Avashia brings out universal strands in her very particular experience of growing up in Appalachia as the queer child of first-generation Indian parents. Into her poignant ruminations on food, religion, sports, family, and love, she weaves nostalgia, humor, sadness, and empathy. | Full title: Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place

D. Watkins grew up in East Baltimore, surrounded by violence and intergenerational trauma that bred toxic masculinity. Sprinkled with fleeting moments of joy, these personal essays track how he grew beyond societal expectations, surviving and thriving as a Black man of his own invention.

Journalists often struggle with how to include themselves in the stories they tell. As Parks researches a gender nonconforming person her grandmother knew in the 1950s, she grapples with her own sexuality, Southernness, faith, and complicated relationship with her mother.

O'Reilly directs droll gallows humor towards his childhood in 1990s Northern Ireland, where his mother died when he was five, leaving his father to raise 11 children. At times uproariously funny, this is an opportunity to bask in the warmth of the love that held this family together.

Part travelogue and part treatise, Cooper Jones's book chronicles what it is like to move through the world with a rare condition that visibly affects her stature and gait. Philosophy, art, gender, sex, travel, motherhood, academia, humor—this book has it all.

As smallpox ravages Europe in the 1700s, Russia's Catherine the Great not only submits to inoculation but publicizes the treatment so her subjects will accept it in this gripping story of Enlightenment ideals, female leadership, and the fight to promote science over superstition. | Full title: The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus

Rudolph Vrba, a Slovakian Jew, did the unthinkable: he escaped from more than one WWII concentration camp. After escaping from Auschwitz, having witnessed the importance of secrecy for the success of the Nazi operation, he didn't rest until he'd told the world what was happening there. | Full title: The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World

A gripping story of the Texas Gulf Coast fishing community in the late 1970s. Oil companies were polluting the water, white fishermen blamed the Vietnamese refugees who had recently arrived, and racist violence erupted. And the fight for justice landed in federal court. | Full title: The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast

James found acceptance amongst the West Coast punk scene but, as a biracial teen, still struggled to find his place in the world at large. This eye-opening memoir has the makings of an instant classic with its reflections on what it meant to be Black and punk.

This memoir is as nebulous and shape-shifting as the clouds in its title. Rojas Contreras weaves family stories of her healer curandero grandfather, her mother's and her own bouts with amnesia, Colombian history, and daily interactions with the supernatural.

Reading this contemplative and invigorating book is like sitting on a couch with a cup of tea and an old friend, talking about the peaks and valleys of life and relationships. Only the friend is Toni Morrison, and the conversation reveals the impact she had on a young Black writer. | Full title: Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison

Gilmer learns that the previous doctor at his clinic, also a Dr. Gilmer, left one day, murdered his father, and returned to work the next morning. While researching the case, he uncovers the woefully inadequate medical and mental-health resources available to incarcerated people. | Full title: The Other Dr. Gilmer: Two Men, a Murder, and an Unlikely Fight for Justice

A fun history of pinball, from its origins to today's current popularity as a multiplayer electric machine. Beautifully drawn color graphics loaded with informed historical text, here's the story of why pinball is popular and a focus of today's video-game arcade rooms.

A young poet reflects on his harrowing 3,000-mile journey from El Salvador to the United States, shared from the point of view of his nine-year-old self. From his observations, both naive and wonder-filled, to the deep-felt experience of how kids process trauma, this is a powerful story.

With the engaging simplicity of a great teacher and the metaphors of a poet, oncologist Mukherjee once again illuminates how the body (and life itself) works, this time with a history of cells and the evolving human understanding of them. | Full title: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human

A journey through Khan's struggle with home and identity, examining not only how she sees herself, but how the rest of the world sees her too. With poetic, vulnerable storytelling and beautiful art mirroring her experiences, we glimpse this wild world through her perspective.

In this autobiography, Shakur, a queer, Jamaican American essayist and activist, charts his political journey as he reckons with his identity, his family’s immigration from Jamaica, and the intergenerational impacts of patriarchal and colonial violence.

Samatar, a fantasy writer, applies her world-building prowess to two true stories: that of a Mennonite sect that settled in Eastern Europe in the late 1800s, and her own parallel journey, growing up half Mennonite, half Muslim in America. A digressive, evocative, and lyrical mosaic.