Biography & Memoir Audiobooks

Kenny G—the incomparable musician with the straight sax, the flowing hair, and some of the most memorable melodies in history—reveals the man behind the music in this indelible, fascinating, and funny memoir. Brand new to this edition—narrated in full by the author himself—are thirty original saxophone pieces, composed by Kenny G exclusively for this audiobook. In honest and heartfelt words, Kenny G shares how skinny Kenneth Gorelick, the kid who got hassled for his lunch money in a Seattle high school, became one of the most celebrated and revered virtuosos in the music industry. He uncovers how he’s managed to rise above the fray, tune out the critics, and live a life filled with happiness and humor. Few people know of Kenny G’s musical roots as the sole white guy in one of the coolest funk bands of the seventies, or as the teenage backup musician for everyone from Barry White to Liberace. As an artist he’s dedicated to turning the next generation on to jazz heroes like Grover Washington, John Coltrane, and Stan Getz. A man who takes his music seriously but himself not so seriously, Kenny G lets listeners behind the scenes to see how he creates his unique sound and unforgettable songs. Along the way, he offers life lessons in discipline, determination, and dedication. Life in the Key of G leads listeners on a tour of one of the great musical careers of the twentieth century, from the time he pulled a fast one on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show—a bold gamble that launched his stardom—to famed duets with legends like Whitney Houston, Frank Sinatra, and more. As Kenny G likes to say, “Try it. You’ll have the best sax you ever had.”

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Come for the Gilmore Girls anecdotes, stay for the revealing truths about what it takes to build a lifelong career in and out of Hollywood” (The A.V. Club) in this candid and captivating memoir from award-winning and beloved actress Kelly Bishop, spanning her six decades in show business from A Chorus Line, Dirty Dancing, Gilmore Girls, and much more. Kelly Bishop’s long, storied career has been defined by landmark achievements, from winning a Tony Award for her turn in the original Broadway cast of A Chorus Line to her memorable performance as Jennifer Grey’s mother in Dirty Dancing. But it is probably her iconic role as matriarch Emily in the modern classic Gilmore Girls that cemented her legacy. Now, Bishop reflects on her remarkable life and looks towards the future with The Third Gilmore Girl. She shares some of her greatest stories and the life lessons she’s learned on her journey. From her early transition from dance to drama, to marrying young to a compulsive gambler, to the losses and achievements she experienced—among them marching for women’s rights and losing her second husband to cancer—Bishop offers a rich, genuine celebration of her life. Full of witty insights and featuring a special collection of personal and professional photographs, The Third Gilmore Girl is a warm, unapologetic, and spirited memoir from a woman who has left indelible impressions on her audiences for decades and has no plans on slowing down.

In Let’s Tidy Up: The Book, Josh Thomas, comedian and creator/star of the hit TV series Please Like Me and Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, chronicles the Herculean effort to organize his home and life in intimate, hilarious detail. Recounting the experiences that shaped him through the lens of his many belongings and the struggle to part ways with them, Josh reflects on his ADHD and autism diagnoses, friendship, loss, life in Hollywood, and whatever else happens to enter his mind — including his tumultuous relationship with the boy he’s been “most in love with” (who, by the way, also happens to be named Josh). This is by no means a comprehensive list; after all, he has an awful lot of tidying up to do. Looking around his home as it’s being “colonized by tote bags,” there are impulse purchases strewn across various rooms, and counters are overcome with face creams and masks. So Josh makes the decision to get organized. For him, it’s a daunting task — one that he takes on with optimism, energy, and “grand delusions of adequacy.” Despite his best efforts, Josh finds himself striving (and failing) to dispose of the items he no longer needs while losing a battle against everyday distractions and his own thoughts. Can he overcome the odds and clear the clutter? You’ll just have to find out…. Based on his successful one-man show co-written with Lally Katz, Let’s Tidy Up: The Book includes added stories from Josh’s quest and features the same comic sensibility with a touch of disarming vulnerability and frankness that defined his stage performance. Part memoir, part comedy, part critique of earwax-cleaning cameras advertised on social media (plus, every other buy-with-one-click item), Let’s Tidy Up is a celebration of — and plea for — self-acceptance, especially the messy parts. Told as only Josh Thomas could, this book is for anyone trying to live in the modern world — particularly those who are terrified of cleaning their homes.

From the finance editor of The New York Times, an insightful and illuminating examination of Bill Gates—one of the most powerful and provocative figures of the past four decades—and an exploration of our national fixation on billionaires. Few billionaires have been in the public eye for as long, and in as many guises, as Bill Gates. At first hailed as a tech visionary, the Microsoft cofounder morphed into a ruthless capitalist, only to change yet again when he fashioned himself into a global do-gooder. Along the way, Gates influenced how we think about tech founders, as the products they make and the ideas they sell continue to dominate our lives. Through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he also set a new standard for high-profile, billionaire philanthropy. But there is more to Gates’s story, and here, Das’s revelatory reporting shows us that billionaires have secrets and philanthropy can have a dark side. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with current and former employees of the Gates Foundation, Microsoft, academics, nonprofits, and those with insight into the Gates universe, Das delves into Gates’s relationships with Warren Buffett, Jeffrey Epstein, Melinda French Gates, and others, to uncover the truths behind the public persona. In telling Gates’s story, Das also provides a new way to think about how billionaires wield their power, manipulate their image, and pursue philanthropy to become heroes, repair damaged reputations, and direct policy to achieve their preferred outcomes. “A balanced, perceptive, and thought-provoking portrait of a man and his times” (Booklist) Billionaire, Nerd, Savior, King is an important story of money and government, wealth and power, and media and image, and the ways in which the world’s richest people hold us in their thrall.

BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE GUARDIAN, THE OBSERVER (LONDON), GRANTA, AND TLS One of our greatest and most original living writers sets out the perils of the writing life with joyful provocation in this “anti-memoir.” M. John Harrison has produced one of the greatest bodies of fiction of any living British author, encompassing space opera, speculative fiction, fantasy, and magical and literary realism. But is there even an M. John Harrison and if so, where do we find him? This is the question the author asks in this memoir-as-mystery, turning for clues to forty years of notetaking: “A note or it never happened. A note or you never looked.” Are these notebooks records of failed presence? How do they shine a light on a childhood in the industrial Midlands, a portrait of a young artist in counterculture London, on an adulthood of restless escape into hill and moorland landscapes? And do they tell us anything about the writing of books, each one so different from the last that it might have been written by another version of the author? With aphoristic daring and laconic wit, this anti-memoir will fascinate and delight. It confirms M. John Harrison still further in his status as the most original British writer of his generation. “Wish I Was Here is a beautifully strange masterwork. It is as if M. John Harrison’s prose devises its own autobiography, while the figure of its author stands to one side tinkering at a eulogy for a dead cat, a manifesto against ruin porn, and a manual of operating procedures for creativity as funky as a Brian Eno card deck. How can this also produce a sublime fugue on memory and aging? Read it and see.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude

*NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER* “This book is so many things I didn’t know I needed: a testament to the work of healing, a raw howl of anger, and an indictment of misogyny’s insipid, predictable, infuriating reign.” —Carmen Maria Machado, author of the National Book Award finalist Her Body and Other Parties and the Lambda Literary Award winner In the Dream House A powerful memoir that reckons with mental health as well as the insidious ways men impact the lives of women. In early 2021, popular artist Anna Marie Tendler checked herself into a psychiatric hospital following a year of crippling anxiety, depression, and self-harm. Over two weeks, she underwent myriad psychological tests, participated in numerous therapy sessions, connected with fellow patients and experienced profound breakthroughs, such as when a doctor noted, “There is a you inside that feels invisible to those looking at you from the outside.” In Men Have Called Her Crazy, Tendler recounts her hospital experience as well as pivotal moments in her life that preceded and followed. As the title suggests, many of these moments are impacted by men: unrequited love in high school; the twenty-eight-year-old she lost her virginity to when she was sixteen; the frustrations and absurdities of dating in her mid-thirties; and her decision to freeze her eggs as all her friends were starting families. This stunning literary self-portrait examines the unreasonable expectations and pressures women face in the 21st century. Yet overwhelming and despairing as that can feel, Tendler ultimately offers a message of hope. Early in her stay in the hospital, she says, “My wish for myself is that one day I’ll reach a place where I can face hardship without trying to destroy myself.” By the end of the book, she fulfills that wish.

Now collected for the first time in one volume, the brilliant and provocative essays that established National Book Award finalist Sarah Smarsh as one of the most important commentators on socioeconomic class in America—featuring a previously unpublished essay and a new introduction. In Bone of the Bone, Sarah Smarsh brings her graceful storytelling and incisive critique to the challenges that define our times—class division, political fissures, gender inequality, environmental crisis, media bias, the rural-urban gulf. Smarsh, a journalist who grew up on a wheat farm in Kansas and was the first in her family to graduate from college, has long focused on cultural dissonance that many in her industry neglected until recently. Now, this thought-provoking collection of more than thirty of her highly relevant, previously published essays from the past decade (2013–2024)—ranging from personal narratives to news commentary—demonstrates a life and a career steeped in the issues that affect our collective future. Compiling Smarsh’s reportage and more poetic reflections, Bone of the Bone is a singular work covering one of the most tumultuous decades in civic life. Timely, filled with perspective-shifting observations, and a pleasure to read, Sarah Smarsh’s essays—on topics as varied as the socioeconomic significance of dentistry, laws criminalizing poverty, fallacies of the “red vs. blue” political framework, working as a Hooters Girl, and much more—are an important addition to any discussion on contemporary America.

Includes a new epilogue narrated by the author exclusively for the audiobook edition. What would it be like to sit down for an impassioned, entertaining conversation with Hillary Clinton? In Something Lost, Something Gained, Hillary offers her candid views on life and love, politics, liberty, democracy, the threats we face, and the future within our reach. She describes the strength she draws from her deepest friendships, her Methodist faith, and the nearly fifty years she’s been married to President Bill Clinton—all with the wisdom that comes from looking back on a full life with fresh eyes. She takes us along as she returns to the classroom as a college professor, enjoys the bonds inside the exclusive club of former First Ladies, moves past her dream of being president, and dives into new activism for women and democracy. From canoeing with an ex-Nazi trying to deprogram white supremacists to sweltering with salt farmers in the desert trying to adapt to the climate crisis in India, Hillary brings us to the front lines of our biggest challenges. For the first time, Hillary shares the story of her operation to evacuate Afghan women to safety in the harrowing final days of America’s longest war. But we also meet the brave women dissidents defying dictators around the world, gain new personal insights about her old adversary Vladimir Putin, and learn the best ways that worried parents can protect kids from toxic technology. We also hear her fervent and persuasive warning to all American voters. In the end, Something Lost, Something Gained is a testament to the idea that the personal is political, and the political is personal, providing a blueprint for what each of us can do to make our lives better. Hillary has “looked at life from both sides now.” In these pages, she shares the latest chapter of her inspiring life and shows us how to age with grace and keep moving forward, with grit, joy, purpose, and a sense of humor.

*An Observer Best New Biographies of 2024* Celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself. “What you are about to read is not a standard account of the life and work of Joni Mitchell. Instead, it’s a tale of long journeying through a life that changed popular music: of a homesick wanderer forging ahead on routes of her own invention, and of me on her trail, heading toward the ringing of her voice.” —From the introduction For decades, Joni Mitchell’s life and music have enraptured listeners. One of the most celebrated artists of her generation, Mitchell has inspired countless musicians—from peers like James Taylor, to inheritors like Prince and Brandi Carlile—and authors, who have dissected her music and her life in their writing. At the same time, Mitchell has always been a force beckoning us still closer, as—with the other arm—she pushes us away. Given this, music critic Ann Powers wondered if there was another way to draw insights from the life of this singular musician who never stops moving, never stops experimenting. In Traveling, Powers seeks to understand Mitchell through her myriad journeys. Through extensive interviews with Mitchell's peers and deep archival research, she takes readers to rural Canada, mapping the singer’s childhood battle with polio. She charts the course of Mitchell’s musical evolution, ranging from early folk to jazz fusion to experimentation with pop synthetics. She follows the winding road of Mitchell’s collaborations with other greats, and the loves that emerged along the way, all the way through to the remarkable return of Mitchell to music-making after the 2015 aneurysm that nearly took her life. Along this journey, Powers’ wide-ranging musings on the artist’s life and career reconsider the biographer’s role and the way it twines against the reality of a fan. In doing so, Traveling illustrates the shifting nature of biography, and the ultimate contradiction of celebrity: that an icon cannot truly, completely be known to a fan. Kaleidoscopic in scope, and intimate in its detail, Traveling is a fresh and fascinating addition to the Joni Mitchell canon, written by a biographer in full command of her gifts who asks as much of herself as of her subject. 

For readers of Crying in H Mart and Minor Feelings as well as lovers of the film Minari comes a “scorchingly honest…hugely evocative memoir” (Helen Macdonald, New York Times bestselling author of H Is for Hawk) about the daughter of ambitious Asian American immigrants and her search for self-worth. A daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas where her loyalties are divided between a restless father in search of Big Money, and a beautiful yet domineering mother whose resentments about her own life compromises her relationship with her daughter. With her parents at constant odds, Song learns more words in Korean for hatred than love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. On her first day, a girl asks the teacher: “Can she speak English?” Neither rich nor white, Song does what is necessary to be visible: she internalizes the model minority myth as well as her beloved mother’s dreams to see her on a secure path. Song meets these expectations by attending the best Ivy League universities in the country. But when she wavers, in search of an artistic life on her own terms, her mother warns, “Happiness is what unexceptional people tell themselves when they don’t have the talent and drive to go after real success.” Years of self-erasure take a toll on Song as she experiences recurring episodes of depression and mania. A thought repeats: I want to die. I want to die. Song enters a psychiatric hospital where she meets patients with similar struggles. So begins her sweeping journey to heal herself by losing everything. “A celebration of resilience and a testament to the power of art to heal and transform” (Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty), Docile is one woman’s story of subverting the model minority myth, contending with mental illness, and finding her self-worth by looking within.

This program is read by the author. The empowering, inspiring, patriarchy-smashing first book by podcast star Drew Afualo. Drew Afualo is best known as the internet’s “Crusader for Women” and is at the head of a new generation of entertainment’s rising stars. Loud is part manual, part manifesto, and part memoir. It makes it clear that behind her fearsome laugh is a mission and a life philosophy, a strategy for self-confidence from the inside out, and a pathway to once and for all remove men from the center of how women and femmes think about themselves. Afualo has amassed more than nine million followers across her social platforms. When she first started creating content in 2020, she realized that men on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and other apps were creating sexist content aimed at disparaging women, and also containing rampant fatphobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry, with very real-life consequences. It didn’t take long for her to step into the role of unofficial watchdog for misogyny, and her signature laugh is now recognized as a feminist call to arms, a summoning cry to rid the internet (and our hearts, minds, and lives) of “terrible men” and create a space to fight outdated patriarchal ideals. A Macmillan Audio production from AUWA Books.

The founder of the Black Doctors Consortium shares her “inspiring story of overcoming mind-numbing obstacles” (Will Smith), highlighting the devastating racial injustices in our healthcare system in this empowering call to action. Dr. Ala Stanford knew she wanted to be a doctor by the time she was eight years old. But role models were few and far between in her working-class North Philly neighborhood. Her teachers were dismissive, and the realities of racism, sexism, and poverty threatened to derail her at every turn. Nevertheless, thanks to her faith, family, and the sheer strength of her will, today she is one of the vanishingly small number of Black women surgeons in America—and an unrelenting force in the fight for health justice. In Take Care of Them Like My Own, Dr. Stanford shares an unflinching account of her story, explaining how her experiences on both sides of the scalpel have informed her understanding of America’s racial health gap, an insidious and lethal form of inequality that exacts a devastating toll on Black communities across the county, affluent and underserved alike. When Covid-19 arrived in her hometown of Philadelphia, she knew it would disproportionately affect the Black population. As the city stood idly by, unwilling or unable to protect its most vulnerable citizens, Dr. Stanford took matters into her own hands. She rented a van, made some calls, and began administering tests in church parking lots. Soon, she found herself at the helm of a powerful grassroots campaign that successfully vaccinated tens of thousands of Philadelphians. She and her movement are living proof that by drawing on faith, community, and inner strength, everyday people can affect tremendous change. “With extraordinary insight, sensitivity, and intelligence” (Dr. Drew Weissman, Nobel Laureate) Take Care of Them Like My Own offers urgent lessons about the power of communities working together to take care of one another and the importance of fighting for a health care system that truly fulfills its promise to all Americans.

"This audiobook is perfect not only for people in love with fashion, but also for anyone interested in fashion as art, obsession, and ever-present societal phenomenon."—Booklist A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press. In the tradition of The Barbizon and The Girls of Atomic City, fashion historian and journalist Nancy MacDonell chronicles the untold story of how the Nazi invasion of France gave rise to the American fashion industry. Calvin Klein. Ralph Lauren. Donna Karan. Halston. Marc Jacobs. Tom Ford. Michael Kors. Tory Burch. Today, American designers are some of the biggest names in fashion, yet before World War II, they almost always worked anonymously. The industry, then centered on Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, had always looked overseas for "inspiration"—a polite phrase for what was often blatant copying—because style, as all the world knew, came from Paris. But when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, the capital of fashion was cut off from the rest of the world. The story of the chaos and tragedy that followed has been told many times—but how it directly affected American fashion is largely unknown. Defying the naysayers, New York-based designers, retailers, editors, and photographers met the moment, turning out clothes that were perfectly suited to the American way of life: sophisticated, modern, comfortable, and affordable. By the end of the war, "the American Look" had been firmly established as a fresh, easy elegance that combined function with style. But none of it would have happened without the influence and ingenuity of a small group of women who have largely been lost to history. Empresses of Seventh Avenue will tell the story of how these extraordinary women put American fashion on the world stage and created the template for modern style—and how the nearly $500 billion American fashion industry, the largest in the world, could not have accrued its power and wealth without their farsightedness and determination. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

The most powerful woman in American political history tells the story of her transformation from housewife to House Speaker—how she became a master legislator, a key partner to presidents, and the most visible leader of the Trump resistance. When, at age forty-six, Nancy Pelosi, mother of five, asked her youngest daughter if she should run for Congress, Alexandra Pelosi answered: “Mother, get a life!” And so Nancy did, and what a life it has been. In The Art of Power, Pelosi describes for the first time what it takes to make history—not only as the first woman to ascend to the most powerful legislative role in our nation, but to pass laws that would save lives and livelihoods, from the emergency rescue of the economy in 2008 to transforming health care. She describes the perseverance, persuasion, and respect for her members that it took to succeed, but also the joy of seeing America change for the better. Among the best-prepared and hardest working Speakers in history, Pelosi worked to find common ground, or stand her ground, with presidents from Bush to Biden. She also shares moving moments with soldiers sent to the front lines, women who inspired her, and human rights activists who fought by her side. Pelosi took positions that established her as a prophetic voice on the major moral issues of the day, warning early about the dangers of the Iraq War and of the Chinese government’s long record of misbehavior. This moral courage prepared her for the arrival of Trump, with whom she famously tangled, becoming a red-coated symbol of resistance to his destructive presidency. Here, she reveals how she went toe-to-toe with Trump, leading up to January 6, 2021, when he unleashed his post-election fury on the Congress. Pelosi gives us her personal account of that day: the assault not only on the symbol of our democracy but on the men and women who had come to serve the nation, never expecting to hide under desks or flee for their lives—and her determined efforts to get the National Guard to the Capitol. Nearly two years later, violence and fury would erupt inside Pelosi’s own home when an intruder, demanding to see the Speaker, viciously attacked her beloved husband, Paul. Here, Pelosi shares that horrifying day and the traumatic aftermath for her and her family. The woman who has been lauded by her opposition as “the most powerful Speaker” ever shows us why she is not afraid of a good fight. The Art of Power is about the fighting spirit that has always animated her, and the historic legacy that spirit has produced.

For readers of Braiding Sweetgrass and How to Do Nothing—books that invite us to imagine better ways to live (and live with each other)—comes a spirited and charming exploration of group living from a child of the counterculture that encourages us to redefine the meaning of home and family. Lola Milholland grew up in the nineties, the child of iconoclastic hippies. Her mom—energetic and intense at work and at play, whether at her job marketing for an agricultural co-op or paddling down a river, fat spliff in hand—had spent her life revolting against the strictures of her American and Filipino upbringing. Her dad, a child of the eastern Oregon desert, was a jovial documentary filmmaker and historian who loved to collect ephemera. Both threw open the doors of the Holman House, their rambling home in Portland, Oregon, to long-term visitors and unusual guests in need of a place to stay. Years later, after college and after her parents’ separation, Milholland returned home. There, she joined her brother and his housemates—an eccentric group of stop-motion animators and accomplished cooks—in choosing to further the experiment of communal living into a new generation. Group Living and Other Recipes tells the story of the residents of the Holman House—of transcendent meals and ecstatic parties, of colorful characters coming together in moments of deep tenderness and inevitable irritation, of a shared life that is appealing, humorous, confounding, and, just maybe, utopian—with a wider exploration of group living as a way of life. Thoughtful, quirky, candid, and wise, Group Living and Other Recipes provides a convincing case that “now is always the right time to reimagine home and family”—and introduces a gifted memoirist and food writer in the tradition of Laurie Colwin, Ruth Reichl, and M.F.K. Fisher. Includes a PDF of all recipes in the text.

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER With revealing, never-before-told stories, Fred C. Trump III, nephew of President Donald Trump, breaks his decades-long silence in this honest memoir and sheds a whole new light on the family name. For the record…Fred Trump never asked for any of this. The divisive politics. The endless headlines. A hijacked last name. The heat-seeking uncle, rising from real estate scion to gossip column fixture to The Apprentice host to President of the United States. Fred just wanted a happy life and a satisfying career. But a fight for his son’s health and safety forced him onto a center stage that he had never wanted. And now, at a crucial point for our nation, he is stepping forward again. In All in the Family, Fred delves into his journey to become a “different kind of Trump,” detailing his passionate battle to protect his wife and children from forces inside and outside the family. From the Trump house to the White House, Fred comes to terms with his own complex legacy and faces some demons head-on. It’s a story of power, love, money, cruelty, and the unshakable bonds of family, played out underneath a glaring media spotlight. All in the Family is the inside story, as it’s never been told before.

In this fifth and final installment in the series from Everand and Roxane Gay, the beloved bestselling author of Hunger and Bad Feminist delivers her own bold and deeply personal exploration of gun culture and gun ownership in America from a Black feminist perspective. In the early 1990s, when she first heard Aerosmith’s hit song “Janie’s Got a Gun,” about a young, sexually abused girl who gets her hands on a gun and can finally avenge herself, Roxane Gay wondered, “if I were facing a flesh and blood person with the cool of a gun’s grip against the palm of my warm hand, would I actually be able to pull the trigger?” So begins a fearless and thought-provoking meditation by a woman who has “no fondness for guns” but nonetheless owns one. Gay lays bare the facts along with her experiences, exploring the uniquely American phenomenon of contemporary gun culture; the horrifying statistics that show the scope of gun violence; the gun industry’s eagerness to target women; the Second Amendment and who is and is not served by it; and what it means to stand one’s ground. Through it all, she tries to reconcile her feminism with gun ownership and makes it clear that while she has joined the ranks of American gun owners, she is not among the converted: “If I had to give up gun ownership to make the world safer, to eradicate all gun violence, I would do so in a heartbeat. Individual rights shouldn’t supersede the greater good. Our safety should not be held hostage by political greed and indifference and impotence. The Second Amendment is not, in fact, sacrosanct—it is a law, written by flawed men, and it should be as subject to change as it is to interpretation. “A gun is a tool,” she writes, “nothing more and nothing less, but I know how to use that tool. I know how to use it quite well, and I will only get better. I own a gun, but I have more questions than answers.”

In Taste of Love, celebrated chef, cookbook author, and ultimate balaboosta Einat Admony serves up a delicious love story against a backdrop of glamorous Michelin-starred restaurants and dingy rental apartments, the heat of a first kiss, and the heartbreak of broken promises. Part memoir and part kitchen confessional, Taste of Love blends stories of Einat’s culinary achievements with inspiring examples of personal growth and tender moments of real romance. She thought she had all the right ingredients for her career and her future: a husband in the same line of work; culinary experience in Israel, New York City, and Miami; and a powerful connection to the foods and spices of her ancestors that brought her joy. She was caught off guard when her ambitious, but unfaithful, husband left her with an empty apartment in Tel Aviv and a career of her own that she’d kept on the back burner. Driven by a sense of instinct, she takes a leap of faith and returns to New York City where she uses her resilience, creativity, and determination to make a name for herself in the culinary capital of the U.S. — and find true love and partnership in her soulmate, Stefan. Savor every step of the journey as Einat finds she can, in fact, take the heat in any kitchen as she works her way from cooking school to the appetizer station at a restaurant owned by the Wolfgang Puck of Israel, to waiting tables at a dive in Florida, to cooking in the hottest spots in Manhattan, to opening falafel chain Taïm. All while serving up tasty meals and offering sage advice for happy relationships. Einat’s story is infused with the charm and humor of Julia Child, the blunt honesty of Anthony Bourdain, and the spice and zing of your favorite takeout. As the author says, “food is joy,” and so is this entertaining memoir of blending cultures, defining one’s identity, and creating the perfect recipe for lasting love.

The man who brought the kavorka to the Seinfeld show through one of the most remarkable and beloved television characters ever invented, Kramer, shares the extraordinary life of a comedy genius—the way he came into himself as an artist, the ups and downs as a human being, the road he has traveled in search of understanding. “The hair, so essential, symbolizes the irrational that was and is and always will be the underlying feature not only of Kramer but of comedy itself. This seemingly senseless spirit has been coursing through me since childhood. I’ve been under its almighty influence since the day I came into this world. I felt it all within myself, especially the physical comedy, the body movements, so freakish and undignified, where I bumped into things, knocked stuff down, messed up situations, and often ended up on my ass. “This book is a hymn to the irrational, the senseless spirit that breaks the whole into pieces, a reflection on the seemingly absurd difficulties that intrude upon us all. It’s Harpo Marx turning us about, shaking up my plans, throwing me for a loop. Upset and turmoil is with us all the time. It’s at the basis of comedy. It’s the pratfall we all take. It’s the unavoidable mistake we didn’t expect. It’s everywhere I go. It’s in the way that I am, both light and dark, good and not-so-good. It’s my life.” —Michael Richards, from Entrances and Exits

A sweeping and evocative memoir from the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, Grammy Award–winning, platinum selling singer-songwriter Michael McDonald, written with his friend, Emmy Award–nominated actor, comedian, and #1 New York Times bestselling author Paul Reiser. Doobie Brothers. Steely Dan. Chart topping soloist. Across a half-century of American music, Michael McDonald’s unmistakably smooth baritone voice defined an era of rock and R&B with hit records like “What A Fool Believes,” “Takin’ It to the Streets,” “I Keep Forgettin’,” “Peg,” “It Keeps You Running,” “You Belong to Me,” and “Yah Mo B There.” In his candid, freewheeling memoir, written with his friend, the Emmy Award-nominated actor and comedian Paul Reiser, Michael tells the story of his life and music. A high school dropout from Ferguson, Missouri, Michael chased his dreams in 1970’s California, a heady moment of rock opportunity and excess. As a rising session musician and backing vocalist, a series of encounters would send him on a wild ride around the world and to the heights of rock stardom—from joining Steely Dan and becoming a defining member of The Doobie Brothers to forging a path as a breakout solo R&B artist. Interwoven with the unforgettable tales of the music, Michael tells a deeply affecting story of losing and finding himself as a man. He reckons with the unshakeable insecurities that drove him, the drug and alcohol addictions that plagued him, and the highs and lows of popularity. Along the way he relays the lessons he’s learned, and that if he’s learned anything at all it’s that there’s often little correlation between what you get and what you deserve. Filled with unbelievable stories and a matchless cast of music greats including James Taylor, Ray Charles, Carly Simon, and Quincy Jones, What a Fool Believes is a moving and entertaining memoir that is sure to be a classic.  Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

From beloved CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca, author of New York Times bestseller Mobituaries, comes an inspiring collection of stories that celebrates the triumphs of people who made their biggest marks late in life. Eighty has been the new sixty for about twenty years now. In fact, there have always been late-in-life achievers, those who declined to go into decline just because they were eligible for social security. Journalist, humorist, and history buff Mo Rocca and coauthor Jonathan Greenberg introduce us to the people past and present who peaked when they could have been puttering—breaking out as writers, selling out concert halls, attempting to set land-speed records—and in the case of one ninety-year tortoise, becoming a first-time father. (Take that, Al Pacino!) In the vein of Mobituaries, Roctogenarians is a collection of entertaining and unexpected profiles of these unretired titans—some long gone (a cancer-stricken Henri Matisse, who began work on his celebrated cut-outs when he could no longer paint), some very much still living (Mel Brooks, yukking it up at close to one hundred). The amazing cast of characters also includes Mary Church Terrell, who at eighty-six helped lead sit-ins at segregated Washington, DC, lunch counters in the 1950s, and Carol Channing, who married the love of her life at eighty-two. Then there’s Peter Mark Roget, who began working on his thesaurus in his twenties and completed it at seventy-three (because sometimes finding the right word takes time.) With passion and wonder Rocca and Greenberg recount the stories of yesterday’s and today’s strongest finishers. Because with all due respect to the Golden Girls, some people will never be content sitting out on the lanai. (PS Actress Estelle Getty was sixty-two when she got her big break. And yes, she’s in the book.)

This program is read by the author. Barrett Brown went to prison for four years for leaking intelligence documents. He was released to Trump’s America. This is his story. After a series of escapades both online and off that brought him in and out of 4chan forums, the halls of power, heroin addiction, and federal prison, Barrett Brown is a free man. He was arrested for his part in an attempt to catalog, interpret, and disseminate top-secret documents exposed in a security lapse by the intelligence contractor Stratfor in 2011. An influential journalist who is also active in the hacktivist collective Anonymous, Brown recounts exploits from a life shaped by an often self-destructive drive to speak truth to power. With inimitable wit and style, palpable anger and conviction, he exposes the incompetence and injustices that plague media and politics, reflects on the successes and failures of the transparency movement, and shows the way forward in harnessing digital communication tools for collective action. But My Glorious Defeats is more than just the tale of the clever and hilarious Brown; it’s also a rigorously researched dissection of our decaying institutions and of human nature itself. As Brown makes clear, institutions are made of people—people with personal ambitions and personal vices—and it is people, just like him, just like us, who hold power. As optimistic as it is heartbreaking, My Glorious Defeats is an entertaining and illuminating manual for insurgency in the information age. A Macmillan Audio production from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

YOU NEVER LOVE A BOOK THE WAY YOU LOVE A BOOK WHEN YOU ARE TEN. Writing as Lemony Snicket, Daniel Handler has led several generations of young readers into that special and curious space of being hopelessly lost, and joyfully finding yourself, in the essential strangeness of literature. The wondrous and perilous journey of the Baudelaire orphans sprung from the author’s own path, from his childhood discovery of Baudelaire’s poetry through the countless peculiarities of his pursuit of a literary life—abject failure and startling success, breakthrough and breakdown, concordance and controversy—lit along the way by the books and culture he loved best. At once a personal memoir and a literary exploration, a how-to book and a critical inquiry, a sequence of stories and a series of events, And Then? And Then? What Else? is a book not just for anyone curious about the creator of Lemony Snicket, but for anyone who loved books when they were a child, and still loves them now.

“Fascinating…the fullest portrait of Kennedy ever written.” —The Washington Post The first oral biography of John F. Kennedy Jr. is an extraordinarily intimate and detailed look at the real man behind the myth. Sharing never-before-told stories, his closest friends, confidantes, lovers, classmates, teachers, and colleagues paint a vivid portrait of one of the most beloved figures of the 20th century who still captures public imagination twenty-five years after his tragic death. Born into the spotlight, John F. Kennedy Jr. lived a short but remarkable life filled with expectation, ambition, family pressures, love, and tragedy. JFK Jr. dives deep into his complicated psyche and explores the what-ifs, illuminating both the cultural and political moment he inhabited and the way this son of a president, so full of promise, embodied America’s most cherished hopes.

“A triumph. Fedarko doesn’t describe awe; he induces it.” —The New York Times Book Review * “Passionate…memorable…life-affirming.” —The Wall Street Journal From the author of the beloved bestseller The Emerald Mile, a rollicking and poignant account of an epic 750-mile odyssey, on foot, through the heart of America’s most magnificent national park and the grandest wilderness on earth. Two friends, zero preparation, one dream. A few years after quitting his job to follow an ill-advised dream of becoming a guide on the Colorado River, Kevin Fedarko was approached by his best friend, National Geographic photographer Pete McBride, with a vision as bold as it was harebrained. Together, they would embark on an end-to-end traverse of the Grand Canyon, a journey that, McBride promised, would be “a walk in the park.” Against his better judgment, Fedarko agreed, unaware that the small cluster of experts who had completed the crossing billed it as “the toughest hike in the world.” The ensuing ordeal, which lasted more than a year, revealed a place that was deeper, richer, and far more complex than anything the two men had imagined—and came within a hair’s breadth of killing them both. They struggled to make their way through a vertical labyrinth of thousand-foot cliffs and crumbling ledges where water is measured out by the teaspoon and every step is fraught with peril—and where, even today, there is still no trail along the length of the country’s best-known and most iconic park. Along the way, veteran long-distance hikers ushered them into secret pockets, invisible to the millions of tourists gathered on the rim, where only a handful of humans have ever laid eyes. Members of the canyon’s eleven Native American tribes brought them face-to-face with layers of history that forced them to reconsider myths at the center of our national parks—and exposed them to the threats of commercial tourism. Even Fedarko’s dying father, who had first pointed him toward the canyon more than forty years earlier but had never set foot there himself, opened him to a new way of seeing the landscape. And always, there was the great gorge itself: austere and unforgiving but suffused with magic, drenched in wonder, and redeemed by its own transcendent beauty. A singular portrait of a sublime place, A Walk in the Park is a deeply moving plea for the preservation of America’s greatest natural treasure.

"In a remarkable performance, Flynn laughs, jokes, and calls O'Hea to task when he's wrong--all sounding very much like the famous Dench...The final segment has Dench (in her own voice) and O'Hea engaged in friendly, very funny, squabbling. Informative, educational and altogether brilliant listening!"—AudioFile (Earphones Award Winner) This program includes interstitial narration from Judi Dench and a bonus conversation between the authors. Discover the work of the greatest writer in the English language as you've never encountered it before with internationally renowned actor Dame Judi Dench's SHAKESPEARE: The Man Who Pays The Rent—a witty, insightful journey through the plays and tales of our beloved Shakespeare. Taking a curtain call with a live snake in her wig... Cavorting naked through the Warwickshire countryside painted green... Acting opposite a child with a pumpkin on his head... These are just a few of the things Dame Judi Dench has done in the name of Shakespeare. For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra. In a series of intimate conversations with actor & director Brendan O'Hea, she guides us through Shakespeare's plays with incisive clarity, revealing the secrets of her rehearsal process and inviting us to share in her triumphs, disasters, and backstage shenanigans. Interspersed with vignettes on audiences, critics, company spirit and rehearsal room etiquette, she serves up priceless revelations on everything from the craft of speaking in verse to her personal interpretations of some of Shakespeare's most famous scenes, all brightened by her mischievous sense of humour, striking level of honesty and a peppering of hilarious anecdotes, many of which have remained under lock and key until now. Instructive and witty, provocative and inspiring, this is ultimately Judi's love letter to Shakespeare, or rather, The Man Who Pays The Rent. A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

Foreword by DeAndre Hopkins In this extraordinary memoir, Sabrina Greenlee, the indomitable mother of NFL sensation DeAndre Hopkins, unveils her journey of triumph over adversity—a saga of tenacity, redemption, faith, and the profound reclamation of personal power. Sabrina Greenlee was born to teenage parents in the shadow of South Carolina’s Clemson University, and her story unfolds against the backdrop of her challenging upbringing in a family that lacked the means—financial and emotional—to offer her and her two brothers the safety, comfort, and love every child deserves. When she was a teenager, her beloved younger brother, Dilly, died in a drunk driving accident. In her early twenties, Sabrina faced the tragic loss of her fiancé and one true love. A decade later, she was brutally and publicly assaulted, resulting in the loss of her vision. After years of abusive relationships, Sabrina willed herself to achieve the kind of life she had always dreamed of. She became the loving and dependable mother she wished she’d had, raising four children— including star athletes—who attended college and are successful in their chosen fields. She also found the courage to break the silence that enshrouded her life, ending the trauma that had damaged her family for generations—allowing Sabrina and her kin to heal. Today she works to help other women assert their power and find the faith to have strength even when the future seems hopeless—just as she herself has. Grant Me Vision is her riveting story—a memoir of resilience in the face of life’s most difficult challenges. It serves as a testament to faith and fortitude, encouraging others to confront their past and to make peace with it.

MOST ANTICIPATED READ and MUST READ OF 2024: The Millions, LitHub, Esquire, BookRiot, Bustle, Vulture, Boston Globe, Brit & Co, Southern Living “Woman of Interest is a memoir wrapped in a mystery—an inward examination of family, identity, and self, but also an actual gumshoe detective story. Each extraordinary, prickly sentence is conjured with clarity and conflict. Funny, moving, mean—an exceptional book from an extraordinary writer.” —Kevin Nguyen, author of New Waves “Dark, deeply funny. . . . Dashiell Hammett meets Fleabag.”—The New Yorker ?A National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 honoree delivers her first work of nonfiction: a compulsively readable, genre-bending story of finding her missing birth mother and, along the way, learning the priceless power of self-knowledge. In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she’d never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea. After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O’Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done, picking up the trail of clues and becoming her own hell-bent detective. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover—the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own—was too tempting. Written like a mystery novel, Woman of Interest is a tale of self-discovery and fugitivity from convention that features a femme fatale of unique proportions, a former CIA operative with a criminal record, and a dogged investigator of radical connections outside the nuclear family. O’Neill gorgeously bends the detective genre to her own will as a writer, stepping out of the shadows of her own self-conception to illuminate the hopes of the woman of interest she is both chasing and becoming.

An electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre. Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you want Kathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya” are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from? In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumul­tuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band” in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination. But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its exclusivity. In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.

Legendary editor Judith Jones, the woman behind some of the most important authors of the 20th century—including Julia Child, Anne Frank, Edna Lewis, John Updike, and Sylvia Plath—finally gets her due in this “surprising, granular, luminous, and path-breaking biography” (Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem). At Doubleday’s Paris office in 1949, twenty-five-year-old Judith Jones spent most of her time wading through manuscripts in the slush pile and passing on projects—until one day, a book caught her eye. She read it in one sitting, then begged her boss to consider publishing it. A year later, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl became a bestseller. It was the start of a culture-defining career in publishing. During her more than fifty years as an editor at Alfred A. Knopf, Jones nurtured the careers of literary icons such as Sylvia Plath, Anne Tyler, and John Updike, and helped launched new genres and trends in literature. At the forefront of the cookbook revolution, she published the who’s who of food writing: Edna Lewis, M.F.K. Fisher, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, James Beard, and, most famously, Julia Child. Through her tenacious work behind the scenes, Jones helped turn these authors into household names, changing cultural mores and expectations along the way. Judith’s work spanned decades of America’s most dramatic cultural change—from the end of World War II through the civil rights movement and the fight for women’s equality—and the books she published acted as tools of quiet resistance. Now, based on exclusive interviews, never-before-seen personal papers, and years of research, her astonishing career is explored for the first time in this “thorough and humanizing portrait” (Kirkus Reviews).