On My Radar:

Talking to Strangers: A Memoir of My Escape from a Cult
by Marianne Boucher
Doubleday Canada
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

Welcome to a place where you are valued. Where everyone is kind. Where you can be your truest self. 

It was the summer of 1980, and Marianne Boucher was ready to chase her figure skating dream. Fuelled by the desire to rise above her mundane high-school life,      she sought a new adventure as a glamorous performer in L.A.

And then a chance encounter on a California beach introduced her to a new group of people. People who shared her distrust of the status quo. People who seemed to value authenticity and compassion above all else. And they liked her. Not Marianne the performer, but Marianne the person.

Soon, she'd abandoned school, her skating and, most dramatically, her family to live with her new friends and help them fulfill their mission of "saving the world." She believed that no sacrifice was too great to be there--and to live with real purpose. They were helping people, and they cared about her . . . didn't they?

Talking to Strangers is the true story of Marianne Boucher's experiences in a cult, where she was subjected to sophisticated brainwashing techniques that took away her freedom, and took over her mind. Told in mesmerizing graphic memoir form, with vivid text and art alike, Marianne shares how she fell in with devotees of a frightening spiritual abuser, and how she eventually, painfully, pulled herself out.

On My Radar:

Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust: My Friendship with Patsy Cline
by Loretta Lynn
Grand Central Publishing
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Loretta Lynn and the late Patsy Cline are legends–country icons and sisters of the heart. For the first time ever Loretta tells their story: a celebration of their music and their relationship up until Patsy’s tragic and untimely death.

Full of laughter and tears, this eye-opening, heartwarming memoir paints a picture of two stubborn, spirited country gals who’d be damned if they’d let men or convention tell them how to be. Set in the heady streets of the 1960s South, this nostalgia ride shows how Nashville blossomed into the city of music it is today. Tender and fierce, Me & Patsy Kickin’ Up Dust is an up-close-and-personal portrait of a friendship that defined a generation and changed country music indelibly–and a meditation on love, loss and legacy.

In My TBR Stack:

Leadership Hero Code: Seven Principles for Thriving in Today's Workplace
by Kristen Hemingway
Hemingway Strategies Publishing
Trade Paperback

Confidently and authentically navigating today’s complex, ambiguous, and unpredictable workplace isn’t about putting on a brave face or taking one for the team. You need trustworthy diagnostics and tools you can count on to focus your energy on high-impact areas of leadership effectiveness. Leadership Hero Code identifies seven principles of leadership health, for you individually and for the teams you work with daily. Discover how you can recalibrate your leadership and your quality of life creating change even in the most conservative environments.

Gain mastery over your career—and your life. Leadership Hero Code will give you the courage to be your own kind of hero.

In My TBR Stack:

Her Argument: Epiphanies, Theories, Confessions
by Ellary Eddy
Darlingmedia Press
Trade Paperback

From the publisher's website:

This is not just another memoir:This is a deconstruction  of life, as lived by a human.

This is not a how-to book:This is a what-if book. 

A ‘what-if you could look at life as an intellectual adventure’ book.

In a vein at once playful, philosophical and lyrical, artist Ellary Eddy builds a provocative case for the value of self-inquiry, authenticity, and radical astonishment at the marvel of existence. Using her own experiences as raw material, Eddy’s essays muse upon the nature of identity and explore the meaning of life in general. Her Argument coaxes you to throw off the shackles of everyday reality and, Tigger-like, bounce free, stripes rippling, into the frabjous wilderness of being. Eddy romps through a wide range of topics: sex, style, play, and dating, philosophy, poetry, art and dildos, daughters, joy, aging like a motherf***er and the ‘Good Life’.

On My Radar:

Swing Kings: The Inside Story of Baseball's Home Run Revolution
by Jared Diamond
William Morrow Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

We are in a historic era for the home run. The 2019 season saw the most homers ever, obliterating a record set just two years before. It is a shift that has transformed the way the game is played, contributing to more strikeouts, longer games, and what feels like the logical conclusion of the analytics era. In Swing Kings, Wall Street Journal national baseball writer Jared Diamond reveals that the secret behind this unprecedented shift isn’t steroids or the stitching of the baseballs, it’s the most elemental explanation of all: the swing. In this lively narrative romp, he tracks a group of baseball’s biggest stars—including Aaron Judge, J.D. Martinez, and Justin Turner—who remade their swings under the tutelage of a band of renegade coaches, and remade the game in the process.

These coaches, many of them baseball washouts who have reinvented themselves as swing gurus, for years were one of the game’s best-kept secrets. Among their ranks are a swimming pool contractor, the owner of a billiards hall, and an ex-hippie whose swing insights draw from surfing and the technique of Japanese samurai. Now, as Diamond artfully charts, this motley cast has moved from the baseball margins to its center of power. They are changing the way hitting is taught to players of all ages, and major league clubs are scrambling for their services, hiring them in record numbers as coaches and consultants. And Diamond himself, whose baseball career ended in high school, enlists the tutelage of each swing coach he profiles, with an aim toward starring in the annual Boston-New York media game at Yankee Stadium.

Swing Kings is both a rollicking history of baseball’s recent past and a deeply reported, character-driven account of a battle between opponents as old as time: old and new, change and stasis, the establishment and those who break from it. Jared Diamond has written a masterful chronicle of America’s pastime at the crossroads.

On My Radar:

Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein
by Bradley J. Edwards
Gallery Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

In June 2008, Florida-based victims’ rights attorney Bradley J. Edwards was thirty-two years old and had just started his own law firm when a young woman named Courtney Wild came to see him. She told a shocking story of having been sexually coerced at the age of fourteen by a wealthy man in Palm Beach named Jeffrey Epstein. Edwards, who had never heard of Epstein, had no idea that this moment would change the course of his life.

Over the next ten years, Edwards devoted himself to bringing Epstein to justice, and came close to losing everything in the process. Edwards tracked down and represented more than twenty of Epstein’s victims, shined a light on his shadowy network of accomplices, and uncovered the scope of his sexually exploitative organization, which reached into the highest levels of American society.

Edwards gives his riveting, blow-by-blow account of battling Epstein on behalf of his clients, and provides stunning details never shared before. He explains how he followed Epstein’s criminal enterprise from Florida, to New York, to Europe, to a Caribbean island, and, in the process, became the one person Epstein most feared could take him down. Epstein and his cadre of high-priced lawyers were able to manipulate the FBI and the Justice Department, but despite making threats and attempting schemes straight out of a spy movie, Epstein couldn’t stop Edwards, his small team of committed lawyers, and, most of all, the victims, who were dead-set on seeing their abuser finally put behind bars.

On My Radar:

The NRA: The Unauthorized History
by Frank Smyth
Flatiron Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

The National Rifle Association is unique in American life. Few other civic organizations are as old or as large. None is as controversial. It is largely due to the NRA that the U.S. gun policy differs so extremely — some would say so tragically — from that of every other developed nation. But, as Frank Smyth shows, the NRA has evolved from an organization concerned above all with marksmanship — and which supported most government efforts around gun control for a hundred years — to one that resists all attempts to restrict guns in any way. At the same time, the organization has also buried its own remarkable history. 

Here is that story, from the NRA’s surprising roots in post-Civil War New York City to the defining event that changed its culture forever — the so called “Cincinnati Revolt” of 1977 — to the present day, where President Donald Trump is the most ardent champion in the White House the NRA has ever had. For anyone who has looked at access to guns in our society and asked “Why?”, this is an unmatched account of how we got here, and who got us here.

On My Radar:

More Myself: A Journey
by Alicia Keys with Michelle Burford
Flatiron Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

As one of the most celebrated musicians in the world, Alicia Keys has enraptured the globe with her heartfelt lyrics, extraordinary vocal range, and soul-stirring piano compositions. Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with private heartache—over the challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection.

Since Alicia rose to fame, her public persona has belied a deep personal truth: she has spent years not fully recognizing or honoring her own worth. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she is at last exploring the questions that live at the heart of her story: Who am I, really? And once I discover that truth, how can I become brave enough to embrace it?

More Myself is part autobiography, part narrative documentary. Alicia’s journey is revealed not only through her own candid recounting, but also through vivid recollections from those who have walked alongside her. The result is a 360-degree perspective on Alicia’s path, from her girlhood in Hell’s Kitchen and Harlem to the process of growth and self-discovery that we all must navigate.

In More Myself, Alicia shares her quest for truth—about herself, her past, and her shift from sacrificing her spirit to celebrating her worth. With the raw honesty that epitomizes Alicia’s artistry, More Myself is at once a riveting account and a clarion call to readers: to define themselves in a world that rarely encourages a true and unique identity.

On My Radar:

Try to Get Lost: Essays on Travel and Place
by Joan Frank
University of New Mexico Press
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Through the author’s travels in Europe and the United States, Try to Get Lost explores the quest for place that compels and defines us: the things we carry, how politics infuse geography, media’s depictions of an idea of home, the ancient and modern reverberations of the word “hotel,” and the ceaseless discovery generated by encounters with self and others on familiar and foreign ground. Frank posits that in fact time itself may be our ultimate, inhabited place—the “vastest real estate we know,” with a “stunningly short” lease.

On My Radar:

Had I Known: Collected Essays
by Barbara Ehrenreich
Twelve Books
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

A self-proclaimed “myth buster by trade,” Barbara Ehrenreich has covered an extensive range of topics as a journalist and political activist, and is unafraid to dive into intellectual waters that others deem too murky. Now, Had I Known gathers the articles and excerpts from a long-ranging career that most highlight Ehrenreich’s brilliance, social consciousness, and wry wit.

From Ehrenreich’s award-winning article “Welcome to Cancerland,” published shortly after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, to her groundbreaking undercover investigative journalism in Nickel and Dimed, to her exploration of death and mortality in the New York Times bestseller, Natural Causes, Barbara Ehrenreich has been writing radical, thought-provoking, and worldview-altering pieces for over four decades. Her reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review, among others, while her essays, op-eds and feature articles have appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The Wall Street Journal, and many more. Had I Known pulls from the vast and varied collection of one of our country’s most incisive thinkers to create one must-have volume.

On My Radar:

The Real James Bond: A True Story of Identity Theft, Avian Intrigue, and Ian Fleming
by Jim Wright
Schiffer Publishing
Hardcover
(Available March 28th, 2020)

From the publisher's website:

Whatever happened to him actually outshines anything I’ve had my James Bond do. —Ian Fleming 

James Bond: author, ornithologist, marksman, and . . . identity-theft victim? When James Bond published his landmark book, Birds of the West Indies, he had no idea it would set in motion events that would link him to the most iconic spy in the Western world and turn his life upside down. 

Born into a wealthy family but cut off in his early twenties, James Bond took off to the West Indies in search of adventure. Armed with arsenic and a shotgun, he took months-long excursions to the Caribbean to collect material for his iconic book, Birds of the West Indies, navigating snake-infested swamps, sleeping in hammocks, and island-hopping on tramp steamers and primitive boats. 

Packed with archival photos, many never before published, and interviews with Bond’s family and colleagues, here is the real story of the pipe-smoking, ruthless ornithologist who introduced the world to the exotic birds of the West Indies.

On My Radar:

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It
by Robert Reich
Knopf
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Millions of Americans have lost confidence in our political and economic system. After years of stagnant wages, volatile job markets, and an unwillingness by those in power to deal with profound threats such as climate change, there is a mounting sense that the system is fixed, serving only those select few with enough money to secure a controlling stake. With the characteristic clarity and passion that has made him a central civil voice, Robert B. Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy, eviscerate the middle class, and undermine democracy. Using Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase as an example, Reich exposes how those at the top propagate myths about meritocracy, national competitiveness, corporate social responsibility, and the “free market” to distract most Americans from their accumulation of extraordinary wealth, and power over the system. Instead of answering the call to civic duty, they have chosen to uphold self-serving policies that line their own pockets and benefit their bottom line. Reich’s objective is not to foster cynicism, but rather to demystify the system so that we might instill fundamental change and demand that democracy works for the majority once again.

On My Radar:

Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (as told to me) Story
by Bess Kalb
A.A. Knopf
Hardcover

From the publisher's website:

Bess Kalb, Emmy-nominated TV writer and New Yorker contributor, saved every voicemail her grandmother Bobby Bell ever left her. Bobby was a force–irrepressible, glamorous, unapologetically opinionated. Bobby doted on Bess; Bess adored Bobby. Then, at ninety, Bobby died. But in this debut memoir, Bobby is speaking to Bess once more, in a voice as passionate as it ever was in life. 

Recounting both family lore and family secrets, Bobby brings us four generations of indomitable women and the men who loved them. There’s Bobby’s mother, who traveled solo from Belarus to America in the 1880s to escape the pogroms, and Bess’s mother, a 1970s rebel who always fought against convention. Then there’s Bess, who grew up in New York and entered the rough-and-tumble world of L.A. television. Her grandma Bobby was with her all the way–she was the light of Bess’s childhood and her fiercest supporter, giving Bess unequivocal love, even if sometimes of the toughest kind. 

In Nobody Will Tell You This But Me, Bobby reminds Bess of the experiences they shared, and she delivers–in phone calls, texts, and unforgettable heart-to-hearts brought vividly to the page–her signature wisdom: 

If the earth is cracking behind you, you put one foot in front of the other. 
Never. Buy. Fake. Anything.
I swear on your life every word of this is true.

With humor and poignancy, Bess Kalb gives us proof of the special bond that can skip a generation and endure beyond death. This book is a feat of extraordinary ventriloquism and imagination by a remarkably talented writer.