids and was a complete person that had a whole other life.” And I think that will be valuable someday down the line, that I was able to keep my life intact and leave a legacy. There’s lots of ways of being valuable.
Lauren Krenzel and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
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