In MOZART: A LIFE, acclaimed historian and author Paul Johnson’s focus is on the music --- Mozart’s wondrous output of composition and his uncanny gift for instrumentation. In addition, Johnson challenges the many myths that have followed Mozart, including those about the composer’s health, wealth, religion and relationships.

In the tradition of M. F. K. Fisher, Laurie Colwin and Ruth Reichl, BLUE PLATE SPECIAL is a narrative in which food --- eating it, cooking it, reflecting on it --- becomes the vehicle for unpacking a life. Kate Christensen explores her history of hunger --- not just for food, but for love and confidence and a sense of belonging --- with a profound honesty, starting with her unorthodox childhood in 1960s Berkeley as the daughter of a mercurial legal activist who ruled the house with his fists.

Rebecca Solnit explores the ways we make our lives out of stories, and how we are connected by empathy, by narrative, by imagination. In the course of unpacking some of her own stories --- of her mother and her decline from memory loss, of a trip to Iceland, of an illness --- Solnit revisits fairy tales and entertains other stories. Woven together, these stories create a map that charts the boundaries and territories of storytelling, reframing who each of us is and how we might tell our story.

Although he wouldn’t officially be diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome until his freshman year of high school, Josh Hanagarne was six years old when he first began exhibiting symptoms. By the time he was 20, the young Mormon had reached his towering adult height of 6’7” when his Tourette’s tics escalated to nightmarish levels. Despite undergoing treatments that failed miserably, Josh persevered to marry and earn a degree in Library Science.

For the first time, Maya Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit who was absent during much of Angelou’s early life. Their eventual reunion began a story that has never before been told. In MOM & ME & MOM, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them.

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, David Shields explores the power of literature to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. He evokes his deeply divided personality, character flaws, woes, and serious despairs. Books are his life, but when they come to feel unlifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness and self-consciousness.

In MY BOOKSTORE, 81 authors write about the pleasure, guidance and support that their favorite bookstores and booksellers have given them over the years. It's a joyful, industry-wide celebration of our bricks-and-mortar stores and a clarion call to readers everywhere at a time when the value and importance of these stores should be shouted from the rooftops.

Since its release nearly 150 years ago, Louisa May Alcott’s classic LITTLE WOMEN has been a mainstay in American literature, while passionate Jo March and her calm, beloved “Marmee” have shaped generations of young women. In this riveting dual biography, Eve LaPlante draws on unknown and unexplored letters and journals to show that Louisa’s “Marmee,” Abigail May Alcott, was the intellectual and emotional center of her daughter’s world.

Historical events are traditionally identified with those who set them in motion, but headlined names are only the public layer of the story. In ABDICATION, Juliet Nicolson creates an absorbing fictional backdrop to the infamous abdication of Edward VIII through the lives of several not-so-common commoners as they plot their own paths through the tumultuous year of 1936.

In this collection of essays and lectures, Margaret Atwood illuminates her lifelong relationship with the literary genre of science fiction.