It was love at first sight between Michael Holroyd and his family’s eight-horsepower Ford.  This essay collection details a lifelong seesaw romance with the ubiquitous automobile. 

Recounting the struggles and eventual dissolution of a family textile business in Prato, Italy, Story of My People is a heartbreaking memoir about the personal impact of globalization.

A controversial sensation in Norway, A Man in Love is the second book of six in the series, detailing Knausgaard’s separation from his wife, his move to Stolkholm and the dogged pursuit of a mesmerizing poet.

Tournament of Books co-founder and novelist Rosecrans Baldwin had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of Parisian living when a French advertising job landed in his lap. But cold réalité soon intruded, as told in this hilarious and winning memoir.

A poignant and riveting memoir of survival during the 2004 tsunami which leveled Sonali Deraniyagala’s native Sri Lanka, and an aftermath of mourning and renewal.  A Spring 2013 Discover Great New Writers selection. 

No chef autobiography has been this flavorful since Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. Eddie Huang casts the founding of his beloved New York restaurant Baohaus against a backdrop of fashion, drugs, and brawling -- a zesty stew leading to culinary brilliance. Delicious.

Here we have autobiography as Munchausen syndrome, as comedian Chris Elliott fantasticates the rudiments of his life into a two-fisted, continents-spanning farce. Whether washing up as a castaway on Marlon Brando's private island or disposing of corpses for the Mafia, Elliott provides not only insights into his formative influences but also slabs of his twisted imagination.

"What are you reading?" takes on added meaning in Will Schwalbe's poignant account of the lifelong conversation about books he shared with his mother, a conversation that evolved into the two-person book club of the title that helped both of them cope while she underwent treatment for cancer.

In a book that rocked her native Britain, celebrated author Rachel Cusk anatomizes the dissolution of her marriage with unflinching honesty. This is reading sure to prompt deep conversations about love and commitment in the twenty-first century.

John Dramani Mahama chronicles his childhood during the post-independence "lost dacades" of Ghana's history when his father, a minister of state, languished in prison and political power passed through the hands of one dictator after another. How this young boy grew up to become vice president of his nation is an inspiring story that mirrors the country's journey from chaos to order.

When the police arrested her father for anti-communist activities in 1983, Carmen Bugan's idyllic life in the Romanian countryside was upended. She captures the trauma of this event, his subsequent release, and her family's exile in language that recalls her previous work as a poet and sheds light on little-known chapter of history.

Jarhead, Anthony Swofford's memoir of his Gulf War military service, launched the author on a promising literary career, but struggles with addiction and despair soon followed. Then a series of RV trips with his terminally ill father, himself a Vietnam vet, saved him from himself, a transformation he captures with courageous intensity in this moving work of nonfiction.

When a job at a French ad agency landed in his lap, novelist Rosecrans Baldwin had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream of living la vie Parisienne. And though cold réalité intruded -- in the form of financial struggles and the limits of his rudimentary Français -- the result was a more mature take on the city of his fantasies, flaws included.

Wenguang Huang's revealing memoir of family life in 1970s China turns on the moment when his grandmother makes a request that pits tradition against the realities of life under Communism during the Cultural Revolution.

Aria Minu-Sepehr's elegant memoir captures a family and nation undergoing radical change in the wake of the 1979 revolution. The son of a prominent Iranian general, the author offers a  rare, illuminating  perspective on a society's transformation, all the more valuable given the tense Iranian-American relations in decades since.

From her working-class Brooklyn childhood to success as a Brill Building hitmaker and her later rise to stardom with the legendary album Tapestry, Carole King takes readers through a career of exhilarating highs and profound lows. Her meditations on motherhood, music, and marriage are revealing, and she delivers an insider's perspective on the industry and the many musical talents who became colleagues, partners, rivals and lovers.

Iraq War veteran Benjamin Busch reflects on a childhood spent roaming rural New York and how that pastoral upbringing led to a career in the US Marine Corps where he witnessed violence and death during two combat tours at the height of sectarian violence. Like the work of Tim O'Brien and Karl Marlantes, this book is a moving account of confronting mortality framed in elemental chapters: water, metal, blood, bone.

Bestselling romance novelist (and B&N Review columnist) Eloisa James and her family relocated to the City of Light for a year of beauty and self-discovery -- and they weren't disappointed. But her dream-come-true sabbatical required some significant adjustments recounted in this warmly funny and devastatingly honest memoir.

When Cheryl Strayed began a three-month solo hike from southern California to the state of Washington, she was fleeing a daily life shattered by her mother's death and her marriage's dissolution. This chronicle of a transforming experience in the wildnerness shines with wisdom, humor, and clear-eyed descriptions of the natural world that opened to the author's gaze for the first time. 

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anthony Shadid describes his quest to uncover his family's history and his own identity while renovating his ancestral home in Lebanon. A graceful journey through past and present made all the more poignant and arresting by the author's death at age 43, while on assignment in Syria.

In this heartrending story, Doron Weber shares his family's struggles to save their gifted, vibrant son, Damon, who was born with a congenital heart defect that introduced serious medical issues during his teenage years. Punctuated with excerpts from Damon's blog and filled with moments both uplifting and devastating, this book captures the spirit of one incredible young man -- and the loving family for whom his voice still sings.

"I really must stop saying sorry; it doesn't make things any better or worse." Actor, comedian, and author Stephen Fry follows 1999's Moab is My Washpot -- a quirky and moving account of his childhood -- with a new memoir that finds a young Fry navigating his way in the world of theatrical comedy along with fellow rising stars Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie. Like having dinner with a friend so clever he makes you feel like the witty one.

South Africa-born novelist, poet, and playwright Zakes Mda evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of his early life growing up in a Soweto family of lawyers, facing deprivation and abuse while struggling to find his identity as the child of a man exiled by the apartheid regime. The true story of his exile and return, his embrace of politics, music, and writing, and his eventual journey to America is crowded with emotion, color, and drama.  

It's common practice for well-known, much-loved screen stars to pen their memoirs. What's unique about Diane Keaton's autobiography is that, in it, the actress best known for her role in Woody Allen's Annie Hall tells us not just her own story but that of her mother as well. In a gorgeous literary collage, Keaton pieces together journals, letters, and lists to form a picture of two fascinating women -- and of the relationship between mothers and daughters everywhere.

Warning: This riveting memoir from the musician behind era-defining songs like "Le Freak," "Good Times," "We Are Family,"  and "I'm Coming Out" is highly addictive. From his candid portrait of childhood among drug-devoted hipsters to his rise as a performer and producer (collaborators range from Diana to Madonna) Nile Rodgers demonstrates a keen appreciation of life's ironies,  and an unwavering devotion to family.  A true story that never misses a beat.

Before he found acclaim as a poet, Welsh vagabond W. H. Davies spent the years between 1893 and 1899 begging his way across America, living a hardscrabble life on the road, and ultimately losing a leg in a train accident on his way to join the Klondike gold rush. In this classic memoir -- newly reissued by Melville House -- the poet recounts his adventures with what George Bernard Shaw calls "boyish charm" combined with "the savoir vivre of an experienced man of the world."

Carrie Fisher's follow-up to her best-selling Wishful Drinking shuttles us through stories about her roller-coaster relationships with her father, Eddie Fisher, as well as with fame (brought on by her role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars films), drugs, and electroshock therapy. Fisher writes with wit, candor, and intimacy, sharing anecdotes that, even after all she has revealed on stage, page, and screen, still have the power to astound.

Every family has its quirks, but wait until you meet Meir Shalev's Grandma Tonia. This warm, delightful memoir by the Israeli author of the novel A Pigeon and a Boy introduces readers to an unforgettable woman whose battle with dirt mirrors the struggles she faced after emigrating from Russia to Palestine in 1923. Shalev's idiosyncratic clan is singular in its strange ways, but may yet remind you of your own meshugana mishpacha.

It wasn't until she was 27 that Victoria Donda, who became the youngest female member of the Argentine National Congress in 2007, found out she was not who she thought she was, that the parents who had raised her had, in fact, been responsible for the "disappearance" of her biological parents during Argentina's bloody 1976 coup d'etat. This is her riveting and remarkable story of identity rediscovered.

Grammy-winning folk singer Judy Collins gives readers the chance to look at her life from both sides now, providing a candid account of the ups and downs she navigated on the road to musical success. She chronicles vital friendships and longstanding relationships (Stephen Stills, Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez), as well as the personal struggles (alcoholism among them) she has faced with amazing grace.