Martha Anne Toll

As Lorene Cary tells the story of her Nana and the stress and sadness all too common for caregivers, it's her recounting of her upbringing and ancestry that is most engaging and captivating.

Author Anna Merlan's recitations are chilling, as are her warnings that fringe beliefs tend to go mainstream — and how their rise is seen against a resurgence in nationalism and white supremacy.

Writer and gallery owner Jean Frémon inhabits artist Louise Bourgeois as if she herself were writing this novel-cum-memoir, opening up our understanding of both the artist and her art.

There is a universality to Édouard Louis' story — the child's longing for acceptance contrasted with the mature son's painful journey to understand why his father behaved as he did.

In Jessica Chiccehitto Hindman's debut, she doesn't shrink from the systemic issues of an unfair economic system, but her personal story, with its unexpected twists, makes this memoir memorable.

Stephanie Allen's novel creates a microcosm of America in 1919 in the form of a travelling medicine show, packed with people from all walks of life, trying to get along in the show's close confines.

Sarah McColl unstintingly puts her heart on the page as she reflects on caring for her dying mother, with whom she is unimaginably close, as her marriage fails.

The title Josephine Wilson's new novel refers to its protagonist, an elderly man who feels useless, extinct — and whose journey is to find the means for growth and change within himself.

Through the arc of the poet's career, Craig Morgan Teicher shows that while we are often too distracted to appreciate each other and our universe — poetry demands that we pause and listen.

The book is at once a paean to the Deep South, a condemnation of our fat-averse culture, and a beautiful memoir of being black, bookish, and part of a family that's as challenging as it is grounding.